Suicide Bombers, Airports, and X-Boxes: Millennials’ Socialization about Islam

• In Event: The Criminalization of Islam in the Trump Era

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with 40 Millennial young adults during the 2016 Presidential election, this paper presents a narrative analysis of how young people that came of age after 9/11 have been socialized into the belief that Islam is a criminal ideology. We find several loci of importance: The 2008 Presidential election was fodder for schoolyard conflict over an imagined “Muslim” Presidential candidate. Engagement with popular culture - from interactive video games to TV comedians - has provided an on-going conflation of Muslims with jihadi violence. And airports have become places that young people learn about the sorting of “safe” from “dangerous” populations. Politically conservative family and church settings provide additional ideological fodder for Islam’s danger, but we demonstrate that even a politically liberal family and progressive urban environment have not provided protection against the socialization of Millennials into the belief that the religion of Islam itself is a criminal ideology. We discuss the implications of this multi-institutional socialization for the concept of building the conditions for criminalization.

Authors

• Sarah Beth Beth Kaufman, Trinity University

• Habiba Beth Noor, Trinity University