Summary
In Lybarger’s Chapter 4, a trajectory emerging across the 1987-2001 and post-September 11 generations that almost entirely ignores nationalism and constitutes identity exclusively in religious sectarian terms, produced principally by a high degree of participation in religious institutions and a corresponding lack of integration within secular nationalist or religious-nationalist activism (Palestinian Chicago — Identity in Exile, PDF p.146 / printed p.125).
Details
- It is one of the two diverging axes, with sectarianized nationalism, along which religious subjectivities move in Lybarger’s data after the emergence of distinct sectarian milieus, in the relative absence of a desectarianized secular space integrating individuals as Palestinians across sectarian lines (PDF p.153 / printed p.132).
- Among Muslims it is illustrated by ‘Aziza (pseudonym), whose suburban isolation from the secular centers and reversion to “proper Islam” through the Mosque Foundation and the Islamic schools left her holding, “I know I’m Palestinian, but I’m a Muslim above all else” (PDF p.146-149 / printed p.125-128).
- Among Christians it is illustrated by Leo (pseudonym), whose family’s social center became St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church (Cicero), which integrated Arab immigrants of diverse backgrounds through an explicitly Orthodox identity eliding nationality and even Arab ethnicity (PDF p.150-152 / printed p.129-131).
- Lybarger reads the denationalization in both cases as replicating a classical US assimilation trajectory in which sectarian or denominational identities elided ethnic particularities (PDF p.151 / printed p.130).
Related pages
Sectarianization · Palestinian Chicago — Identity in Exile · Secularism · Religious turn