Sociology of Religion Commons^™

Making Muslim Americans: Parenting Practices, Parochial Schools, And The Transmission Of Faith Across Generations In Metropolitan Detroit, Rebecca Karam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At present, it is estimated that there are 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States, the vast majority of whom are immigrants and the children of immigrants. While religion has typically been found to foster assimilation among immigrant newcomers, Islamophobia is rampant and threatens to challenge this process. This dissertation project intervenes in this empirical puzzle by asking the following research questions: How do we explain the conscious attempt by second generation Muslim parents to foster a distinctly Muslim and American identity among their third-generation children? More specifically, how have the parenting decisions of upper-middle class, second-generation Muslim Americans …