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Muslims in India have lived alongside Hindus peacefully for many centuries. Yet in the contemporary period some politicians have orchestrated division for political ends, for example, during the Godhra-Gujarat riots in India in 2002 in which there were many Muslim casualties. Critics allege that the ruling party in Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and its leader Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now the Prime Minister of India) were responsible for the Godhra-Gujarat riots. Once again, in 2020, under Narendra Modi’s Prime Ministership, riots against the Muslims took place in Delhi. Within the framework of identity politics in India, where religion seems to dominate the social, economic and political spheres, based on my participants interviews, this paper mainly focuses on how the 2002 Gujarat riots impacted on Muslims in Gujarat. Based on other primary sources, this paper also briefly examines the recent 2020 Delhi riots. I conclude that, in the era of identity politics when Muslims form a disadvantaged minority, national and international policy makers should promulgate policies that would improve social cohesion in India. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Fernando Ortiz acknowledged the pain of colonisation and the uprooting of slaves from Africa from the sixteenth century onwards. Later, people from diverse backgrounds such as Jews, Anglo-Saxons and Chinese migrated to the New World. Ortiz observed that initially migrants were faced with the problem of disadjustment and readjustment, of acculturation, deculturation and neoculturation – in a word, of transculturation. Ortiz’s concept of transculturation provides a useful framework for examining the cross-cultural adaptation and hybridisation that usually takes place when two or more cultures meet. Against the transcultural conceptual framework offered by Ortiz, this paper examines the life stories of three American Muslim girls of Bangladeshi heritage, and evaluates their experiences as reflecting transcultural processes. It examines how their transculturality or hybridity through the ‘contact zone’, and global and local interactions, helped them to assert their identity and sense of belonging. It recognises the tensions and the positive outcomes of their transculturation. In particular, this paper mobilises Pratt’s, Kraidy’s and Pereira-Ares’s interpretation of transculturation. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

A few years ago, in my interviews with young Australian Muslims, I found that the participants were critical of the practices of the conventional media when it reported on the topic of Islam or Muslims. In recent years, my newspaper research has shown that the rhetoric of the “Muslim Other” has become more frequent. In this chapter, through thematic critical discourse analysis and content analysis of selected print media, I examine whether the print media is Islamophobic and if its sensationalist representation of Muslim news can serve Islamic State propaganda. I conclude that media stereotypes can further marginalize vulnerable Muslim youth and that can make them susceptible to radicalization.

Recently, SBS TV presented a panel discussion on why people are fearful of Islam (‘Fear of Islam’, SBS, November 2010 ). Among the invited panelists were Reza Aslan, a religious scholar, and Nonie Darwish, a former Muslim – both from the United States. The Australian audience comprised Muslim and non-Muslim guests. Nonie Darwish was critical of the Quran and said, ‘Islamic doctrine promotes violence and hatred against non-Muslims. Sixty per cent of the Quran is dedicated to cursing and spreading hatred and violence against non-Muslims who are called “Kaffir’”. Reza Aslan responded that all religious scriptures, including the Bible, Torah and the Quran, talk about war and peace, love and hatred, compassion and bigotry. Aslan also said, ‘…it's kind of convenient to simply pick and choose whatever violent bits and pieces one finds in the Quran and ignore the equally important verses that talk about compassion and peace’. The Australian audience members were also divided in their views about the Quran and its interpretation (see ‘Fear of Islam’, SBS, November 2010 ).

The civil war in Somalia forced many Somalis to migrate to other countries where they had to adapt to new cultures and learn new languages. At the same time, they retained the identity and culture that were important to them throughout the process of migration. These first-generation Somali immigrants may feel strong allegiance to their country of origin along with a “sense of belonging” to their clan/kinship. They may also hope that one day they will be able to return “home”. But do second-generation Somalis feel the same way? This paper is based on 23 interviews with Somali immigrants in Australia, the UK and the USA. Out of the 23 participants, two were first-generation and the rest were second-generation. I seek to understand the participants' identity and their sense of belonging to their ethnicity and host country in the wake of pertinent moments of local, national and international anxiety. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Australia is the home of 340,393 Muslims and they constitute about 1.7% of the total national population of 19,855,287 million people.¹ Muslims have migrated to Australia from several Muslim countries on their own will for a better life. The Australian government also welcomed the immigrants because it needed labor for a sustainable economy. However, in times of crisis, for example, after the 9/11 incident the media and some politicians positioned the Muslims as the “Other”. In December 2005 there was a riot at Sydney's Cronulla beach between some Lebanese-Australians and the mainstream Australians but the politicians and the media sided with the wider society. In September 2006, when the Egyptian-born Mufti al-Hilali presented a controversial sermon in Arabic in which he depicted scantily-dressed women as uncovered meat and blamed them for inciting men to rape, the rhetoric of “us” and “them” was final. The racial profiling of Muslims through the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 has also caused unease in the society. Against this backdrop I interviewed 14 Muslim youths of diverse backgrounds, 15–17 years in Melbourne and tried to gain an understanding of their identity. Overall, the participants appeared to be peaceful, and their bicultural skills strengthened their Australian citizenship. Refereed/Peer-reviewed