Islam in the Anglosphere Perspectives of Young Muslims in Australia, the UK and the USA

Using semi-structured interviews with 122 young Muslims in Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA) from diverse ethnic backgrounds, this book investigates the lived reality of young Muslims from their own perspectives. It explores their ideas of key Islamic and secular issues, their struggles, world views, triumphs, how the stigmatized group negotiates their identity in these three English language speaking Western countries, 20 years after 9/11. The key aspect of this book is to transcend binaries and reductionisms by exploring what Muslims actually think and say rather than intellectual articulations on them. The book presents a very detailed account of these young Muslims in the Anglophone West on their political beliefs, their knowledge and understanding of sharia law, their interest and participation in local and transnational political activism, their positive and negative feelings about their own communities, and indeed how they define theircommunity.

Ihsan Yilmaz is Research Professor and Chair of Islamic Studies at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Oxford University’s Regent College and the European Center for Populism Studies, Brussels. Previously, he worked at the Universities of Oxford and London and has a strong track record of leading multi-site international research projects funded by the Australian Research Council, Victorian and Australian Governments, and Gerda Henkel Foundation. He has been working on various topics including Muslim diasporas in the West, authoritarianism, digital authoritarianism, populism, and religion and politics with special emphasis on Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan.