The ‘new Islam’ and Bangladeshi youth in Britain and the US

Abstract

In this paper I look at the growth of revivalist Islam – the ‘new Islam’ – within Muslim migrant communities in Western societies. I do so through a comparative analysis of how Bangladesh-origin Muslims in Britain and the US view and understand revivalist Islam, especially its popularity among youth within their communities. I explore the effects of national context, exploring the ways in which variations of history and context of settlement shape the character of revivalist Islam in the British and US Bangladesh-origin communities. I find that Bangladesh-origin Muslims in Britain and the US see the growth of revivalist Islam to be a response to the growing salience of ‘Muslim’ as a public identity for them in these countries. Other explanations include a deep sense of political and cultural alienation from the West, coupled with a desire, especially among the younger generation, to distance oneself from an identification with Bangladesh. The impact of national context is evident in how these understandings are expressed as well as in their implications for patterns of incorporation. The growth of revivalist Islam appears to be a far more contested matter among the Bangladesh-origin community in Britain than it is in the US.

Keywords:

• Bangladeshi immigrants
• Muslim youth
• revivalist Islam
• identity
• second-generation Muslims
• South Asian immigrants

Acknowledgements

This research was funded in part by a 2003–4 grant from the American Sociological Association, Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline.

Notes

1. I use the term ‘Bengali’ rather than ‘Bangladeshi’ when discussing the pre-1971 period, before the establishment of the Bangladesh state.

2. The law restricted entry to Commonwealth citizens who has been born in the US or held a passport issued by the UK government.

3. Loury, Modood and Teles (2005, p.11) note that the penetration of local councils by Commonwealth immigrants has coincided with the progressive weakening of local government in Britain.

4. The lottery is open only to those from countries that have sent fewer than 50,000 people to the US in the past five years.

5. US Bureau of Census 2005 (5 per cent Public Use Microdata Sample) on foreign-born Bangladeshis shows that in 1980, 66 per cent were college graduates, a percentage which declined to 46 per cent in 2000.

6. The National Asian Pacific Legal Consortium (2001) reports that in the three-month period following the 11 September attacks, there were nearly 250 bias-motivated incidents and two murders targeting Asian Pacific Americans.

7. I counted as second-generation those who were the children of immigrants and either born in the ‘host’ country or had arrived there before the age of 12. The third-generation included those who were the grandchildren of immigrants.

8. The term ‘1.5 generation’ refers to those who arrived in the ‘host’ country in their teenage years.

9. Glynn (2002) writes of the visibility of this generational divide in a demonstration against Maulana Sayedee, a Jamat-i-Islami Member of the Parliament in Bangladesh who is accused of 1971 war crimes in Bangladesh.

10. In Bangladesh and throughout South Asia, Shab-e-barat is observed as the night of good fortune. The belief is that one's fate for the coming year is determined on this night. Many observe fasting during the day and pray throughout the night.

11. ‘Bangali’ and ‘Bengali’ are generally used interchangeably to refer to persons from Bangladesh and more generally from the Bengal region of South Asia.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nazli Kibria

NAZLI KIBRIA is Associate Professor of Sociology, at Boston University