Young people first! The multiple inscriptions of a generational discourse of Muslimness among Italian-Bangladeshi youths

Andrea Priori
Additional contact information
Andrea Priori: Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Dept. of Social and Cultural Sciences, Germany.

Migration Letters, 2021, vol. 18, issue 1, 97-108

Abstract: ‘Our parents couldn’t teach us the true meaning of what spirituality and faith can be!’. This assertion, made by a 24-year-old youth, epitomises the critical stance of a group of young Italian-Bangladeshi Muslims towards the religiosity of their former generation. Based on ethnographic research in Rome (Italy), this article illustrates the apparently oxymoronic characteristics of a discourse of Muslimness which, despite stressing the importance of a return to the primary sources of Islam, combines this attitude with a peculiar emphasis on ‘integration’. I will show how this counter-intuitive combination is not only inspired by a scholarly concept of ‘European Islam’, but first and foremost it is grounded in the concrete life conditions of youths who are both well placed within the Italian society and animated by religious zeal. In this way, I seek to shed light on the mutual entanglement of religious stances and life experiences, and to point up the limits of ‘exceptionalist’ and ‘literalist’ approaches to the study of Islam.

Keywords: Bangladeshi diaspora; second generations; young Muslims; European Islam; ethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.tplondon.com/ml/workflow/index/1058/5 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mig:journl:v:18:y:2021:i:1:p:97-108

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://migrationletters.com/

DOI: 10.33182/ml.v18i1.1058

Access Statistics for this article

Migration Letters is currently edited by Kittisak Jermsittiparsert

More articles in Migration Letters from Migration Letters
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ML ().