ISLAM'S WITTENBERG:

American culture often presents two opposing paths for young Muslims. On one side are people like President Donald Trump, who retweets unverified videos purporting to show Muslim violence; says things like "I think Islam hate us"; and claims there's "no real assimilation" among even second- and third-generation Muslims in the U.S. On the other are movies like The Big Sick, which depicts the autobiographical love story of Kumail Nanjiani, a Muslim comedian who rejects religion and falls in love with a white woman, devastating his immigrant family.

In reality, most Muslims are somewhere in between. U.S. Muslims--roughly 60 percent of whom are under 40--are going through a process that's quintessentially American: finding new, diverse, self-constructed identities in their faith, ranging from fully secular to deeply pious. The contours may be particular to Islam, but the story is one shared by Catholics, Jews, and even the Puritans. Muslims are creating distinctively American forms of their religion.

As a group, Muslims are extremely diverse, and their experiences reflect that diversity. Some young Muslims care deeply about their religious and cultural identities, but choose to prioritize other parts of life. Others self-define new, non-traditional ways of engaging with their faith. Immigrants understand the country differently than people who have been in the U.S. for generations; black Muslims encounter distinctive kinds of discrimination and have particular communal needs. Converts face questions from family members who might not understand their new religion, and have to navigate the sometimes-unfamiliar cultures of new friends and partners. And some Muslims don't feel accepted by their own community, for reasons of race, gender, or sexuality.

As in other American religious groups, a tiny minority of young Muslims take their religion to an extreme, including in the context of love. Jaelyn Young and Muhammad Dakhlalla offer one such story--two Mississippi college students convicted in 2016 of conspiring to join the Islamic State. According to the Center on National Security at Fordham University's School of Law, young Muslim converts are particularly common among those involved in ISIS-related cases in the U.S.

But for the vast majority of Muslim parents, teachers, and imams, the worry is the opposite: that the young will drift away from their faith. "The people [who] are anxious about [assimilation] are the people who are white-knuckling it, holding onto tradition, worried that they're going to lose it," said Zareena Grewal, an associate professor at Yale University. Imams will often compare young Muslims and Jews, she added, wondering whether their religious organizations will also be hurt by widespread disaffiliation. "They're like, 'Oh, the rabbis are panicking, so we should also be panicking.'"

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