Globalized Muslim Youth in the Asia Pacific: Popular Culture in Singapore and Sydney by Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir (review)

This book is a sociological study of popular Muslim youth culture in two globalized cities in the Asian Pacific: Singapore and Sydney. Both cities are culturally dynamic and ethnically diverse; both also have significant Muslim minority populations. Of the two, Singapore’s Muslim population is larger and more homogeneous, consisting mainly of indigenous Malays. (Singapore’s population is 13.3% Malay, 74.3% Chinese, 9.1% Indian, and 3.2% “other.”) Sydney’s Muslim population (at only 4.4%) is much smaller by comparison and is more ethnically varied. Sydney’s Muslim youth are largely second-generation immigrants whose parents came to Australia from Lebanon, Turkey, Albania, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. For the purposes of this comparative study, however, the author does not emphasize ethnicity as a significant factor in youth culture formation. Kamaludeen observes that most young people in both cities self-identify in terms of their Muslim and national identities (as either Singaporean or Australian), and only secondarily in terms of ethnic affiliation (20). The author sees this as a function of their identification as members of the “September 11 generation,” an identity galvanized by a particular “global consciousness among young Muslims revolving around the twin issues of social justice and human rights” (41). The author’s research also found that the Muslim youth in these two settings tend to differentiate themselves strongly from the generation of their parents and elders, whom they regard as both less religious and more attached to their ethnic traditions and identities. Rather than ethnicity, the author identifies the nature of state management as the critical catalyst for Muslim youth culture formation.

The author argues that the role of the state has been largely overlooked in research on popular youth culture, yet it plays a pivotal role in shaping cultural forms by controlling the possibilities of what can and cannot develop. Kamaludeen proposes to “bring the state back into the study of popular youth culture,” then, by attending not only to everyday cultural forms but to the state’s influence on their expression (pg. 4). One of the key differences between Singapore and Sydney, he writes, is that the Singaporean state attempts to control its population more tightly—particularly but not only with regard to the expression of ethnic and religious identities—whereas Australia’s government takes a relatively more liberal approach. In contrast to Australia’s loose policy of multiculturalism, for example, Singapore has put forward a top-down policy of engineering religious and race relations, including the dissemination of a discourse of the “ideal Muslim youth” (47). Furthermore, whereas mosques in Australia are privately run and largely autonomous institutions that serve their local communities and are organized along ethnic lines, the Singaporean state has established an Islamic Religious Council (the MUIS) to closely oversee mosques and mosque activities.

The author applies Roland Robertson’s (1992) framework of “glocalization” to analyze the effects of these state interventions and global cultural flows on Muslim youth culture, focusing on three popular cultural forms: hip-hop music, tattooing, and cultural consumption. Glocalization acknowledges that global cultural flows do not have a uniformly homogenizing effect on local cultures, but instead interact with both local forms and with the state. In this process, rather than a homogenization of cultural forms, there is a complex exchange between local and global, resulting in both pluralization and hybridization.

The author contends that hip-hop music, tattooing, and youth consumption are closely linked to the class status and social marginalization of Muslim youth. A characteristic of Muslim youth in both sites is their lower working-class status. In the case of Singapore Malays, this class status is a reflection of a political history of neglect/discrimination and of state policies that have positioned Muslim youth in particular as a “social problem.” In the case of Sydney’s...