Muslim youth claim a Muslim-first identity partly to justify interreligious marriages

Evidence

Second-generation South Asian and Arab Muslim Americans are exhibiting signs that a Muslim identity is becoming more prominent than ethnic identity. Naber argues that there are a few factors that influence young Arab Americans to claim they are “Muslim first.” Some individuals feel their religious identity defines them more than their other identities, like ethnicity or even their national identity, and the increased media racialization of Islam after 9/11 has contributed to the stronger connection young Arabs feel to their religious identity. Furthermore, this group sometimes uses “Muslim first” as a tactic to convince their immigrant parents to support interracial marriages with other Muslims (Naber 2005). Due to an increase in religious classes and organizations that are available to them in America, second-generation Muslims are also learning more about their religion and making their own autonomous decisions about religious practices. As Peek (2012) found, many young Muslim women refused to take off their hijabs after 9/11, even when their parents asked them to do so out of fear for their safety. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 104

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s core question about how faith gets racialized — the media racialization of Islam after 9/11 strengthening rather than suppressing religious identification. Connects to Beydoun’s work on the racialization of Muslim identity.