“I wouldn’t call them Muslims!”: Constructing a Respectable Islam

Abstract

This article addresses the understanding of Islam of nine young adult Muslims living in the Malmö and Copenhagen region.1 Throughout the interviews with the young adults, they mark their distance from what they perceive as unacceptable forms of Islamic ideas and practices, labeling these ideas as extremist and inconsistent. They develop discursive techniques of distancing themselves from the mediated Islam of radicals and the often negative rendering of Islam that they encounter in daily life and in the media. By negotiating with the dominant discourse on what a “respectable religion” should look like, the young adults construct a religiosity that shares much of theformprescribed by mainstream society, but is different incontent. The theoretical framework is drawn from the study of sociology of religion and, in particular, from Beverley Skeggs’ theories on respectability (1997).