"I Rely on Allah": The Role of Religion in the Resettlement Experiences of a Syrian Muslim Refugee-Background Family in the United States

• In Event: Amplifying Voices and Experiences: Representations of Languages, Literacies, and Identities Among Refugee-Background Children and Families

Abstract

With the numbers of refugees increasing across the globe, their integration experiences into the countries of resettlement remain a significant issue. This is especially pronounced as the contexts of reception in countries of resettlement tend to be quite hostile for many of them – among which are those who are Muslim (Author 3, 2021). While increasing attention has been devoted to the role of religion in the resettlement experiences of refugee populations, researchers have found that the frameworks that are being used in trying to inform it are oftentimes based in Western traditions that render them irrelevant. Recent scholarship on the interconnections between religion and resettlement describes how religion is a source of hope and resilience, but we know little about how Muslim families from refugee backgrounds negotiate religious beliefs in their daily lives in post-settlement contexts. This study addresses this gap by asking: What is the role of religion in how a Syrian refugee-background family negotiates their lives in the United States?
We adopt a transnational lens to examine Islam and resettlement which views religion as a marker of identity with multiple ways of enacting and engaging in religious practices across various contexts (Grillo, 2004). Our participants included Omar and Maria, parents to three elementary-aged children at the time of the study. Data included three years of ethnographic observations of the participants, extended interviews, and various artifacts from the participants’ residence. Despite the first author’s personal experience of displacement and both researchers’ previous experience working with diverse refugee populations from the Middle East and Africa, both researchers were outsiders to the Muslim community. Findings revealed that while the family adhered to their Muslim faith in determining halal (right) from haram (wrong); they were flexible in making changes to their religious practices, such as adapting their parenting style in raising the children and celebrating holidays in the United States. Furthermore, while they sought to achieve harmony with their new surroundings through a non-confrontational practice that they named “mujamalah,” they also resisted discriminatory practices that they experienced. For example, participants practiced mujamalah by being courteous to one of their agnostic friends and avoided embarrassing them by openly disagreeing with their agnostic beliefs. On the other hand, Maria’s advanced English enabled her to resist discriminatory practices at work and use her voice to challenge stereotypical positionings of Muslim women.
While previous studies document that a high level of faith can be correlated to adopting an integration approach, and a low level of religious commitment may be correlated to an assimilationist approach, Maria’s and Omar’s case complicates such a straightforward and binary relationship between religion and resettlement and demonstrate how religious practices can be fluid and malleable, especially in transnational contexts. Such findings challenge the simplistic view of families adopting either integrative or assimilationist approaches to resettlement and highlight the complexities of negotiating religious issues in post-settlement contexts. Theoretical implications are presented with respect to migration and “mujamalah”, in addition to methodological insights regarding conducting ethnographic research to examine religious practices of refugee populations.

Author

• Fares Karam, University of Nevada - Reno
  Presenting Author