Passing on religion as identity? Anglo-western Islamic children’s literature and Muslim acculturation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing upon a classical cultural studies perspective and employment of participant observation in the socio-cultural scene of Anglo-western Islamic children’s literature in Britain and North America, this paper explores its socio-cultural limits for passing on religion as identity. Generational change influenced by cultural hybridisation amongst migrant Muslims and indigenous Muslims in three Anglo-western countries is surveyed to note distinct reconfigurations over time in social (re)constructions of Anglo-western Islamic children’s literature. Featuring simultaneous aspects of Islam and Western culture in their social (re)constructions of an Islamic cultural tradition, stories in this genre increasingly raise visibility to imagined spaces in which Muslim writers discursively project autonomous places in an often xenophobic Anglo-west. Nonetheless Muslim authors appropriate the cultural logics and language of colonial and neo-colonial power in their discursive practice, which has significantly altered Muslim discursive autonomy. In their attempts to make sense of this phenomenon, Muslim social constructions of nascent forms of Anglo-western Islamic literary theory also bare observable features of acculturation and cultural hegemony.