| dc.description.abstract | This thesis is based on approximately 4,5 months of fieldwork conducted in the spring of 2015 in Houston, Texas. It will concern the overarching anthropological themes of religion, gender, community and performance. It examines how these themes are interlinked in the construction of a community of Muslim youths at the University of Houston. In an increasingly Islam-hostile climate, such as the American society, Muslim youths are experiencing discrimination and misrecognition. This climate has inspired a ‘strength in numbers’ mindset, and the youths seek out communities and networks that resonates with the values and moral codes they want to live by. The university setting is examined as an arena where gender, religion and community are performed. Additionally, I will seek to understand the mechanisms of how the religious and pious self is constructed. My question is what is it that makes the University of Houston Muslim youth community attractive? Is it the security of being a part of a larger community? And is the fostering of this community resulting in a fostering of a pious self? These are all questions I seek to explore throughout this thesis. These explorations begins with a case-study of the killings of three Muslim youths in North Carolina, which seek to describe and explain the way Muslim youths in America is connected. The murder victims inhabited many of the same qualities that the youths at UH aimed on incorporating into their character. Further on, the post-9/11 climate under which these youths has grown up and become young adults is explored. It continues by laying the foundation for the understanding of the thesis through thorough description of the study’s key informants and the two student organizations which was the stepping stones into this field. Furthermore, the arena of the university library is analyzed in terms of the concerns and social structures that unfold here. Performance of reputation and piety, inter-group policing through gossip, and space conversion are uncovered and, consequently, theorized and analyzed in terms of the underlying mechanisms that drives this community. To better understand these mechanisms, the thesis zooms in on a category of persons within this group, namely the Hijabis, and examines this category in light of agency, power and patriarchal traditions. Finally, the thesis investigate the inter-group policing in connection to religious outreach and the construction of a pious self and a pious community of Muslim youths. | eng |