Globalized Muslim Youth in the Asia Pacific: Popular Culture in Singapore and Sydney

Abstract

This book is a sociological study of popular Muslim youth culture in two globalized cities in the Asian Pacific: Singapore and Sydney. Both cities are culturally dynamic and ethnically diverse; both also have significant Muslim minority populations. Of the two, Singapore’s Muslim population is larger and more homogeneous, consisting mainly of indigenous Malays. (Singapore’s population is 13.3% Malay, 74.3% Chinese, 9.1% Indian, and 3.2% “other.”) Sydney’s Muslim population (at only 4.4%) is much smaller by comparison and is more ethnically varied. Sydney’s Muslim youth are largely second-generation immigrants whose parents came to Australia from Lebanon, Turkey, Albania, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. For the purposes of this comparative study, however, the author does not emphasize ethnicity as a significant factor in youth culture formation. Kamaludeen observes that most young people in both cities self-identify in terms of their Muslim and national identities (as either Singaporean or Australian), and only secondarily in terms of ethnic affiliation (20). The author sees this as a function of their identification as members of the “September 11 generation,” an identity galvanized by a particular “global consciousness among young Muslims revolving around the twin issues of social justice and human rights” (41). The author’s research also found that the Muslim youth in these two settings tend to differentiate themselves strongly from the generation of their parents and elders, whom they regard as both less religious and more attached to their ethnic traditions and identities. Rather than ethnicity, the author identifies the nature of state management as the critical catalyst for Muslim youth culture formation.The author argues that the role of the state has been largely overlooked in research on popular youth culture, yet it plays a pivotal role in shaping cultural forms by controlling the possibilities of what can and cannot develop. Kamaludeen proposes to “bring the state back into the study of popular youth culture,” then, by attending not only to everyday cultural forms but to the state’s influence on their expression (pg. 4). One of the key differences between Singapore and Sydney, he writes, is that the Singaporean state attempts to control its population more tightly—particularly but not only with regard to the expression of ethnic and religious identities— whereas Australia’s government takes a relatively more liberal approach. In contrast to Australia’s loose policy of multiculturalism, for example, Singapore has put forward a top-down policy of engineering religious and race relations, including the dissemination of a discourse of the “ideal Muslim youth” (47). Furthermore, whereas mosques in Australia are privately run and largely autonomous institutions that serve their local communities and are organized along ethnic lines, the Singaporean state has established an Islamic Religious Council (the MUIS) to closely oversee mosques and mosque activities.The author applies Roland Robertson’s (1992) framework of “glocalization” to analyze the effects of these state interventions and global cultural flows on Muslim youth culture, focusing on three popular cultural forms: hip-hop music, tattooing, and cultural consumption. Glocalization acknowledges that global cultural flows do not have a uniformly homogenizing effect on local cultures, but instead interact with both local forms and with the state. In this process, rather than a homogenization of cultural forms, there is a complex exchange between local and global, resulting in both pluralization and hybridization.The author contends that hip-hop music, tattooing, and youth consumption are closely linked to the class status and social marginalization of Muslim youth. A characteristic of Muslim youth in both sites is their lower working-class status. In the case of Singapore Malays, this class status is a reflection of a political history of neglect/discrimination and of state policies that have positioned Muslim youth in particular as a “social problem.” In the case of Sydney’s Muslim youth, their class standing is related at least in part to the fact that they are relative newcomers. Whatever the social influences, the author writes, their working-class status has implications for young people’s engagement with popular cultural forms. Hip-hop, tattooing, and gang life have a long history of association with those at the margins of society.The author identifies these and related popular cultural forms as avenues for the expression of youthful resistance to their marginalization and liminal status (58). At the same time, Muslim youth in Singapore and Sydney have struggled to reconcile their identity as Muslims with their appropriation of cultural forms often identified in mainstream society as deviant. The author is careful to underscore that “the fusion of religion with popular culture and the blurring of sacred and profane do not necessarily signal a loss of religiosity” (13). Thus, for example, Muslim youth have attempted to blend aspects of nasyid, or male acapella singing of religious verses, with hip-hop forms and during performances are especially careful about elements of bodily presentation. The differential responses of the Singaporean and Australian state to popular cultural forms, however, has meant that Sydney hip-hop can foreground issues of social injustice and minority status whereas Singaporean hip-hop, at least in the public sphere, is considerably less critical. It is because of a political culture of fear, the author argues, that Singaporean hip-hop is relatively more inward-looking and focused on personal struggles for success and individual excellence.Kamaludeen’s book is an original and interesting study of Muslim youth in two cities. The author effectively challenges the view that global forces are homogenizing Muslim youth culture, demonstrating the importance of state interventions and local negotiations within the globalizing context. Although the rather critical role of actors on the ground is largely under-developed in this study, the book is nonetheless a useful and informative sociological study of Muslim youth in an age of cultural and political globalization.Nancy J. Smith-Hefner is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Boston University. She has written extensively on issues of language, gender, education, and sexuality in Southeast Asia. Her recent publications include “Youth Language, Gaul Sociability, and the New Indonesian Middle Class” (Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2007), and “Muslim Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Java” (Journal of Asian Studies 2007). She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Islamizing Intimacy: Gender, Youth, and Social Change in Contemporary Java.