The Halal Way of Clubbing: A Study of Second-Generation Muslim Youth’s Resistance and the Subculture It Has Generated

Abstract

This study examined two second-generation Muslim youth clubs in the city of Ottawa. First-generation mosques and community centres have ample space for youth. Still, as a form of defiance against their parents, these youth have created youth clubs outside of Ottawa’s residential areas. The clubs had devised an original form of ‘fun’ for themselves, which, despite being ‘halal’, was not approved by their parents and thus represented a form of resistance against them. These youth clubs have exacerbated tensions within the Muslim community in Canada. This article contends that a Muslim youth subculture is emerging among second-generation immigrants, which is consistent with aspects of the Birmingham School and post-subcultural theories. Steve Redhead argues that today’s youth continue to resist not through style but by ‘lengthy clubbing’. A total of 26 young women and men were interviewed alongside 10 months of fieldwork.