Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Youthful Muslim masculinities: gender and
generational relations
Peter E Hopkins
There is evidence of two main discourses about the masculinities of young Muslim
men – one that emphasizes patriarchy and aggression, the other effeminacy and
academicism – and together they offer polarized perspectives of young Muslim
men’s masculinities. This paper explores youthful Muslim masculinities through
narratives of gender and generational relations, using interview and focus group
data collected during discussions with young Muslim men, mainly of Pakistani
heritage, who live in Glasgow and Edinburgh, in Scotland. I seek to use this data
to disrupt these dominant discourses by demonstrating that young Muslim men’s
masculinities are influenced by markers of social difference, as well as locality,
and so are multiple, fluid and multi-faceted.
key words Scotland masculinities qualitative methods Islam youth identities
Department of Geography, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4AF
email: p.hopkins@lancaster.ac.uk
revised manuscript received 14 February 2006
Introduction
It has only been in the last 15 years or so that
geographers have started to research masculinities
(e.g. Jackson 1989 1991 1994), and it could be
argued that this work has now reached a critical
mass in the discipline (Longhurst 2000; Berg and
Longhurst 2003; McDowell 2003; van Hoven and
Horschelmann 2005). Research about the geographies
of masculinities has taken to task a wide
range of concerns about men’s everyday lives,
masculine identities and gendered performances.
Studies have investigated, for example, men
working in merchant banks (McDowell 2001);
constructions of masculinities in men’s lifestyle
magazines (Jackson et al. 1999) and in advertising
(Jackson 1994); masculinities and sexualities
(Browne 2005; Skelton and Valentine 2005); the spaces
of fatherhood (Aitken 2000 2005); and young white
men and economic change (McDowell 2003; Nayak
2003a 2003b). In this paper, I contribute to this
burgeoning literature by exploring youthful Muslim
masculinities, focusing upon the young men’s
perceptions on gender and generational relations.
Social scientists, including human geographers,
have spent much time exploring and emphasizing
the complex ways in which masculinities are
socially constructed, produced, consumed and
performed (Connell 2000 2002 2005; Edley and
Wetherell 1995; Frosh et al. 2003; McDowell 2003).
As Connell clarifies,
Masculinities are neither programmed in our genes, nor
fixed by social structures, prior to social interaction.
They come into existence as people act. They are
actively produced, using the resources and strategies
available in a given social setting. (2000, 12)
Social constructions of masculinities ‘are given life
by their articulation. Through repetition they can
achieve a remarkable durability’ (Dunn 2001, 292).
These ‘widely held shared beliefs’ or ‘commonsense’
understandings (Dwyer 1998, 53) are constantly
yet subtly reinforced by television representations,
newspaper and magazine images and other
institutions (Said 1997; Dwyer 1998; Dunn 2001),
and so influence what Alexander calls the
‘dominant imagination’ (1998, 440). There are two
main discourses about the masculinities of young
Muslim men – one emphasizing patriarchy and
aggression, the other effeminacy and academicism
– both of which feature strongly in dominant and
academic discourses, but that vary according to
338 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
certain world events as well as through space and
across time. As Claire Alexander has intimated,
there are strong
parallels between media and academic analyses, which
raises pertinent, and disquieting, questions about the
ways in which selected academic discourses have fed
into, and upon, populist soundbite understandings of
race and ethnicity. (Alexander 2004, 544)
Young Muslim men often appear in the dominant
imagination as violently patriarchal, unemployed
and involved in crime (Dunn 2001; Archer and
Yamashita 2003). They are the society’s ‘ultimate
Other’ (Phoenix 1997, 7), part of the rise of the
Asian youth folk devil (Alexander 2000a; O’Donnell
and Sharpe 2000) and in conflict with their parent’s
generation (Alexander 2000b). Associated with
deviance and violence, young Muslim men suffer
due to the triple pathology of race, gender and
generation. Alexander (1998 2000a 2000b 2004) has
documented the rise of the ‘Asian gang’:
these are youths wielding weapons, alienated from
their families, their communities and the wider society,
locked into a cycle of inevitable but meaningless
violence, low self-esteem and self-destruction. (Alexander
2000b, 126)
This ‘street culture’ is ‘male dominated and highly
macho’, and has increased significantly in recent
years (Khan 1997, 18, in Macey 1999, 848; see also
Keith 1995). The young men place importance on
appropriate gender roles, family authority, dress
and marriage as a method whereby they can control
the freedom and choice of young women (Macey
1999). They are part of the Muslim Pakistani and
Bangladeshi ‘underclass’ of the notorious Panorama
documentary, ‘Purdah in the Underclass’ (Alexander
1998, 440) and are likely to belong to the group of
anti-school Asian male students that Mac an Ghaill
(1988) identifies as ‘The Warriors’. Young Muslim
men are portrayed as policing the streets, often
using aggression and violence, and closely examining
the behaviour and conduct of their female
counterparts (Dwyer 2000). Many of these stereotypes
of young Muslim men have been reinforced
by the events of 11 September 2001 as well as the
bombings in London on 7 July 2005, both of which
associated young Muslim men with violence,
aggression and terrorism.
Contrary to such a stereotype, there is also a now
less prevalent discourse that represents young
Muslim men as part of the wider category of young
‘Asian’ men and so identifies them as being passive,
soft and weak. For example, ‘Asian’ young men
have been conceptualized as effeminate, as more
‘middle-class’ and as ‘behavers and achievers’ in
school (Archer 2001, 81), and O’Donnell and
Sharpe have suggested that this stereotype has
been fed by ‘the apparent tendency of Asian boys
to be physically smaller’ (2000, 79). These young
men often fall into what Mac an Ghaill (1994, 59)
refers to as ‘The Academic Achievers’, a small
group of students who have a ‘positive orientation
to the school curriculum’. Along these lines, Alexander
suggests that Muslim masculinities are often
represented as ‘failing’ masculinities (2000a, 236).
This overall stereotype of effeminate and weak Asian
young men is often reinforced by the tendency of
these young men to suffer higher rates of racism at
school (Archer 2001). Furthermore, stereotypes of
black masculinity places young Muslim men (who,
in the Scottish context, are overwhelmingly of
Pakistani heritage) into a marginalized position, as
for black men of African descent the stereotypes have
been fixed on the body, on physicality, physical
strength, and as a site for European fantasies about
black male sexuality. (Westwood 1990, 55; see also
Marriot 2000)
and in terms of ‘jockeying for position’ (Edley and
Wetherall 1997)
African Caribbean boys . . . often position themselves as
superior to white, as well as Asian, boys in terms of
their sexual attractiveness, style, creativity and ‘hardness’.
(McDowell 2003, 77)
As a result, young Asian men are not only stereotyped
as being subordinate to young white men, but
are represented as weak, delicate and subsidiary to
the strength and prowess of black masculinities.
In this paper, I aim to disrupt these dichotomized
stereotypes by exploring the complex,
multiple and multi-faceted nature of youthful
Muslim masculinities, by engaging with the lived
experiences of young people whose voices are
usually silenced, often unheard and frequently distorted
(although for a rare exception see Ouzgane
2003). It has already been observed that young
Muslim men are ‘marginalised in human geography’
(Hopkins 2004, 260), so by exploring the young
men’s narratives about women and home as well
as generational issues, I intend to counter this
marginalization. First, I offer a brief summary of
the research project from which this paper arises.
Youthful Muslim masculinities 339
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Second, I explore the young men’s narratives
around women and home, emphasizing the ways
in which they adopt contradictory masculine subject
positions in promoting a form of sexist equality.
Third, I explore the importance of markers of social
difference and locality in terms of how the young
men negotiate and perform masculine identities.
Fourth, I offer an insight into the young men’s
understandings of generational differences, thereby
challenging the notion that the young men are in
conflict with their parents’ generation.
The study
In this paper, I use data collected during 11 focus
groups and 22 interviews with young Muslim men
living in post-devolution urban Scotland. All of the
qualitative interviews and focus groups were taped
with consent, fully transcribed and anonymized by
the author, and coded by theme. Any names used
in the text are pseudonyms in order to protect the
confidentiality of the respondents. All of the young
men involved were aged 16–25 at the time of
interviewing, and they participated in the research
project between March 2002 and July 2003. I
contacted a range of organizations – schools, colleges
and universities, mosques, community and voluntary
organizations and youth groups – and through a
process of snowballing, asked if young men who
might want to participate in the project could be
identified. The focus groups took place in youth
groups, school classrooms and community halls,
and the interviews either took place in the homes
of the research participants, or in local cafés and
community centres. All focus groups and interviews
focused on four key themes: Scotland and
Scottishness, the local community, being a young
man, and being a Muslim. However, they were
also open and exploratory in nature, and so other
topics of conversation were raised during the
research process where relevant. This paper builds
upon, in particular, the point in interview and
focus group discussions where the topic of being
a young man was explored. In this part of the
discussions, I was interested in the young men’s
relationships with their parents, their perceptions
about the role of Muslim women, as well as their
aspirations and general views about gender and
generation.
Of the 55 focus group participants, three were
aged 20 or over, with the remainder being in their
later teens, and of the 22 interviewees, eight were
under 20, with the remaining 14 being aged
between 20 and 25. Over 70 young Muslim men
therefore participated in this project. Although
most of the research participants identified with a
Pakistani heritage, there were also two young men
with Indian backgrounds as well as young men
with Bangadeshi, Iraqi, Kosovan and Moroccan
parentage. As with diversity in the category
Muslim (Modood 2003), individuals varied with
regards to the frequency with which they practised
their religion, displayed various levels of knowledge
and understanding of their religious faith,
as well as a range of political opinions (Hopkins
forthcoming). Six of the interviewees held university
degrees and diplomas, seven were in the
process of completing them and the younger
participants generally hoped to attend university
in the future. The sample of young men recruited
for this project could also be identified as relatively
middle class, and this may relate to the slightly
more affluent positioning of ethnic minority groups
in Scotland compared with elsewhere in the UK.
It has been noted that, in terms of race and racism,
the Scottish context is different from the rest of
the UK because of a lack of a racialization of the
political process since 1945, different migration
streams in and out of Scotland, and different experiences
of the class structure (Miles and Dunlop
1987). This could explain why the sample recruited
in this project did not contain the experiences of
deprivation and disadvantage normally highlighted
by research with Muslim communities in England
(e.g. Alexander 2000a 2000b).
The Scottish context is also important in terms of
how the research participants relate to the researcher,
and indeed this is one aspect of the relationship
between the researcher and the researched where
there was a general degree of similarity. This often
acted as a useful method for facilitating conversation,
establishing connections and putting research
participants at their ease. After all, the young Muslim
men consulted in this project, are like me, young
Scottish men. However, as Robina Mohammad
(2001) has explained, insider and outsider status
are not fixed and are constantly being negotiated,
resisted and contested. Like Mohammad, my positionality
varied throughout the project. Although
there are aspects of similarity such as age, gender
and connections with Scotland and Scottishness,
my race, lack of religious affiliation and other subtle
markers of social difference worked to highlight
the lack of similarity between the researcher and
340 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
the researched. The young men frequently questioned
me on my religious beliefs, which moved
constantly between agnosticism and atheism
throughout the project, and were eager to establish
what school I attended before going to university.
Although these are important methodological
issues to consider, I agree with Audrey Kobayashi
when she highlights her ‘dis-ease’ with the ‘reflexive
turn in human geography’ suggesting that a focus
on the researcher
is actually a privileged and self-indulgent focus on the
self that provides anything but an anti-racist lens and
ends up distancing the writer . . . from the very people
whose conditions she might hope to change. (2003,
347–8)
For this reason, I now turn attention to the
circumstances and experiences of the young
Muslim men consulted in this research project.
Gender relations
Blunt and Varley observe that ‘the home is
invested with meanings, emotions, experiences
and relationships that lie at the heart of human
life’ (2004, 3), and indeed the home is ‘shaped
by everyday practices, lived experiences, social
relations, memories and emotions’ (Blunt 2005,
506). Furthermore, in terms of thinking about
Muslim masculinities and femininities, Robina
Mohammad notes that
feminine space is the space of the home. It includes
spaces for women and for their close male relatives,
and is a domain into which the entry of other men is
restricted. Spaces outside the home are largely
masculine. (1999, 30)
It is of little surprise then, that the vast majority of
young Muslim men consulted contextualized their
discussion about the role of Muslim women, and
in particular their mothers, by focusing on the
meanings, associations and experiences of the
spaces of the home. For example, in their narratives
of home, it is clear that home is a place to ‘have
dinner’, play the computer and watch TV, and
therefore it is seen as a site for consumption and
relaxation. The young men explicitly assume that
the home is the domain of their mothers and
sisters, and the connections between Muslim
women and the home were regularly discussed
during focus groups and interviews. Nasser and
Saeed are both 16, and Imran is 17, and they all
attend a local youth group in Glasgow and identify
with a Pakistani heritage. Consider their views:
Nasser: Women tend to stay in the house and things
like that . . .
Saeed: I mean a lot of women, they tend to stay at
home and look after the kids, and that’s hard work,
right. The guy normally has a job.
Imran: Yeah. (Focus Group, Glasgow, 24 July 2002)
Home is rarely referred to in terms of cooking,
cleaning or general household chores, and so the
young men ‘perpetuated the (dominant) stereotypical
assumption that home is a place of freedom and
autonomy for males and a site of restriction and
subservience for women’ (Archer 2003, 75). One of
the few exceptions to this was Babar, a 22-year-old
university graduate with a Pakistani heritage, who
mentioned helping with the housework:
Babar: Help mum out in the house like with hoovering
or whatever, like clean up yeah. My big brother is like
handicapped so I need to help out a bit . . . (Interview,
Glasgow, 24 June 2003)
This extract and the other comments made by
Babar shows how he highlights that his situation is
different from other young men his age because he
has to help with the housework and assist his
brother. The lack of reference to household chores
in the young men’s accounts is very different from
the way that the young Muslim women in Dwyer’s
(1998 1999 2000 2002) research constructed the
home as a place where they were expected to
reproduce the parental culture which is reinforced
through izzat (family honour). The lack of interest
in housework could therefore be contributed to
their expected role in the family as well as to their
lack of interest in such activities and their desire
to conform to a form of hegemonic masculinity
which encourages them to avoid work and routines
that they see as being increasingly feminized
(McDowell 2003). However, in Babar’s case, issues
around disability prevent him from distancing
himself from such activities, and although Valentine
and Skelton (2003) have highlighted some of the
challenges in relation to ethnicity and disability, it
may be that Babar is creating an alternative Muslim
masculinity where he can be ‘one of the lads’
(Interview, Glasgow, 24 June 2003) as well as
assisting with household chores.
Discussions about gender also focused on the
perceived inequality between men and women in
Youthful Muslim masculinities 341
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Islam and the young men’s views, opinions and
responses to this. Mohammed is aware of such
inequalities and noted that this is ‘a cultural thing
and not a religious thing’ (Interview, Edinburgh,
16 May 2002). Similarly, 16-year-old school student
Ifty, and 18-year-old university student Kabir,
both of whom identify with a Pakistani heritage
observe:
Ifty: . . . some people think that there is like a lot of
sexism in Muslim men and women, but that sexism
comes from like culture, Pakistani culture . . . but the
actual religion of Islam, men and women are very close
. . . (Interview, Glasgow, 16 July 2002)
Kabir: . . . people from a particular culture think that
Muslim women have to remain in the home or
something, which is not from Islam . . . A housewife is
the mother of the family and the teacher of the nation
really because, you know, who teaches the children . . .
it’s the mother, you know, it’s a huge responsibility
and honourable task. But again . . . she can also work,
she can also participate in society. (Interview,
Edinburgh, 12 December 2002)
The argument that the association of women with
the home was cultural and associated with their
Pakistani heritage was a frequent comment made
in this research, yet the young men also simultaneously
attempted to justify that men are
expected to work, earn wages and provide for the
family. This suggests that they try to distance
themselves from the ‘sexism’ of South Asian
culture by stressing that men and women are equal
in Islam, and so, in this case, they could be said to
be advocating specifically Muslim masculinities.
This is emphasized in the following extract, where
three 17-year-old men participating in a focus
group offer a response to the idea that Muslim
women were oppressed:
Omar: . . . that is just culture from Pakistan. That is not
allowed in Islam.
Jafran: . . . a lot of things come from Indian culture like
arranged marriages which is like Hindu and Indian
culture. People are mixing culture with religion, you
can’t do that.
Faisal: See the Indian culture, they treat their women
like shit. They just get married to them and just use
them, they don’t have a say in anything. But Islam
doesn’t promote that. (Focus group, Glasgow, 10
October 2002)
I would like to suggest here that young Pakistani
Muslim men adopt contradictory masculine subject
positions. They simultaneously argue that men and
women are equal in Islam, whilst advocating sexist
stereotypes about their expectations of Muslim
women. The young men seem to promote a form of
sexist equality. They attempt to distance themselves
from the patriarchy of Pakistani culture, yet they
also adopt the sexist attitudes that they say are the
responsibility of that culture, and at the same time,
advocate equality between men and women, which
they argue is based on Islamic principles. Furthermore,
Kaukab, a 24-year-old café owner, talked
about wanting to ‘be a good businessman’, and
21-year-old university student Anwar mentioned
that he wanted to ‘get married and go out and
work and provide for the family’. It is clear that
these young men could see futures in households
of their own, and in all but one case, this involved
them being the breadwinner, earning money and
providing for their (heterosexual) family. This
perspective on masculinity links with the view of
white working-class young men highlighted in the
work of Linda McDowell (2002b, 115), where the
young men’s masculinities are constructed around
a belief in ‘domestic conformity’ whereby the young
men focus on earning wages and reproducing sexist
and heterosexist familial situations.
Stereotypes about Muslim women tend to represent
them as ‘the passive victims of oppressive
cultures’ and as the ‘embodiment of a repressive
and fundamentalist religion’ (Dwyer 1998, 53).
The comments show how the young men adopt
a number of arguments in their assertions that
Muslim women are not the victims of an oppressive
culture, nor are they marginalized by their religion,
and in doing so, they engage in a series of contradictions
about their perception of the roles of
Muslim men and women. For example, these
young men suggest that they themselves have to
go out to work as a result of the fact that:
Saeed: . . . women tend to care more about tradition
and things like that.
Nasser: Aye, we tend to be more free than the Asian
women. (Focus Group, Glasgow, 24 July 2002)
Here the implication appears to be that Muslim
women marginalize themselves, and are somehow
responsible for their subordinate position. The
young men also draw on stereotypes that associate
young Muslim women with the spaces of the home
and assume that they will not engage in any form
of employment (Mohammad 2001). Muslim
342 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
women are also represented as being privileged
because there are more community facilities
available to them. Consider the views of 24-yearold
Talib, a Muslim of Pakistani heritage:
Talib: There’s a lot more burdens placed on us yeah . . .
I mean girls . . . because people think it’s harder for
them, there are a lot more facilities available for them
than there are for boys. I mean like down at the
[community hall] they’ve got loads of girls groups and
things like that, but there’s not that much for boys, you
know what I mean. There’s all these women’s aid
centres and that, but where’s the male one? You know
what I mean? (Focus Group, Glasgow, 5 September
2002)
This may be the case; however, the existence of
more community and voluntary organizations
targeting the needs of Muslim women is perhaps
an indication of their marginal position.
Furthermore, it may also be that Muslim men feel
they need to perform a macho form of masculinity,
and so feel less need to access local services and
groups.
The third argument put forward by the young
men is that, as Amar, a 21-year-old university
student, notes, ‘[Muslim] women are “the height of
respect”‘ (Interview, Glasgow, 9 July 2003), and
this stands in stark contrast to the Muslim boys
in Louise Archer’s (2003, 83) research who constructed
girls as ‘out of control’ and ‘mental’. I
suspect that this difference is due to the younger
profile of the men in Archer’s study. Saeed is 22
years old and Jamal is a 17-year-old school student,
and both have a Pakistani heritage. Consider their
comments:
Saeed: . . . in the eyes of the Creator they are high, and
in our eyes they should be very high as well . . . we
should think that women are the best and that they are
above us. (Interview, Edinburgh, 14 June 2002)
Jamal: . . . I think that in Islam women are respected
much more than men . . . you know it says in the Koran
that under your mother’s feet is where heaven is.
(Interview, Edinburgh, 25 March 2003)
Jamal was one of many of the young men who
commented on heaven being ‘under your mother’s
feet’. Muslim women are also expected to cover
themselves and ‘not show their body’. Here it is
recognized that it must be difficult for Muslim
women because they are expected to dress
modestly, yet, these young men also reinforced this
form of dress:
Saeed: . . . I think my wife has a harder time . . . I mean
she wears a headscarf and covers her body you know.
(Interview, Edinburgh, 14 June 2002)
Mohammed: . . . if you are talking about a proper
Muslim woman then I think it would be hard being a
woman because they have to wear a headscarf and
dress modestly. It would be harder for them to get a
job . . . (Interview, Edinburgh, 16 May 2002)
It would appear that markers of Muslimness have
heightened in significance in recent years (Hopkins
2004), particularly as a result of the events of 11
September 2001 in New York, and the bombings
in London on 7 July 2005. The young men may be
drawing upon gendered discourses in assuming
that Muslim women are more likely to experience
discrimination because of their dress, and they
could also be said to be performing a hegemonic
Muslim masculinity by assuming that women,
rather than men, suffer more discrimination.
Aware of the challenges this presents to Muslim
women, the views of the young men show how
they still reinforce this discourse. Qamar, a 22-yearold
Pakistani Muslim, suggests that:
Qamar: . . . In Islam, women are requested to wear the
hijab, to cover their head, their face, their ears, and the
main thing is that they do not reveal the shape of their
body. Women are not oppressed. Most women prefer
to stay at home and look after the kids you know.
(Interview, Glasgow, 23 June 2003)
Saeed, in line with Qamar, also sees Muslim
women belonging in the home, and he suggests
that this offers protection to Muslim women who
have to cover up when they go out:
Saeed: . . . they are not kept in the house, but they are
protected in the house, they cover up when they go out
so that no one else can look at them. (Interview,
Edinburgh, 14 June 2003)
The young men therefore adopt a number of
strategies in opposing that idea that Muslim women
are oppressed. I have argued that they adopt a
form of sexist equality, whereby they advocate
equality between men and women yet also adopt
sexist stereotypes about the role of women. There
are a range of reference points that the young men
draw upon in order to justify and account for their
masculine identities and performances, and these
reference points include their religion, their South
Asian heritage and the assumed preferences of
their female peers. The young men account for any
marginalization that Muslim women experience as
Youthful Muslim masculinities 343
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
being the responsibility of women themselves as
they are represented as being more traditional and
choosing to stay at home. Moreover, they appear
to suggest that women are not treated unequally
as they are the height of respect, have more
community facilities and are allowed to keep any
money they earn and use that money as they wish.
Nineteen-year-old university student Abdul
noted that ‘white women have it easier than Muslim
women, and are a lot more equal’ (Interview,
Glasgow, 19 November 2002). In focus group and
interview exchanges, racialized discourses were
drawn upon, placing Muslim women in opposition
to white women. The main purpose of this
appeared to be the argument that Western women
are corrupt and therefore Muslim women are ‘the
height of respect’. Consider this exchange between
Sabir, a 20-year-old Pakistani Muslim and Arif,
a 22-year-old Indian Muslim, both of whom are
university students:
Sabir: I think really in society really, women are
oppressed, but it’s a different type of oppression . . .
people like say that like women in Islam wear a hijab
or dress or whatever, are oppressed, but like, when I
walk down the street and I see women that are wearing
next to nothing, that is sort of oppression . . . when you
look in the newsagent and see . . . like pictures of half
naked women, that is a sort of oppression . . . in my
opinion we live in a society today in this country
where women are oppressed. It’s a different type of
oppression that people need to get their heads around,
but women are oppressed.
Arif: [Islam] allows the woman to do what she is best
at, and not based on the way she looks. It allows a
woman to get a job based on her ability and her
credentials, as opposed to her physical appearance . . . I
just think that, from a respect point of view, when I see
a woman with a headscarf, they have more respect for
me than an attractive female who is showing off most
of her body . . .
Sabir: I think it takes a lot for women to actually cover
themselves up. If you’ve got a good looking Muslim
woman and she says that she wants to cover herself up,
it takes a lot to do that, and there is something about
that that is really special, you know . . . (Focus Group,
Edinburgh, 30 April 2003)
The idea that Muslim women are oppressed is
reversed in this extract, as the focus group
participants highlight the ways they see women in
the West being oppressed by cultural constructions
of ideal femininity. Furthermore, Sabir admits
that women (both Muslim and non-Muslim) are
oppressed, and chooses to focus on what he sees as
the unequal treatment of women in Scotland. It
could be suggested that the young men in this
focus group agree that many Muslim women are
oppressed, but are choosing to avoid confronting
the issue by focusing on non-Muslim women.
Overall, these comments by the young men are all
ways of justifying their perceptions about the role
of women in Islam, and therefore display how they
police the boundaries of acceptable Muslim
femininity (Dwyer 2000). It was not only the young
men in this focus group who commented on the
role of women in the West. Consider the views of
Aslam, a 22-year-old university graduate and Jamail,
a 17-year-old school student, both of whom identify
with a Pakistani heritage:
Aslam: If you think about it or the way I think about it
is that women in this country are actually treated more
unfairly than they are treated in the likes of Pakistan or
India or any other place. It’s actually now okay for a
woman to walk down the street wearing whatever she
wants, hardly anything, have men lusting, you know,
just that concept I think . . . is awful. I think that is
genuine abuse and people can believe that so much
that it is actually okay and I think that’s worse than
any abuse that’s happening in the East . . . Islam
prescribes men and women to be equal . . . men and
women are equal and there is no greater sex. Man is
not better than a woman and no woman is better than a
man. (Interview, Edinburgh, 18 December 2002)
Jamail: I mean in this country women are allowed to
turn round and show their arse off, you know, and it’s
okay for you to walk around and have your breasts
hanging out. Islam doesn’t like that you know. (Focus
Group, Glasgow, 3 October 2002)
It is clear that these young men dislike the dress
choice of women in the West. They not only adopt
a strategy of sexist equality, but also draw upon
religious and Western discourses to justify their
views about the role of Muslim women. As Dwyer
notes, ‘this policing by the young men appeared
to be a means by which their own adolescent
masculine ethnic and religious identity could be
maintained’ (2000, 479). The young men therefore
possess multiple Muslim masculinities that do not
conform to simplistic stereotypical understandings
of Muslim men as patriarchal and effeminate. They
place a central emphasis on earning capacity and
the control of appropriate Muslim femininities, and
draw upon a range of reference points such as
religion, heritage and gendered expectations.
344 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Markers of social difference and the
importance of locality
Having demonstrated the importance of religion,
heritage and gendered expectations to the
formation of youthful Muslim masculinities, I now
highlight the ways in which markers of social
difference such as class and sexuality have
important roles in influencing how young Muslim
men construct, manage and perform their masculine
identities. As I mentioned earlier, Babar’s masculine
identity and perception of the role of women vis-àvis
housework is strongly influenced by markers of
social difference – namely disability – as he justified
helping around the house due to his brother’s
(dis)ability. Thinking about other markers of social
difference, Andrew Yip has highlighted factors that
influence how non-heterosexual Muslims negotiate
social and familial relationships. These include
the strict censure of non-heterosexuality (specifically
homosexuality) based on various Islamic written sources,
the pervasive cultural censure of homosexuality as a
‘western disease’, the expectation of marriage as a
cultural and religious obligation, the respect for
parents, and the maintenance of family honour (izzat).
(Yip 2004, 336)
Furthermore, Valentine et al. observe that little
attention has been paid to the actual processes through
which sexual dissidents negotiate their identities with
others, and the consequences of such disclosures for
those that are close to them. (2003, 480)
Omar, a 25-year-old health professional, who
identifies as a gay Muslim, was originally from
Glasgow. He felt compelled to leave home as his
father beat him when hearing about his sexuality.
He was in an arranged marriage until his wife ran
away. He speaks to his mother once a week,
although she still struggles to accept his homosexuality.
Omar constantly asserted his identity
during the interview and at a meeting of gay
Muslims stating that ‘I am gay and I am a
Muslim’ (Interview, Glasgow, 19 May 2002). Omar
negotiated his gay Muslim identity by moving
away from his family and participating in a
support network for Muslims who are questioning
their sexual and gendered identities. He highlighted
his parents’ disapproval of his sexual
identity when he mentioned that ‘there was no
way I could be a gay’, and since relations with
families are ‘critical in the cultural production of
masculinities’ (Mac an Ghaill 1994, 52), Omar’s
masculine identity is strongly influenced by and
intertwined with his homosexual identity. Despite
this, as far as Omar is concerned, he still complies
with many of the requirements of his religious
faith:
Omar: . . . because I’m gay . . . I think being gay
excludes me from a lot of things . . . I’m not going to
get married, yet most of us get married so . . . I try
to follow my faith as much as I can, I fast, I’ve been to
Mecca . . . you know, I love my parents . . . I suppose in
certain respects I am a very typical Muslim, but
because of the complications of my sexuality I am not. I
suppose that is the only issue that makes me different.
(Interview, Glasgow, 19 May 2002)
Whilst Omar highlights his connection with other
Muslims and his compliance with the vast majority
of the requirements of his religion, his masculinity
has been formed in relation to the heterosexual
masculinities of other young Muslim men, as well
as in relation to the femininities of other young
Muslim women. This appears to have assisted
Omar in being sympathetic to the circumstances of
young Muslim women, and in particular those of
young lesbian Muslims:
Omar: No . . . because from my being gay experience . . .
I have met some women who have had a bloody hard
time . . . Issues about doing well at school and that kind
of stuff, is nothing compared to what lesbian women
who are married have to go through. (Interview,
Glasgow, 19 May 2002)
This understanding opens up the possibility for
Muslim masculinities that are racialized, ethnicized,
gendered and sexualized and therefore
aware of the pressures and demands imposed upon
young Muslims in terms of their sexual identities.
Alongside the relationship between gender and
sexuality, recent studies have also highlighted the
importance of the interactions within and between
masculinity and class (Archer 2003; McDowell
2003; Connell 2005). The masculine identities of the
young Muslim men involved in this research also
influence and are influenced by their class position.
This was most notable during a focus group with
six young Muslim men at an elite private school in
Edinburgh (14 November 2002). As O’Donnell and
Sharpe observe:
The notorious ‘public school type’ or ‘public school
man’ was and is disciplined, tough, self-confident to
the degree of arrogance, accustomed to the notion of
leadership, and elitist in the highest degree. (2000, 52)
Youthful Muslim masculinities 345
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Omar,1
a 16-year-old school student from Glasgow,
summed up the general opinion in this focus group
when he stated, ‘I think it is up to the individual
to do their best . . . so it’s up to them at the end of
the day’. The following exchange then took place
between Ali and Nasser, who are 16 and 17
respectively, are Pakistani Muslims, and schoolmates
of Omar:
Ali: . . . I mean girls don’t need to do too much else, I
mean they just like going shopping and that’s about it,
whereas boys like do lots and play sports and things
like that.
Nasser: . . . we have sports and you want to involve
yourself in other activities, whereas they just have a
much clearer goal . . . Asian women in Scotland, they
don’t usually go out like on a Friday night because it’s
obviously not allowed, whereas with boys Muslim
parents are a lot more lenient towards them so like
playing football is okay and cricket is okay . . . if they
had just as much choice, and they were given the same
chances that we were, then they would probably just
do the same as well. (Focus Group, Edinburgh, 14
November 2002)
The young men here use their privileged position
to condescend and belittle their female contemporaries,
and there was general agreement amongst
them that young Muslim women are only interested
in ‘going shopping and that’s about it’. This shows
how they disparage their mothers and sisters,
whilst simultaneously reinforcing their masculine
identities through their commitment to sport.
Furthermore, the young men in this focus group
also suggested that Pakistani Muslim women who
experience racism did so because they do not
conform to Western stereotypes of femininity, do
not always speak English and ‘do not integrate’.
Tahir, an 18-year-old Pakistani Muslim stated that
‘I think Asians should integrate like with the
Scottish’ and Ali, who is 16, observes:
Ali: . . . [Muslim women] tend to speak their own
language and they tend to wear their own clothes and
that sort of stuff . . . I mean it’s not very positive if you
come over to a different country, and you are looking
at the people . . . you know, its sort of like arrogant or
something like that, a word like that. (Focus group,
Edinburgh, 14 November 2002)
Again, the assumption here is that Muslim women
are at fault and are responsible for their own
marginalization, and the patronizing tone of the
young men’s statements demonstrates their feelings
of superiority. Overall then, these upper-class young
Muslim men position themselves in opposition to,
and in a superior position to, young Muslim
women, and this is tied in with gendered, classed
and racialized expectations of both young men and
women. Furthermore, these young men use sport
as a cultural tool in order to justify gender
relations, bolster their masculine identities, and
differentiate themselves from other young men
(O’Donnell and Sharpe 2000).
This research project involved a relatively
middle-class sample compared with many other
studies of Muslim youth (for example, Alexander
2000a; Archer 2003) as there was little indication of
poverty and deprivation in the young men’s
accounts which could be attributed to the different
socio-economic status of ethnic minority groups in
Scotland. However, the young men still framed
their masculine identities in the context of earning
wages, providing for the family and being the
breadwinner. Talib and Qamar stated:
Talib: If you’re married yeah . . . it’s the man’s
responsibility to provide for his wife and kids. The
woman can go out and work yeah, but she gets to keep
all of her money, she doesn’t have to spend any of it
on her husband or her kids or anything, the man has
to, you know what I mean? (Focus Group, Glasgow, 5
September 2002)
Qamar: … if a woman earns pay then that is hers to
keep in a marriage, she doesn’t need to give that to her
husband and her husband can’t ask that from her.
When her husband works, he has to . . . give some of
his income to his wife. (22-year-old, college student,
Interview, Glasgow, 23 June 2003)
Here, they draw upon masculine ideas of
providing for the family, and so suggest that
women hold a position of privilege in being
allowed to keep their earnings to themselves.
This links with the research by McDowell (2002a
2002b 2003) where one of the main findings, as
mentioned earlier, was the desire of the young
men to achieve ‘domestic conformity’ (McDowell
2002b, 115). The young men consulted were
continually involved in a process of constructing
themselves as masculine, a construction that places
a great deal of emphasis on waged labour, and this
seems to be particularly important for young
Muslim men as well. However, the young men
take this a step further, as some of them could be in
a position where their partners earn more money
than they do, yet, as the husband, they still have to
provide for the family. They therefore draw upon
346 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Islamic discourses in order to support, justify and
bolster their masculine identities and performances.
Overall then, ‘the boys drew on a
traditional gender dichotomy in which men earn/
work, providing for the home, and women have
domestic responsibilities’ (Archer 2003, 75), and
even when their partners do work, their masculinities
are not threatened as they still provide for the
home.
As well as being influenced by markers of social
difference, I would like to suggest that the young
men’s Muslim masculinities also interact with
and are shaped by locality, and in particular, the
masculinities of other young men in their local
area. Mac an Ghaill notes that
we need to consider not only gender differences but
also relations between young men and women and
within young men’s peer groups . . . Masculinities are
also developed in specific institutional contexts in
relation to and against each other. (1994, 61)
Young Muslim men’s masculinities therefore
interact with and develop in relation to the
masculinities of other young men who inhabit the
same local spaces and institutional contexts as they
do. Social geographies matter, as the demographics
of a particular place influence how young men
construct, negotiate and perform masculine
identities. The young Muslim men that I spoke to
have been brought up in Scotland where the black
population is very small compared with the South
Asian population. This may have a direct influence
on the ways the young men perform their masculine
identities. Rather than the weak masculinity
amongst black and Asian youth mentioned earlier,
they may inhabit the powerful, strong and
dominant masculinity often associated with black
men. The fact that some of the young men stated
that nobody ‘messed with them’ supports this
assertion. Furthermore, part of this project focused
on a segregated neighbourhood in Glasgow, and
thinking about this context, the young Muslim
men’s masculinities also interact and compete
with dominant white working-class masculinities
that emphasize the importance of being visibly
heterosexual, racially and ethnically superior
and economically active (McDowell 2002a 2002b).
The young men’s location in Scotland and the
demographics of the black and minority ethnic and
white communities therefore have an influence on
how their Muslim masculinities are developed,
performed and contested.
Generational relations
The dominant discourses about youthful Muslim
masculinities that I mentioned earlier also
emphasize the significance of conflict between
young Muslims and their parents’ generation. They
are defined as ‘caught between two cultures’,
between the secular and modern world of the
school and the traditional and fundamentalist
world of the home (Knott and Khokher 1993).
On the one hand there is the social world of family,
community and religion – while on the other, there is
the western world experienced through institutions like
education and the media. (Qureshi and Moores 1999,
318)
This is sometimes viewed as a ‘culture clash’ where
young Asians experience stress and identity conflicts
as a result of having to negotiate and manage
a number of contradictory, confrontational and
competing identities (Brah 1996). These resurfacing
dualisms are often stated as continuity or change,
alienation or assimilation, tradition or modernity,
fundamentalist or secular, parental culture or wider
society. However, as Brah (1996) has convincingly
argued, the notion of a culture clash is not supported
by evidence. The young men’s narratives of
generation tended to concentrate on the differences
between the young men’s daily lives and that of
older men like their fathers, and so contribute to
recent work about fathering (Aitken 2000 2005) as
well as to understandings about the ways in which
men construct their masculinities in relation to
other men. There was some indication of tensions
between the young men and their fathers, and in
this extract, 16-year-old Akthar and 17-year-old
Ahmed, both of whom are Pakistani Muslim
schoolmates, suggest that they intend to try to
construct an alternative masculinity to that of their
fathers and grandfathers:
Aktahr: I think my grandad was meant to be quite
strict so my dad is just following in his footsteps . . .
I’m not going to be following my dad’s anyway . . . I
won’t be as strict with things . . . I mean he’s trying to
lose weight cause he has like high blood pressure.
Ahmed: My dad has that as well yeah . . . my dad
would come home from work and do things like that as
well and start moaning and getting stressed about
things yeah.
Aktahr: It’s normally the man in the house that gets
stressed.
Youthful Muslim masculinities 347
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Peter: Do you think that you’ll be like that or do you
think that will change?
Aktahr: Some want to be strict . . . I’m actually quite
glad the way my dad brought me up because I can see
how I shouldn’t be if I have children. (Focus Group,
Edinburgh, 19 June 2002)
Aktahr keeps a clear distance from his father by
retiring to his bedroom when his dad arrives
home. This could be read as Aktahr performing a
hegemonic masculinity in front of his peers;
however, he is adamant that his father has shown
him how not to bring up his own children. Aktahr
and Ahmed also comment on the everyday ‘stress’
that their fathers experience, acknowledging that
they have ‘high blood pressure’. The comments
from this focus group reflect Archer’s (2003) view
that the boys in her research associated their
fathers with power. ‘Fathers were described as
commanding the boys’ awe, respect and sometimes
fear’ (Archer 2003, 102).
In line with Archer’s findings, one of the strongest
themes running through interviews and focus
groups was a respect for their parents’ generation.
This respect was largely based on the young
men’s view that their parents are a hardworking
generation, and contradicts the dominant discourse
about young Muslim men being in conflict with
their parents’ generation. Consider the comments
of 22-year-old college student Qamar, and 25-yearold
youth worker Amin, both of whom identify
with a Pakistani heritage:
Qamar: See my dad’s generation . . . they are a very
hardworking generation. They are used to working
fifteen hours a day, or seventeen hours a day, eighteen
hours a day, they are used to it. Seven days a week. They
are more of a generation that like to work. My generation
is more people who like to relax more, you know, like
you work for two days on the trot and you are tired
and you feel as if you can’t do a lot of things. I mean I do
my fair share of work but I can’t see myself doing eighteen
hours a day seven days a week. Maybe a few days
but not that much. (Interview, Glasgow, 23 June 2003)
Amin: Well older Scottish people, I think that they also
try to work hard and enjoy what they do . . . older
people are part of the generation where everyone
worked hard. I mean people today do not like to work,
they are lazy and would rather not work. I prefer the
hardworking attitude of a lot of older people.
(Interview, Edinburgh, 22 July 2003)
Qamar’s comments are heavily gendered and it is
clear that it is his dad that he perceives to be a hard
worker. Qamar’s account displays a respect and
awe for the hardworking nature of his father’s
generation, and Amin also prefers those who have
a ‘hardworking attitude’. Amar comments on how
his dad is constantly working seven days a week
and his reference to ‘Scottish Asians’ draws on a
racialized version of generational differences.
Instead of this, Amar, a 21-year-old university
student with a Pakistani heritage, notes:
Amar: Well for like older Scottish Asians it is totally
different. My dad will get up in the morning, go to the
shop or go to work, come home, watch TV and so on,
do this and that, and then go to bed, and get up the
next day. They will do that for seven days a week. You
know, I relax more, do this and that, do a bit of
shopping, go into town, check things out, you know.
(Interview, Glasgow, 9 July 2003)
Young people are now spending a greater amount
of time in a state of semi-dependency (Furlong
and Cartmel 2001), and there is now also greater
emphasis given to leisure and consumption. The
significance of sport and leisure are important
aspects of the young men’s local frameworks and
it is clear that this marks the young men’s
masculinities out as being different from their
fathers. This construction of masculinity also
contradicts the young men’s emphasis on waged
labour mentioned earlier, and demonstrates the
ways in which they adopt contradictory masculine
subject positions. Furthermore, their accounts of
their relationships with their fathers also challenge
traditional understanding of a culture clash between
generations, as well as problematizing the dichotomous
stereotypes that either associate young
Muslim men with either patriarchy or effeminacy.
Ifty and Babar both note how sport is something
that makes them different from their fathers. Ifty is
16 and still attends school, and Babar is a 22-yearold
university graduate. Consider their comments:
Ifty: . . . they probably stick to their work and families
and things like that whereas I like going out and doing
sport and things like that. (Age 16, school student,
Interview, Glasgow, 16 July 2002)
Babar: Yeah, he doesn’t play football, he’s not really
into sport. He is just at work all the time, at the shop
from like ten until six, and like he’ll be in the house
unless he’s at the mosque for prayer which he does
every evening. Other than that he might go out with
my mum to my uncle’s and aunt’s house or whatever.
That is the main type of social gathering that my mum
can get, but when I’m at work I can meet my friends,
348 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
and at football I’m with my friends . . . my dad is
always at the shop so he doesn’t get to see his friends
that much, so he likes to meet the neighbours or see the
family and stuff. (Interview, Glasgow, 24 June 2003)
As well as working hard, the fathers of these
young men are represented as being focused on the
family and their religion. The religiosity of older
Muslim men was also commented on by 22-yearold
Pakistani Muslim, Rehman, who said:
I would have to say that my dad is a bit more religious
than I am, so religion is a lot more to him. He is a lot
more likely to go to the mosque, and I mean I don’t just
mean a Friday, he’ll go during the week as well.
(Interview, Glasgow, 23 June 2002)
Overall then, the young men generally admire the
hardworking nature of their parent’s generation,
although they acknowledge that their fathers tend
to be less interested in sport and leisure and more
focused on family and religion than the young men
are themselves.
Homogenous views of the Muslim community
were resisted during discussions about the everyday
local lives of the young men’s fathers. Consider the
views of this 23-year-old university student:
Faruk: . . . I mean my dad is quite relaxed, he’s got that
mindset because he was born and bred here you know.
Other Asian’s dads might be different, they might not
go out as much to play football or go to cafes or
whatever because they have never had that when they
were younger, but my dad did. They don’t have that
mind set, their mind set is different, they are more like
homely, more domestic, you know, rather than go out
for food, they would bring it home and have a big kind
of dinner. (Interview, Glasgow, 25 June 2003)
Faruk demonstrates the complexity and diversity
of the Muslim community by highlighting his
difference from other young Muslim men by
claiming his mixed-race status in having a white
Scottish father. Kabir also challenged the idea of a
‘nation of shopkeepers’, noting how many Asians
have now completed higher education qualifications
and are involved in a range of jobs. This is
supported by previous research which highlights
an increasing diversity in the economic and
employment prospects of ethnic minorities, as well
as the increasing numbers of such young people
pursuing further and higher education courses
(Ahmad 2001; Modood et al. 1997). This is also
supported by the fact that many ethnic minority
families are choosing to move to the suburbs
(Peach 2000; Naylor and Ryan 2002), resulting in it
being more difficult to say what the typical Asian
or Muslim community is, and demonstrating
further that Muslim masculinities are multiple,
fluid and influence and are influenced by a range
of geographical contexts.
Although the young men narrate a respect for
their parents’ generation, there are also issues
that cause unease, and this arose with particular
reference to relationships, and having a girlfriend.
Faruk talked about meeting his girlfriend in the
afternoon, and also noted ‘as far as I know I
shouldn’t be doing that, but again, from a personal
perspective, I have this thing inside me’ (Interview,
Glasgow, 25 June 2003). Across the focus groups
and interviews there was general agreement that
young Muslim men are not allowed to have a
girlfriend, and this is reiterated to them through
imams at the local mosques, and more persistently
from their parents. A few of the young men
commented, like Faruk, that they had a girlfriend.
Latif, a 16-year-old school student with an African
heritage, mentions that one of the most challenging
aspects of his everyday life is having a girlfriend
and managing this relationship alongside family
life. Even if he is ‘not doing stuff’, Latif has to carefully
negotiate his relationship with his girlfriend,
which he sees as ‘natural’. Latif suggests that he
has to hide, as well as look over his shoulder, in
order to negotiate the local area. This would suggest
that young women and men’s behaviour and conduct
is monitored by the local community through
discourses of appropriate gendered and religious
identities:
Jamal: I don’t know, my parents are quite broad minded
and like they know what is acceptable and what isn’t
acceptable, you know, and they know, and I know
many parents who aren’t like that and it’s stone cold.
Latif: . . . I think that the girlfriend is like one of the
hardest things as well, because you can’t bring your
girlfriend home if you know what I mean.
Jamal: Aye, you can’t go home and introduce her to
your mum.
Latif: Yeah, even if you like get on really well, and you
are the sweetest guy, even if you just like not even
doing stuff . . . you know you still need to hide and you
are still looking over your shoulder. (16-year-old,
school students, Focus Group, Edinburgh, 4 February
2003)
Jamal also highlights the multiple nature of the
Muslim community by suggesting that his parents
Youthful Muslim masculinities 349
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
are ‘quite broad minded’, acknowledging that
others are not. These comments also demonstrate
that the young men feel excluded from the home as
they are not allowed to bring their girlfriends there
and so have to use the other spaces of the local area
in order to negotiate their relationships. Whilst the
local community also polices the behaviour of their
extended family members and friends, the young
men adopted a number of strategies for managing
their relationships with girlfriends, and many of
these strategies might not be as easily utilized by
young Muslim women, emphasizing the continuing
significance of understandings of appropriate
gendered behaviour. Amar stated that
we’ve been going out for a year and a half, so another
year and I might tell them [his parents] that she is the
one I really want, you know. (Interview, Glasgow, 9
July 2003)
By travelling around half an hour away by bus
from home, Amar manages to hide his relationship
with his girlfriend from his parents. Amar also
mentions how he would arrange to meet his
girlfriend in the city centre, thereby increasing his
level of anonymity. The freedom of young Muslim
men to travel throughout the city was a privilege
rarely offered to young Muslim women who are
often expected to work in the local community and
frequent the family home (Dwyer 1999; Mohammed
1999). They use this freedom to negotiate their
relationship with parents, their girlfriends and
their religion. In general, the young men who
mentioned having a girlfriend did not discuss the
ethnic background of their partner, although
reading through Amar’s interview transcript, it is
clear that his girlfriend has a white ethnicity. This
demonstrates that Amar’s masculinity develops in
relation to the spatial freedom afforded to him,
along with race and ethnicity and other markers of
social difference. The complexity of local frameworks
may therefore work to exclude and segregate the
young men and lead them to use alternative spaces
and times in order to negotiate greater freedom
and personal choice. Furthermore, they could also
be said to be using their masculinities in order to
exploit the lack of freedom given to young women.
The need to strategically negotiate their relationships
with girlfriends is a concern most frequently
voiced by young men from Glasgow. Their extended
families tend to live in the local area, and given
the higher levels of ethnic residential clustering
(Hopkins and Smith 2005), there is an increased
likelihood that the young men will meet family
friends and relatives as they negotiate the spaces of
the local area. The young men who worked parttime
in the evening whilst studying used the spaces
of the college and university, and that of work, to
see their girlfriends. Babar mentions how ‘going to
university, you have to relate to other people, you
know, you talk to them and you get on fine’ (Interview,
Glasgow, 24 June 2003). These young men
therefore used the different scales of their local
everyday lives in order to negotiate and manage
gender, generational and sexual relations.
Conclusion: multiple Muslim
masculinities?
Research about young men as active subjects
‘involves making masculinities plural and
understanding and addressing them as relational
identities which boys construct and inhabit’ (Pattman
et al. 1998, 139) and so involves highlighting the
power and weaknesses involved in ‘doing’ gender.
In this sense, the young men utilize a repertoire of
masculinities in their articulations of their views
and experiences. Whilst the majority of young
Muslim men might aim to conform to hegemonic
stereotypes of Muslim masculinity, a range of
complex intertwining markers of social difference –
gender, social class, sexuality, disability – disrupt
this pattern, as do the young men’s relationships
with their fathers and their particular locations in
urban Scotland. There are a range of masculinities
inhabited and performed by the young men,
highlighting the complexity of their experiences
and the different ways that they see themselves,
and are seen by others, as men. In this paper, I
have demonstrated the diverse, heterogeneous and
multifaceted nature of youthful Muslim masculinities
that are simultaneously gendered, sexualized and
classed, and influenced by generation and location.
In different settings and at different times, the
young men performed hegemonic Muslim masculinities,
thereby placing emphasis on patriarchy
and aggression, yet at other times the young men
displayed masculinities that were sensitive to the
importance of various markers of social difference
and respective of their parents’ lives. As Frosh et al.
note, the young men’s masculinities are multiple,
flexible and part of a repertoire, as well as being
themselves deeply racialised: full of the tension and
drama, and the pain, of belonging and not-belonging,
350 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
including and excluding, that the dimensions of
difference encoded in ‘race’ produce. (2002, 174)
Overall, the young men adopt a range of
contradictory masculine subject positions, such
as emphasizing equality and opportunity whilst
also reinforcing sexist stereotypes and expectations.
All in all, the various accounts of the young
men’s masculine identities simultaneously support,
challenge and subvert dichotomized stereotypes
that either associate them with effeminacy and
academicism or patriarchy and aggression. There
were accounts that could be said to be associated
with an effeminate or patriarchal masculinity;
however, there were also accounts that drew
upon a range of discourses and markers, and so
simplistic stereotypical understandings of Muslim
masculinities have limited value.
McDowell acknowledges that her recent research
is about young white men, and
the significance of ‘race’ and racism in structuring the
lives of young men in different parts of the UK is,
however, a key issue for further analysis. (2002b, 56)
This article contributes to understandings of the
multiple natures of youthful Muslim masculinities
(Alexander 2000a 2000b; Archer 2003). However,
there is also a need to extend the analysis in
research about men and masculinities to include a
range of different groups of men and women in
different places and at a range of times and scales.
As Connell observes,
diversity also exists within a given setting. Within the
one school, or workplace, or ethnic group, there will be
different ways of enacting manhood, different ways of
learning to be a man, different conceptions of the self
and different ways of using the male body. (2002, 10;
original emphasis)
If further research seeks to do this, geographers
will be able to more fully comprehend, understand
and appreciate the ways in which different groups
of men enact masculinity, and the ways these
gendered performances vary in relation to other
men and women and in different places and times.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Institute of
Geography, University of Edinburgh. I am very
grateful for the advice, guidance and comments
of David Howard and Susan Smith, as well as for
the exceptionally useful comments of three anonymous
referees.
Note
1 Sixteen-year-old Omar and 25-year-old Omar are two
different people. In order to respect the pseudonyms
chosen by the research participants, I have kept the
names that they requested.
References
Ahmad F 2001 Modern traditions? British Muslim women
and academic achievement Gender and Education 13 137–
52
Aitken S 2000 Fathering and faltering: ‘Sorry, but you
don’t have the necessary accoutrements’ Environment
and Planning A 32 581–98
Aitken S 2005 The awkward spaces of fathering in van
Hoven B and Horschelmann K eds Spaces of masculinities
Routledge, London 222–36
Alexander C 1998 Re-imagining the Muslim community
Innovation 11 439–50
Alexander C 2000a The Asian gang Berg, Oxford
Alexander C 2000b (Dis)entangling the ‘Asian gang’:
ethnicity, identity, masculinity in Hesse B ed Un/settled
multiculturalisms: diasporas, entanglements, transruptions
Zed Books, London 123–47
Alexander C 2004 Imagining the Asian gang: ethnicity,
masculinity and youth after ‘the riots’ Critical Social
Policy 24 526–49
Archer L 2001 ‘Muslim brothers, black lads, traditional
Asians’: British Muslim young men’s constructions of
race, religion and masculinity Feminism and Psychology
11 79–105
Archer L 2003 Race, masculinity and schooling: Muslim boys
and education Open University Press, Maidenhead
Archer L and Yamashita H 2003 Theorising inner-city
masculinities: ‘race’, class, gender and education Gender
and Education 15 115–32
Berg L and Longhurst R 2003 Placing masculinities in
geography Gender, Place and Culture 10 351–60
Blunt A 2005 Cultural geography: cultural geographies of
home Progress in Human Geography 29 505–15
Blunt A and Varley A 2004 Introduction: geographies of
home Cultural Geographies 11 3–6
Brah A 1996 Cartographies of diaspora Routledge, London
Browne K 2005 Stages and streets: reading and (mis)reading
female masculinities in van Hoven B and Horschelmann
K eds Spaces of masculinities Routledge, London 237–48
Connell R 2000 The men and the boys Polity Press,
Cambridge
Connell R 2002 Gender Polity Press, Cambridge
Connell R 2005 Masculinities 2nd edn Polity Press,
Cambridge
Dunn K 2001 Representations of Islam in the politics of
Youthful Muslim masculinities 351
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
mosque development in Sydney Tijdschrift voor Economische
en Sociale Geografie 92 291–308
Dwyer C 1998 Contested identities: challenging dominant
representations of young British Muslim women in
Skelton T and Valentine G eds Cool places: geographies
of youth culture Routledge, London 50–64
Dwyer C 1999 Contradictions of community: questions of
identity for young British Muslim women Environment
and Planning A 31 53–68
Dwyer C 2000 Negotiating diasporic identities: young
British South Asian Muslim women Women’s Studies
International Forum 23 475–86
Dwyer C 2002 ‘Where are you from?’ Young British
Muslim women and the making of ‘home’ in Blunt A
and McEwan C eds Postcolonial geographies Continuum,
London 184–99
Edley N and Wetherell M 1995 Men in perspective: practice,
power and identity Prentice Hall, Hemel Hempstead
Edley N and Wetherell M 1997 Jockeying for position:
the construction of masculine identities Discourse and
Society 8 203–17
Frosh S, Phoenix A and Pattman R 2002 Young masculinities
Palgrave, New York
Furlong A and Cartmel F 2001 Young people and social
change: individualization and risk in late modernity Open
University Press, Milton Keynes
Hopkins P 2004 Young Muslim men in Scotland: inclusions
and exclusions Children’s Geographies 2 257–72
Hopkins P forthcoming Global events, national politics,
local lives: young Muslim men in Scotland Environment
and Planning A
Hopkins P and Smith S J 2005 Scaling segregation;
racialising fear Paper presented at the Fear: critical
geopolitics and everyday life conference, Durham, July
2005
Jackson P 1989 Maps of meaning Unwin Hyman, London
Jackson P 1991 The cultural politics of masculinity:
towards a social geography Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers 16 199–221
Jackson P 1994 Black male: advertising and the cultural
politics of masculinity Gender, Place and Culture 1 49–59
Jackson P, Stevenson N and Brooks K 1999 Making
sense of men’s lifestyle magazines Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 17 353–68
Keith M 1995 Making the street visible: placing racial
violence in context New Community 21 551–65
Knott K and Khokher S 1993 Religious and ethnic identity
among young Muslim women in Bradford New Community
19 593–610
Kobayashi A 2003 GPC ten years on: is self-reflexivity
enough? Gender, Place and Culture 10 345–9
Longhurst R 2000 Geography and gender, masculinities,
male identity and men Progress in Human Geography 24
439–44
Mac an Ghaill M 1988 Young, gifted and black Open University
Press, Milton Keynes
Mac an Ghaill M 1994 The making of men: masculinities,
sexualities and schooling Open University Press, Milton
Keynes
Macey M 1999 Class, gender and religious influences on
changing patterns of Pakistani Muslim male violence in
Bradford Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 845–66
Marriot D 2000 On black men Edinburgh University Press,
Edinburgh
McDowell L 2001 Men, management and multiple masculinities
in organisations Geoforum 32 181–98
McDowell L 2002a Transitions to work: masculine identities,
youth inequality and labour market change Gender,
Place and Culture 9 39–59
McDowell L 2002b Masculine discourses and dissonances:
strutting ‘lads’, protest masculinity, and domestic
respectability Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 20 97–119
McDowell L 2003 Redundant masculinities? Employment
change and white working class youth Blackwell, Oxford
Miles R and Dunlop A 1987 Racism in Britain: the
Scottish dimension in Jackson P ed Race and racism
Unwin Hyman, London 119–41
Modood T 2003 Muslims and the politics of difference
Political Quarterly 74 100–15
Modood T, Berthoud R, Lakey J, Nazroo J, Smith P,
Virdee S and Beishon S 1997 Ethnic minorities in Britain:
diversity and disadvantage Policy Studies Institute,
London
Mohammad R 1999 Marginalisation, Islamism and the
production of the ‘other’s’ ‘other’ gender Place and
Culture 6 221–40
Mohammad R 2001 ‘Insiders’ and/or ‘outsiders’: positionality,
theory and praxis in Limb M and Dwyer C
eds Qualitative methodologies for geographers: issues and
debates Arnold, London 101–20
Nayak A 2003a Last of the ‘real Geordies’? White masculinities
and the subcultural response to deindustrialisation
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21 7–25
Nayak A 2003b Race, place and globalisation: youth cultures
in a changing world Berg, Oxford
Naylor S and Ryan J 2002 The mosque in the suburbs:
negotiating religion and ethnicity in South London
Social and Cultural Geography 3 39–60
O’Donnell M and Sharpe S 2000 Uncertain masculinities:
youth, ethnicity and class in contemporary Britain
Routledge, London
Ouzgane L 2003 Islamic masculinities: introduction Men
and Masculinities 5 231–5
Peach C 2000 Discovering white ethnicity and parachuted
plurality Progress in Human Geography 24 620–6
Phoenix A 1997 The place of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the
lives of children and young people Educational and Child
Psychology 14 5–24
Qureshi K and Moores S 1999 Identity remix: tradition
and translation in the lives of young Pakistani Scots
European Journal of Cultural Studies 2 311–30
Said E W 1997 Covering Islam: how the media and the experts
determine how we see the rest of the world Vintage, London
352 Peter E Hopkins
Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 31 337–352 2006
ISSN 0020-2754 © 2006 The Author.
Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006
Skelton T and Valentine G 2005 Exploring notions of
masculinity and fatherhood: when gay sons ‘come out’
to heterosexual fathers in van Hoven B and Horschelmann
K eds Spaces of masculinities Routledge, London
207–21
Valentine G and Skelton T 2003 Living on the edge: the
marginalisation and ‘resistance’ of D/deaf youth
Environment and Planning A 35 301–21
Valentine G, Skelton T and Butler R 2003 Coming out
and outcomes: negotiating lesbian and gay identities
with, and in, the family Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space 21 479–99
Van Hoven B and Horschelmann K eds 2005 Spaces of
masculinities Routledge, London
Westwood S 1990 Racism, black masculinity and the politics
of space in Hearn J and Morgan D eds Men, masculinities
and social theory Unwin Hyman, London 55–71
Yip A K T 2004 Negotiating space with family and kin in
identity construction: the narratives of British nonheterosexual
Muslims Sociological Review 52 336–50