ABSTRACT
Large-scale immigration from Muslim-majority countries to highly secularised North-Western European societies has raised questions about how the European-born children of Muslim immigrants relate to and practise religion. On the one hand, second-generation Muslims are socialised into Islam within their immigrant families and communities. On the other hand, they grow up in societies where the majority is historically Christian, highly secularised and, in a post-9/11 era, increasingly anti-Islamic (Bruce 2011). By secularisation, we refer to a robust downward trend in the importance and impact of religion among Christian-majority populations (Gorski & Altinordu 2008). In European societies, secularism is a normative ideology that represents religiosity as a foreign, backward and/or dangerous force. Islam and its practitioners are particular targets of hostile public attitudes towards religion (Allen & Nielsen 2002). From a majority perspective, the religiosity of second-generation Muslims therefore appears to be a bright boundary, one setting them apart from the so-called mainstream and standing in the way of their successful integration (Fleisch-mann & Phalet 2012).
