ABSTRACT
Over the past number of years, Muslim youth in Ireland have come to prominence under very difficult circumstances. Since the suicide attacks of 2001 in the USA (9/11), the Madrid train bombings in 2003, the London transport suicide bombings in 2005 (7/7), more recently the attacks in the UK (e.g. Michael Adebolajo) and the increase in attention to so-called foreign fighters travelling to war zones, Muslims and particularly Muslim youth have been the focus of a generalized suspicion and stigmatization (Lynch 2013). Heightened academic interest in Islam and Islamic inspired terrorism emerged in the years after 9/11 with a focus on any linkage between Islam and terrorism, as well as on how to prevent individuals becoming involved in either or both (Silke 2004; Lynch 2013; Gordon 2004; Deflem 2004; Dalgaard-Nielsen 2010). There emerged, quite problematically, an untested assumption that radicalization and its perceived consequences were processes unique to Muslim youth populations living in Europe (e.g. Kepel 2004; Roy 2004). This assumption led to the entanglement of notions of assimilation, segregation and immigration (Huysmans and Bunifino 2008) with security concerns surrounding terrorism, and thus Muslim youth became central to these complex issues. Research in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and other European countries further informed and challenged these assumptions and in the majority of cases highlighted the mistreatment of Muslim communities in each location. However, in Ireland, there is a total absence of literature that addresses the
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015 Vol. 38, No. 11, 2003-2018, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1050047
Orla Lynch and Angela Veale
(Received 28 August 2014; accepted 21 April 2015)
There has been a significant, well-established if somewhat invisible Muslim population in Ireland since the 1950s. An increase in immigration during the Celtic tiger years along with the hysteria of 9/11 caused a rapid visibilization of this population. Muslims became synonymous with extremism and terrorism, but also fell victim to racist constructions emerging from the economic decline. The experience of Muslim youth since 9/11 has been well researched in the UK and Europe, however there has been little empirical work conducted with Ireland’s Muslim communities. In the literature, it is assumed that the British experience is replicated for Muslim youth in Ireland – this is not the case. This paper examines the lived experience of Irish Muslim youth given the visibilization of Islam after 9/11 and their ensuing experiences of Irishness. An analysis of ethnographic data reveals the idiosyncratic experiences of these youth growing up in the shadow of a discriminatory and Islamophobic narrative on extremism and terrorism and an evolving immigrant landscape.
