The Interplay between Ethnicity, Religion and Gender among Second-Generation Christian and Muslim Arabs in Montreal

The author explores how religion operates as an "ethnic-like" identity marker, or group binder, among both Christian and Muslim CEGEP students of Arab origin in Montreal. Special attention is also paid to the relation between traditional attitudes toward gender relations and ethno-religious identity building. A sample of 250 second-generation Arabs from five different Montreal CEGEPs filled out a questionnaire. Sixteen of these students participated in in-depth interviews. The author's findings lend support to the hypothesis of a triadic relationship between ethnic identity, religious identity and gender. More specifically, the author found that these Arab-origin youth perform heuristic re-appropriations of religion and gender-related traditions, which are freely recycled into an identity vector delineating distinct ethnic group boundaries. This ethnicisation of religion is coupled with a shift toward a "symbolic religiosity," where religion comes to the foreground not as a fixed set of socially binding norms, behavioural rules, and rituals, but rather as a contributor to ethno-cultural identity building. The author also discovered two unexpected findings. First, the intersection of ethnic and religious identity turned out to be significantly more pronounced among Christian than Muslim respondents. Second, the hypothesis that females would be more likely than males to oppose traditional gender roles as an ethno-religious identity marker was only partially supported by the data.

Canadian Ethnic Studies / Études ethniques au Canada

Vol. 35

no. 2

30-60

2003

en