Young Adult Muslim Americans on Campus— Faith, Identities, Citizenship, Gender, and Pluralism. Thank you to Drs. Muhamad Ali, Karen Leonard, Sherine Hafez, and Michael Alexander for serving on my dissertation committee and to my friends, family, other instructors throughout the years, and UC Riverside for all their support. I am looking to turn some of its chapter sections into journal articles and soon get a book contract to revise it for publication. My chapters are the following:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION
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Young Adult Muslim Americans:
Locating Research and Researcher, Methods and Theory of the Study
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1
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CHAPTER 1
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Individuation in Relationships: The Ecology of Islamic
Identity Formation among young adult American heritage Muslims
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33
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CHAPTER 2
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The Islam of the Young Generation: Totally American, Totally
Muslim
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89
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CHAPTER 3
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Young Adult Muslim Americans and Gender:
Finding their own Way
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161
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CHAPTER 4
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Out of Many One: Young Adult
Muslim Americans Dealing with Differences
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251
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CONCLUSION
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Ethical
Encounters with Young Adult Muslim Americans
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339
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The Abstract for the dissertation reads:
This dissertation highlights context and the contours of
the religious discourse of young adult Muslim Americans on university campuses
in the Pacific West of the United States. It specifically focuses on the second
generation children of Muslim immigrants and their leadership approaches to
college Muslim Student Associations [MSA].
Based off data from eighty in-depth interviews with this population and
some converts, extensive participant observation, and an online survey, this
study also employs sociological analysis, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and
comparative ethics to identify the ways this demographic draws on scriptural
sources to articulate the significance of their faith in an American
environment. Chapter One explores the social matrix in which
heritage Muslims come to embrace and assert Islam as a central facet of their
personal identity. In particular it identifies the importance of family
upbringing, peer relationships, prejudice and stereotyping of Muslims, and multiculturalism.
Chapter Two discloses many core features of a “Muslim” identity, and the ways
it relates to their nationality “American” and various other demarcations and
activities of their personal identity. Chapter Three presents MSAs’
institutional practices and individual interpretations related to envisioned
binaries of male and female, analyzing how they believe women and men should
relate to each other on campus, in families, and in their roles in public life.
It also presents their perspectives of homosexuality. Chapter Four tackles the
question of how young Muslims conceptualize and deal with religious, ethnic,
and racial differences. This chapter discloses dynamics of inclusivity,
prejudice, trans-ethnic friendship, marriage ideals with ethnic others, and
young Muslims’ sometimes embracing and sometimes censuring Islamic sectarian
diversity. It also divulges their perspectives on soteriology of non-Muslims. This
research counters previous simplifications of young American Muslims on campus
as fundamentalist, exclusive, uncritical, and militant yet also complicates
reifications of them as liberal, democratic, and inclusive, presenting their
diverse interpretations to their faith and detailing the particular ways and
for what purposes they perform conservative, exclusive, liberal, and inclusive approaches
to Islam. This dissertation reveals young adult Muslim Americans on campus creatively negotiate what they
learn about their Islamic tradition with American ideals, constituting diverse
expositions of their Faith.
