Being a Muslim in the Western World A Social Identity Perspective

In this chapter we focus on questions related to Muslim minority identity in Western societies and argue for the usefulness of the social identity perspective for examining these questions. We aim to show that the existing research on Muslim minority identity will be enhanced by more fully considering the implications of the social identity perspective. These implications include (a) the conceptualization of social identity, (b) the importance of considering various dimensions of group identification, (c) the question of religious and host national identity (in)compatibility, and (d) the relation between Muslim minority identity and social change. Furthermore, the social identity perspective emphasizes the importance of intragroup and intergroup processes for social identifications and identity enactments. These implications have not been fully considered in the literature in Muslim identities but offer important possibilities for theoretically and empirically addressing some of the critical questions that the presence of Muslim minorities in Western societies raise.