"Jævla terrorist!" Muslimhets og hverdagsmotstand

Abstract

Research has revealed widespread anti-Muslim sentiment in Norway. Little knowledge exists, however, on the types of anti-Muslim hostility that Muslims experience and how they react to it. Based on interviews with 90 young Norwegian Muslims, we describe widespread forms of anti-Muslim hostility and discuss the strategies that Muslims use in response to stigma and prejudice. The forms of hostility that these Muslim youths most frequently described, and which they said affected them most in their daily lives, were those expressed during face-to-face encounters. The ways in which the young Muslims dealt with hostility demonstrate that they are far from passive victims. Rather, they actively engaged in attempts to reduce the impact of hostility and to challenge prejudices against Islam and Muslims through various forms of everyday resistance. We argue that these ways of responding to anti-Muslim sentiment can be perceived as a repertoire of everyday resistance, that is, a set of ways to resist hostility that are relatively well-known and regularly employed by Muslims both in our study – and beyond.