Paper short abstract:

The paper argues for the need to take serious the complex social processes within which Muslim women’s religious subject formation takes form and to look at what dynamics this formation in a particular time and place brings forth.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues for the need to take serious the complex social process within which Muslim women's religious identification takes form and to look at what dynamics their religious subject formation in a particular time and place brings forth. Muslim females' desires to craft their selves religiously must be analyzed within the European context where Islam is considered as 'traditional' and as subverting women and where Muslims as a group is negatively stereotyped. The paper suggests how the subjectification of the religious self of Muslim youth in Berlin is shaped by the specific socio-political context and ongoing discourse on Islam and Muslims in Germany. The young women form their religious self both in relation to an (mis)understanding of Islam by German liberal or secular modes of governmentality and Muslim discourses, which in the process become intertwined. The formation of a religious subject also involves relating to discourses that has the characteristics of body politics - in that the body (consumption, body behaviour, and movements) becomes a means through which the youth try to change or influence the majority perception of Islam and Muslims in Germany. This dynamic involves both an increase in self-control and peer policing and that everyday practices become sutured with religious meanings, contributing to making religiosity more visible and more public. This will affect women in different classes in different ways. In focus here are youth who belong to the upward middle class, partly due to their educational success in the German system and their career ambitions.