ABSTRACT

This paper draws upon recent research that explored Muslim youth identity constructions in southern Ghana. At a time when Muslim youth are often demonised and Islam is represented as incompatible with western democratic ideals, the research explored the intersections of nation, religion, ethnicity and gender in identity narratives of female students in high school and higher education in southern Ghana. After describing the Ghanaian socio-historical context, we outline the post-structural and post-colonial theories used to understand key concepts such as identity and youth. We then describe our methodological approach before presenting our intersectional analysis of data from the focus group discussions. This highlights female youths’ deep commitments to nation and religion, the marginalisation of young Muslim females in this Christian-majority context, and finally, the identity tensions articulated by participants between different Islamic traditions. We further show how all of these identity constructions were intersected by gender.

摘要

本文借鉴了最近对加纳南部穆斯林青年身份建构的研究。在穆斯林青年经常被妖魔化、伊斯兰教被认为与西方民主理想格格不入的时代，该研究探索了加纳南部高中和高等教育女学生身份叙事中民族、宗教、种族和性别的交叉点。在描述了加纳的社会历史背景之后，我们概述了用于理解身份和青年等关键概念的后结构和后殖民理论。然后，在展示我们对来自焦点小组讨论的数据的交叉分析之前，我们描述了我们的方法论方法。这凸显了女性青年对国家和宗教的深刻承诺，在这种基督徒占多数的背景下，年轻的穆斯林女性被边缘化，最后，不同伊斯兰传统之间的参与者所表达的身份紧张。我们进一步展示了所有这些身份结构如何与性别相交。