ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the politics and practice of fear that makes religion a point of racial distinction between young Muslim men and other young people in Scotland. It based on data collected during eleven focus groups and twenty-two interviews conducted between March 2002 and July 2003. All of the young men were aged 16-25 and identified as Muslims. The tactics of withdrawal associated with the fears inspired by racism are encouraged in a setting where the bases of religious, cultural, and ethnic differentiation are denied positive recognition. The chapter shows that the demonisation of racialised others drive all scales of politics, and have historically been used politically to assert power over territory: over neighbourhoods, over national boundaries and across entire world regions. There are two views and two sets of tactics around neighbourhood: the importance of safety in numbers, prizing residential segregation as a source of security; a tactic of safety in scarcity, seeking invisibility through dispersal.
