Fracturing the Nation: Muslim Youth Identities in Multi-Religious States

In this paper, we focus on the production of Muslim youth identities within multi-religious states. Using empirical case study research from Lebanon and Nigeria, we discuss how the historical specificities of state formation have produced internal cleavages within the corresponding nation-states and how these have shifted over time. We also discuss how the agglomeration of different ethnic and religious groups in the formation of these states has produced internal fractures that are constantly revivified by youth in their identity discourses. Our focus in this paper is on the ways that youth identity discourses are constructed at the intersections of religion and nation. Using a comparative analysis across these two country contexts, we explore the ways that youth articulate their own identities with reference to internal others within their nation. More specifically, we examine how religious differences both between Muslims and Christians, and amongst Muslims, intersect with the national imaginaries in complex and contradictory ways. In this way, youth allegiances both shape and threaten the internal cohesion of the nation.