Negotiating British-Muslim Identity: Hybridity, Exclusion and Resistance

Since the events of 11 September 2001 Islam and Muslims have been the subject of intense scrutiny and open to pervasive institutional construction, both on a domestic and global level. Such constructions implicate the identities of British-Muslims, the ummah and Muslim countries. The all-encompassing nature of this institutional construction, most notably within the media, mainstream political discourses and State security measures has left little space for British-Muslims to publically express their beliefs, feeling and perceptions in an arena untainted by dominant discourse. This project strives to fill this void by rooting the research in the experiences of British-Muslim youth as narrated by themselves and their peers. This primary research study used a combined method of both focus groups and semi-structured interviews to examine the young British-Muslim views on three interrelated research questions: firstly, ‘To assess the impacts of counter-terrorism legislation and security measures on British-Muslims post 9/11’; secondly, ‘To examine how British-Muslim identities have been institutionally represented since 9/11’; and, thirdly, ‘To analyse the micro-level strategies deployed by young British-Muslims to maintain and de-stigmatise identities which have been rendered suspect.