In this article, I offer a qualitative study of three spaces created by and for young Muslim women in Toronto, Canada: an after-school drop-in programme for Muslim girls, a Somali women's group and a Muslim women's collective. I focus on data gathered from interviews of seven Muslim women in their 20s who created the spaces, which offered refuge…

The study examines four adolescent multilinguals' engagement with religion, as well as outcomes of that engagement, in an out-of-school book club. The qualitative analysis of participants' talk in book club meetings, writing responses, and individual interviews revealed that multilinguals tap into their religious knowledge and identities in making…

This grounded theory study explored the conceptualization of authenticity in language education. The participants were 30 Iranian English language educators, who were studied as adult learners. The findings revealed that authenticity was conceptualized by language educators as a social and reflective practice under the influence of the…

In 2014, the city of Birmingham (UK) became embroiled in a high-profile scandal that would bring it and the wider education system under disrepute. The 'Trojan Horse' affair, as it become known, began with an anonymised letter that claimed hard-line 'Islamists' were plotting and planning to take over a number of schools in Birmingham. Amongst the…

The convergence of Islam and national and cultural identity in Europe, exacerbated by external events like a murder, assassination, riot, embassy bombing or even a satirical cartoon, has the potential for disrupting civic order and eroding movements towards cultural assimilation and national integration. Clearly, fundamentalism in any religion,…

Islamophobia has become increasingly evident in the sociocultural landscape of the United States. The current political climate which centers on the influx of refugees and concerns of extremists has in effect othered individuals of Arab ancestry as a bounded group. Arab students represent a heterogeneous group of individuals, encompassing a…

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Islamic teachers' college in Israel and interviews with women lecturers, this article explores how the women combine education and religion to create a revitalized self and sense of belonging despite lived experiences of structural racial, national, and gender inequalities. The women's experience is understood…

This article focuses on the concerns expressed by three female Muslim educators who are support staff at an English comprehensive school. Consistent with the debates associated with multiculturalism, group rights and feminism, the article illuminates spaces of gender constraint and possibility within the discourses shaping these women's lives and…

Negotiating their double identity as Mauritians and Muslims in multilingual and in multiethnic Mauritius, Mauritian Muslims have been socialised into reading and writing in Kreol in madrassahs, while they have never been exposed to Kreol literacy in mainstream education. At the point where Kreol is being introduced as an optional school subject,…

This dissertation employs data collected from multiple sites in Southern California over a period of nine months. Several in-depth ethnographic interviews and participant observations were conducted with Pakistani Muslim women (age 17-22) and their parents in an effort to better understand the influence that parents and ethno-religious communities…

This article describes a cultural production process called religification, in which religious affiliation, rather than race or ethnicity, has become the core category of identity for working-class Pakistani-American youth in the United States. In this dialectical process, triggered by political changes following the September 11 terrorist…

This dissertation examines how women in the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of Colorado at Boulder respond to the negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims that have proliferated since 9/11. The media's positioning of Muslim women as "backwards" and "un-American" compels MSA women to construct an extensive…

This paper presents the stories of three female Muslim educators actively engaged in empowering Muslim girls in their school/community liaison roles. The stories are drawn from a broader qualitative and predominantly interview-based research project that investigated issues of teaching and social justice in three English schools. Through lenses…

This study analyzes the connections among multilingual language practices, multilingual literacy practices, and social identities in two Sunni madrassahs in Mauritius. The study is framed by sociolinguistic and poststructuralist perspectives on language and identity, and social practice views of literacy. Data collection and analysis involved…

This article investigates the relationship between religious identities of African American Muslims and school performance. We examined how understandings of religion inform how American Muslims view, behave, and imagine their role in school. The first author conducted interviews over the course of a year with four American Muslims, two of whom…