Muslim Political Activism or Political Activism by Muslims? Secular and Religious Identities Amongst Muslim Arab Activists in the United States and United Kingdom

Abstract

Scholarship on Muslim political mobilisation in the West has developed as an important counterpoint to public discourse, which has tended to cast Muslims as a threat to social cohesion, liberal democracy, and national security. But even as scholarly literature has shed light on civic participation among Muslims, it has sidelined the diversity of political identities and values that motivate them. Most, if not all, Muslims in the West find their identities politicised in some way, but the question of whether this leads to a consensus amongst Muslims about the role of religion in public life often remains unexamined. In this article we draw on interviews with seventy-eight activists in Britain and the United States who are both Muslim and Arab to complicate ideas about the political mobilisation of Muslims in the West. Respondents, we show, are far from unified in their views on religion as a basis for political action and mobilisation. Some are keen to place Islam squarely in mainstream political spaces; most, however, are insistent that Islam should remain a private faith and identity and that political mobilisation should take place under the aegis of Arabness or other ‘secular’ identities. Using theoretical perspectives on the public sphere, we explain the complexity of our respondents' political identities and activism. Our overall aim is to broaden perspectives on the ways in which people from Muslim backgrounds participate in public, political life in Western contexts.

Keywords:

• Arab Americans
• British Arabs
• Muslim minorities
• secular identity

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge all of our research participants, whose graciousness made this research possible.

Notes

1. The study on which this article is based was entitled ‘Community, immigration, and the construction of citizenship’ and was funded jointly by the National Science Foundation (BCS-0216886) and the Economic and Social Research Council (R000223995).

2. About a quarter of the respondents in the larger study on which this article is based were from Christian Arab backgrounds. This article, however, focuses solely on our Muslim respondents.

3. The Muslim population in the United States includes a large number of African Americans, whose socioeconomic characteristics and theological perspectives often differ dramatically from Muslims whose families migrated to the United States in the past 50 years.

4. All names are pseudonyms.

5. There is not space in this article to fully discuss the development of modern Arab identities; Gualtieri (2009) provides an excellent account of Arab nationalism and identity and the role of Arabic-speaking émigré communities in their development. We emphasise here that the pan-Arab sentiment expressed by our respondents reflects a broad political and cultural affinity with the Arab world rather than a clear political program or agenda.

6. Christian Arabs—and especially Lebanese Christians—have had an uneasy relationship with Arab identities since the early twentieth century. Still, we spoke with several Arab Christians—including first-generation immigrants and the descendents of early immigrant settlers—who are deeply involved in Arab American politics. For these individuals, as for their Muslim counterparts, a secular Arab identity is central to political activism.