Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities Through Multiple Methods

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “War on Terror,” growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim men as terrorists and Muslim women as oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and police, and the fierce embodiment of fears in their homes.

With great attention to quantitative and qualitative detail, the authors provide stories of discrimination and resistance, delivering statistical evidence of moral exclusion for young people whose lives are situated on the fault lines of global conflict, carrying international crises in their backpacks and in their souls.

The volume offers a critical conceptual framework to understand Muslim American identity formation, applicable to other marginalized and immigrant youth. Through innovative data analytic methods that mix youth drawings, individual interviews, group discussions, and culturally sensitive survey items, the authors provide an antidote to “qualitative vs. quantitative” debates in psychology and behavioral sciences.

Muslim American Youth provides a roadmap for understanding how Muslim and other immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans.