connections in gaining employment, absence of accountability of
the government and international actors in regard to economic
and political policies, has
a direct bearing on the current lives and future prospects of Arab
youth.
Although the socioeconomic
is a temple. It is not only a sanctuary, it is also
a temple. And one takes off ones headscarf
in that temple, precisely to become available
to the great works of culture, to the works that
make humanity. If the instructor, the teacher
is the representati
for money to be sent from elsewhere; almost all had some debts
to pay and
REACHING A LARGER WORLD 155
obligations to get out of. Yet in all of this, there remained in our
discussions
during the course of the next several weeks a willingness to incur
new r
France (CMF), are rather opposed to such ventures.18 They
perceive these
schools as confessional institutions that will ultimately enclave
Muslim youth
in segregated educational settings, thus deepening their social
exclusion
(Chaambi 2007 ). Such schools
emptiness.
Unlike those who apologize for the emptiness of the HLM
Solidarit, that
huge expanse of concrete barriers, squatted flats, vacancy, and
regimentation
either those who are sorry about the conditions in which African
and Arabs,
French or non-Fren
is largely viewed as a matter of grand theft, the focus on a
minimal life is often
viewed, then, as a means of keeping theft itself to a minimum.
Even as youth
REACHING A LARGER WORLD 149
acknowledge that Islam strictly forbids stealing, many simply see
t
the young man has been trying something quite new to him: a
proper Muslim life. This way of living, which offers him guidance,
solace, and community, has become especially important now
because Rami no longer lives with his father, who was picked up
for
i
Egypt has become a kingdom of kings. But even in kingdoms the
name of the president doesnt become a substitute for the name
of
the country. In England you dont have people saying England is
Elizabeth. But here we have the expression, Egypt is Mubarak
(Mis
through which one could risk doing the minimum as a means of
keeping oneself available for something big and transformative,
even if there were no guarantees that such change would ever
come. In the following story from Bangkok,
Muslims do something of th
perceived as promoting communautarismethat is, the
ghettoization of
ethnic communities and the fragmentation of the Republics social
fabric and political ethos. For others, protests by Muslim activists
who
seek the licensing of a Muslim school are perceiv
becomes Marsmore than the abbreviated nickname for the city,
but a city that
belongs nowhere, on which one suspects life but it is not clear
what life has
existed or could exist. At the same time, the realities in IAMs
songs of the concrete zones of HLM (
undertaking.
Because the participants wanted to be smart about what they
didnot
only in terms of getting away with shortcuts or working in risky
commercial
environmentsbut to exude to some larger abstract audience
that being Muslims was itself something s
So nothing is well thought out. These are not sophisticated
conceptual formulations; they are going more on instinct,
believing that the way forward is about
using what little they have in common, among themselves and
other Muslims
that they do and could
across the European Union (EU) (Shadid and van Koningsveld
2005 ). The
emergence of a European educational space transcends the
territorial bounds
of a particular nation-state, in this case France, raising new issues
and challenges. As a transnational or
goals, they dream of going abroad, where it is believed that
young people, even
if they might be influenced by morally corrupting elements of
western culture,
can have a fair chance at success if they are willing to work hard.
The life stories of a young
than the world average of 25.5. In Egypt, which has the highest
number of
140 LIVELIHOODS AND LIFESTYLES
Internet users in the African continent and a penetration rate of
nearly 16%,
the number of mainly young users continues to rise at a meteoric
level.
truck at the Nigerian border. Different materialscommodities,
information,
services, commitments, affiliationsare converged into a single
unit of sale
and, as such, markets are opened up to the participation of a
wider range of
actors looking for opportun
rambunctious avenue of various illicit trades.
Given the difficulties Arabs and Muslims face in securing visas,
Bangkok
has become a favored vacation destination, particularly because
its competitive
retail prices and fl exible customs policies support ac
community leader told me in 2006 that he believes the Arab
American
community in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, has dwindled by about 20%
since 2001
(Bayoumi 2006 a: 23).
But the most evident reaction among Brooklyns young Muslim
men to
the current inhospitable env
he had been studying aqeedah (theology) for a year and a half
now. He then told
us about the time that his more secular father had screamed at
him in anger.
The devout son had been reading the Quran when the time for
prayer descended.
Ezzat prepared for h
transfrontier economies of Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeriawith its
reinvented dependence on raiding, smuggling, and theft as a
means
of ensuring a strangely egalitarian circulation of survival,
opportunity,
and powerpoints out, being in the right way is less
believe that some restrictions of civil liberties by the government
is necessary for
Muslim Americans (Nisbet and Shanahan 2004: 6). A USA/Today
Gallup Poll
from August 2006 discovered that 39% of Americans admit to
holding at least
some prejudice against
respects there is nothing to it. Faith and confidence emanate
through the selffashioning of action, of displaying certain manners
of speech and behavior,
rather than being anchored in weighty theological precepts and
institutional
orders.
In urban environ
there are simply too many making too many demands on
available
resources. Physical, built, and social environments are
progressively eroded by
overuse, the lack of money for repair and rehabilitation, and the
incessant
shortcuts and improvised uses of obj
might have of them, not to do what was expected, and to
undermine the plans
and apprehensions of those others through the intricacy of
dealings that had no
clear outcome other than to keep things open.
It is hard to predict just what skills and performanc
understands it. (In fact, many young people are now frequent
khateebs [Friday
prayers leaders] around the city, and the opportunity to lecture at
a Friday prayer
is considered by many of this generation as a desirable goal. It
indicates a kind
of rite of
that the prospects for attaining a reasonable future are
increasingly difficult
to imagine, let alone concretize (Agier 1999 ; Devisch 1995 ;
Ferrndiz 2004 ;
Masquelier 2001 ). Larger numbers of youth are unable ever to
leave the households of their paren
Deregulation is opposed by the far Right and the socialist Left,
albeit for
different reasons. The far Right considers educational
deregulation, and the
endorsement of confessional schools, as signaling the
disengagement of
the state from its commitment t
Ridge, Brooklyn. (In 2001, there were three or four in Bay Ridge,
which now
counts approximately eight.) Unlike the shisha clubs in
Manhattan, which serve
a mixed (largely non-Arab non-Muslim) population and trade in
exoticism,
these cafs have a very simp
deems valuable about national politics, regional politics, and
economic development. She confirms the adage that knowledge
is power, and feels her generation can use the Internet as a
means of empowerment and truth seeking so
that justice can prevail.
Yet
