Challenging the discursive positioning of young British Muslims through the multilingual performance of devotional song and poetry

ABSTRACT

This article presents data which challenge current hegemonic discourses in public and media spaces which reductively position young British Muslims as linguistically problematic. Framing these data are public space statements which argue for an overly simple linguistic basis to so-called extremist behaviour based on the presence or absence of the English language. Through an analysis of a questionnaire and interviews carried out with young performers, singers and reciters of devotional song and poetry in a range of language varieties, this article shows how such performance practices lead to the deployment of complex and mobile language resources which help negotiate and fashion rich linguistic repertoires and fluid identities for these young British Muslims. The article argues that these are (a) more representative of the wider British-Muslim youth community, (b) unmarked, and thus generally invisible within public discourses and (c) a far cry from the prevailing discursive attempts to frame young Muslims as posing a linguistic problem.

KEYWORDS:

• Linguistic repertoire
• religion
• identity
• devotional song and poetry
• performance

Acknowledgements

The author wish to convey his sincere appreciation to the editors of the journal, Eva Vetter and Danuta Gabrys-Barker, the three anonymous reviewers, and to University of Sheffield colleagues for the many valuable suggestions and comments made on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This author realises this term is unsatisfactory. See fuller discussion on page 9.

2 This variety is variously known as Pahari, Pothwari, Mirpuri-Pahari or simply as Mirpuri-Punjabi.

3 Also not to be confused with literary western Punjabi, the H-language of the Sikh community in India and the Sikh diaspora.

4 See note 3.

5 See note 3.

6 See Rehman (2005) and Hussain (2015) regarding written varieties of Pothwari/Pahari.

7 The Keighley Munshids (The Keighley Munshids, n.d.) are one such British ensemble who prefer to perform almost exclusively in Classical Arabic drawing on the rich tradition of devotional singing from Jordan and Syria despite their Pakistani-heritage.