Keeping It All a Halal Muslim Was Never Harder: Identity Formation Among Second-Generation Muslims in Canadian Urban Centres

AbstractThe influx of Muslim immigrants to Canada raises tensions: the host society’s fear of Islamification as manifested in Bill 21 (prohibition of wearing religious symbols by public employees) versus Muslim communities’ fear of losing their religious identity. Expanding on the concept of religious identity construction, I ask how second-generation Muslim Canadians form their religious identity in Canadian urban centres and how this changes over the life course. My sample consists of N=30 second-generation Arab Muslim Canadians living in Montreal and Toronto, and I use qualitative semi-structured interviews to collect data. The findings identify three family types; those with non-existent relations to Islam, those with sporadic affinity to Islam, and those with devout strict affinity to Islam. The evidence of conflicts surrounding religious identity (disentangling cultural versus religious aspects, wearing the hijab, attending Sunday school) indicates participants re-evaluate their religious identity in three ways: some individualize their religious identity (i.e., selectivists who pick and choose elements); some indigenize it to the Canadian context (i.e., ‘all halal’ participants); some deconvert (i.e., ‘all halal’ participants for whom religion becomes less germane). These trajectories are theoretical alternatives to the more common ‘black box’ notion of ‘identity negotiation’ in explaining religious identity formation. The trajectories inspire us to consider theoretical models where Muslims can retain their religious identity in an Islamophobic context, rather than promoting models confined to edge cases (loyal to or exiting the community). In their romantic life, most participants prefer a Muslim spouse whose outlook on religious identity is similar to theirs, including those who have deconverted. I call this an intra-faith preference based on variance within the group (in-group), thus presenting an alternative to the literature on inter-faith marriages between groups (out-group), commonly considered an indicator of integration. The preference for a Muslim spouse with a similar outlook contributes to the religious vitality of Muslims in the Canadian context. The findings contribute to two scholarly fields: identity theory of religious identity construction and religious vitality.

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