Intersecting Literacies and Identities: A Justice-Oriented Framework for Muslim Adolescents

• In Event: Beyond Extraction: Islamic Community Practices as Liberatory Research

Abstract

This conceptual paper introduces a justice-oriented framework that centers the literacy and identity development of Muslim American adolescents across three key spaces: home, school, and Islamic community centers. In response to the marginalization and erasure of Muslim youth in educational research and practice, this framework highlights how literacy functions not merely as an academic task but as a means of resistance, identity affirmation, and belonging. The framework draws from three interwoven strands: (1) empirical research and critical theories, (2) qualitative data from a multi-year book club program, and (3) the author’s lived experience and positionality as a community-engaged Muslim scholar.
The central data source informing this framework is the author’s dissertation research, which examined the literacy practices and identity formation of Muslim American early adolescents through a 12-week book club held at an Islamic community center in Central New York. Participants, aged 11–14, engaged in weekly discussions of diverse texts that reflected their cultural and religious experiences. Data collection included video-recorded sessions, semi-structured interviews, participant journals, creative artifacts, and fieldnotes. These materials were analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to understand how participants negotiated identity and literacy in response to broader sociopolitical contexts. The book club was designed with the community and facilitated by the author, allowing for a sustained, trust-based, and culturally responsive learning space.
In addition to this primary data, the framework is informed by studies on Muslim youth identity development (e.g., Ali, 2022; Mir & Sarroub, 2019; Baboolal, 2019), research on religion and race in literacy (e.g., Zaal, 2012; Greene, 2015), and multiple intersecting theoretical lenses. These include Muslim Critical Race Theory (MusCrit), New Literacies Theory (Street, 2003), Culturally Situated Reader Response Theory (Brooks & Browne, 2012), Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), and Gholdy Muhammad’s (2020) Historically Responsive Literacy model. These perspectives position literacy as a sociopolitical practice shaped by religion, race, gender, and power.
A model developed by the author illustrates how home, school, and Islamic centers serve as overlapping literacy spaces, each offering distinct affirmations or tensions around Muslim youth identities. External forces, such as Islamophobia, media narratives, and institutional discourse, continuously shape these sites. The model was iteratively refined through theoretical engagement and fieldwork reflections over the three-year program.
The author’s dual role as researcher and cultural insider enabled a grounded, relational approach to analysis. This positionality was crucial in building community trust, co-creating space with youth, and interpreting meaning through a culturally sustaining lens. Sriprakash (2023) argues that reparations “compel us to consider the interconnections between past, present, and future in both the formation of injustice and its repair” (p. 283). By illuminating how literacy operates within and across marginalizing structures and affirming communities, this framework provides a roadmap for developing curricula, policies, and scholarly inquiries that affirm rather than erase the multiplicity of Muslim adolescents’ identities.

Author

• Fatima Seyma Kizil, Syracuse University