Cont Islam DOI 10.1007/s11562-017-0382-x Two cultures, one identity: formulations of Australian Isma’ili Muslim identity Karim Mitha1,2,3,4 & Shelina Adatia5 & Rusi Jaspal6,7 # The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract The Shi’a Imami Nizari Isma’ili Muslims have often been considered the Bposter child^ for pluralistic integration (Cayo 2008). This ethos has been inculcated within members of the community, with its adherents seeing themselves as a diverse and multi-ethnic collective. Nevertheless, despite this purported pluralism, social research on the Isma’ilis has primarily focused on the diasporic and post-diasporic migrant communities of South Asian descent, the ‘first and second-generation immi- grants,’ in the Euro-American context (Mukadam and Mawani 2006, 2009; Nanji 1983, 1986). The experiences of co-religionists in other contexts have often been neglected. This study examines how members of the self-described geographically and socially isolated Isma’ili community in Australia construct their identity vis-à-vis the larger, global, Isma’ili community, and how they have responded to the potential of identity threat given the arrival of another group of Isma’ilis with a differing migratory history integrating into the extant community. Using the approach of identity process theory, this study examines how salient features of identity are constructed amongst the * Karim Mitha
[email protected] 1 Edinburgh Migration, Ethnicity, and Health Research Group (EMEHRG), Centre for Population