Choosing Islamic Conservatism: Muslim Youth in Europe and the UK and the Question of Social Cohesion

The Islamic networks that historically embedded themselves in Muslim communities within Europe and the UK represent, in theological and methodological terms, most conservative Islamic knowledge traditions, which promote highly conservative social norms, encourage isolation from mainstream society, and in extreme cases also endorse jihad. Despite facing serious competition in recent years from Islamic scholars and institutions that are actively trying to promote teachings from the classical Islamic scholarly tradition, which balances textual loyalty with a focus on contemporary social reality, thereby providing more socially optimal outcomes for young Muslims in the West, the conservative Islamic movements still control the mosque and madrasa (Islamic school) networks and have a visible constituency among second- and third- generation Muslims in the West. Working within theories of institutional persistence and change, and complementing them with a focus on understanding the significance of ethical and moral agency as discussed in recent studies in anthropology of Islam, and taking cues from the growing interest in the role of neighbourhoods in religious socialisation, this project develops a conceptually and methodologically unique approach to understand the stickiness of Islamic conservatism in the West. It has a three-fold focus: (1) studying the survival strategies of the institutional elites, as well as any attempts at internal reform; (2) expanding the existing focus on push factors (childhood socialisation and reactionary religiosity) to also study the pull factors (such as the possible appeal of the ethical and moral agency that these movements are able to inculcate); and (3) testing the hypothesis that ‘mosque-dense Muslim-majority neighbourhoods’ are central to engraining a conservative social Islamic imaginary in each subsequent generation, which through a dense network of bridging ties is spread to Muslim youth across the country.