UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title American Islam, the Next Generation: Young Adult Muslim Americans on Campus — Faith, Identities, Citizenship, Gender, and Pluralism Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1n209613 Author Pschaida, Daniel Azim Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE American Islam, the Next Generation: Young Adult Muslim Americans on Campus— Faith, Identities, Citizenship, Gender, and Pluralism A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies by Daniel Azim Pschaida August 2015 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Muhamad Ali, Chairperson Dr. Sherine Hafez Dr. Michael Alexander Dr. Karen Leonard Copyright by Daniel Azim Pschaida 2015 The Dissertation of Daniel Azim Pschaida is approved: ____________________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements The work of writing a dissertation is too often a solitary exercise so that it can be easy to forget that it really is the emanation of many precious relationships. This dissertation has been empowered by family, friends, colleagues, teachers, and professors too numerous to all name here. I want to thank my parents Gregory Pschaida, Betsy Walker, and Joseph Walker for the thousands of ways they have supported, encouraged, and nurtured me in every stage of my life. I also want to thank my in-laws Joseph and Marsha Urlacher for their support, interest in this project, and their many hours of carefully reading and editing chapter drafts. I thank my many teachers from childhood through higher education who have pursued their vocation with passion and care, helping me develop my capacities and instilling in me a love for life-long learning. Coming in without a background in this field, the mentorship of my professors during the Master of Arts in Religious Studies at the University of Iowa was essential, namely from Richard Turner, Ahmed Souaiaia, Howard Rhodes, David Klemm, Ralph Keen, and Morten Schlütter, and from the department administrator Maureen Walterhouse. The wonderful faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at University of California Riverside has continued this work to further my skill and intellectual faculties in this field. I am grateful to the department chairs and graduate advisors who have found department resources to support me. I am sincerely grateful to dissertation committee members Sherine Hafez and Michael Alexander for their enthusiasm for and guidance of this project. Nothing I can do or say can recompense Karen Isaksen Leonard for her many hours of going line by line in iv the long dissertation chapters to help me improve the language of my writing, the strength and clarity of my arguments, and the organization of the content. Muhamad Ali has been an immensely generous mentor in his guidance and support at every step of the doctorate process, from directed studies, chairing my final exam committee and then the dissertation itself. I thank the Religious Studies faculty for nominating me and UC Riverside for giving me the Graduate Mentorship Fellowship that has funded me to pursue full-time in 2014 to 2015 the completion of my dissertation. The administrative and advisory support of UCR’s Multidisciplinary Unit has been quintessential to my success, Diana Marroquin, Deisy Escobedo, Ryan Mariano, and Trina Elerts. The warmth and friendship of so many fellow graduate students in the Religious Studies Department has been a refuge and reprieve from my own thoughts and have pushed me to keep going through self-doubts. I am very grateful to Vivian-Lee Nyitray and Douglas Oliver who paved the way for me to return to Riverside, after a hiatus in Seattle, to pursue and complete the dissertation. I am grateful to the teaching of Bahá’u’lláh who taught me to “Consort with the followers of all religions in friendliness and fellowship,” to look for commonalities and appreciate differences between the world religions. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s advice to visit the religious gatherings of other faith communities and to work for unity has inspired this dissertation project. It has truly been a bounty to have the friendship of Faezeh Fathizadeh who became a Religious Studies major as I began this project and enthusiastically helped connect me with her many Muslim friends at the University of California Riverside. She was also a conversation v partner and sounding board with whom I could think through my findings and conclusions. I would like to thank the leaders of the 2013 to 2015 Muslim Student Associations at UC Riverside, Cal State University San Bernardino, Riverside City College, Cal Poly Pomona, University of Washington, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, and UC Berkeley for their indulgence, cordial welcomes, and support of this project. My wife Tiara has patiently supported and encouraged the pursuit of my dream, taking on the lion share of household responsibilities so I could finish this work in a timely manner. I dedicate this project to her and to the many young Muslims who have befriended me and given me their time and energies to make this project possible, opening their lives to Tiara and me. Truly any strengths of this dissertation is the fruit of the assistance of all mentioned above and any shortcomings of it are mine. vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION American Islam, the Next Generation: Young Adult Muslim Americans on Campus— Faith, Identities, Citizenship, Gender, and Pluralism by Daniel Azim Pschaida Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Religious Studies University of California, Riverside, August 2015 Dr. Muhamad Ali, Chairperson This dissertation highlights context and the contours of the religious discourse of young adult Muslim Americans on university campuses in the Pacific West of the United States. It focuses on the second generation children of Muslim immigrants and their leadership approaches to college Muslim Student Associations [MSA]. Based off data from eighty in-depth interviews with this population and some converts, extensive participant observation, and an online survey, this study also employs sociological analysis, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and comparative ethics to identify the ways this demographic draws on scriptural sources to articulate the significance of their faith in an American environment. Chapter One explores the social matrix in which heritage Muslims come to embrace and assert Islam as a central facet of their personal identity. In particular it identifies the importance of family upbringing, peer relationships, prejudice and stereotyping of Muslims, and multiculturalism. Chapter Two discloses many core features of a “Muslim” identity, and the ways it relates to their nationality “American” vii and various other demarcations and activities of their personal identity. Chapter Three presents MSAs’ institutional practices and individual interpretations related to envisioned binaries of male and female, analyzing how they believe women and men should relate to each other on campus, in families, and in their roles in public life. It also presents their perspectives of homosexuality. Chapter Four tackles the question of how young Muslims conceptualize and deal with religious, ethnic, and racial differences. This chapter discloses dynamics of inclusivity, prejudice, trans-ethnic friendship, marriage ideals with ethnic others, and young Muslims’ sometimes embracing and sometimes censuring Islamic sectarian diversity. It also divulges their perspectives on soteriology of non- Muslims. This research counters previous simplifications of young American Muslims on campus as fundamentalist, exclusive, uncritical, and militant yet also complicates reifications of them as liberal, democratic, and inclusive, presenting their diverse interpretations to their faith and detailing the particular ways and for what purposes they perform conservative, exclusive, liberal, and inclusive approaches to Islam. This dissertation reveals young adult Muslim Americans on campus creatively negotiate what they learn about their Islamic tradition with American ideals, constituting diverse expositions of their Faith. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Young Adult Muslim Americans: Locating Research and Researcher, Methods and Theory of the Study 1 CHAPTER 1 Individuation in Relationships: The Ecology of Islamic Identity Formation among young adult American heritage Muslims 38 CHAPTER 2 The Islam of the Young Generation: Totally American, Totally Muslim 98 CHAPTER 3 Young Adult Muslim Americans and Gender: Finding their own Way 171 CHAPTER 4 Out of Many One: Young Adult Muslim Americans Dealing with Differences 274 CONCLUSION Ethical Encounters with Young Adult Muslim Americans 371 ix Detailed Table of Contents Introduction: Young Adult Muslim Americans: Locating Research and Researcher, Methods and Theory of the Study ……………………………………………………….. 1 1. Locating Young Adult Muslim Americans ………………………………….…... 1 2. Brief history of the Muslim Student Association movement ……………….…… 7 3. Theoretical and Methodological Framework ……….………………………….. 16 4. Brief Overview of Subject and Findings ……....………………………………. 34 Chapter 1: Individuation in Relationships: The Ecology of Islamic Identity Formation among young adult American heritage Muslims 1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………….. 38 2. A Complex of Multidimensional Relationships and the