INTRODUCTION

Until recently, much academic and policy research about Muslim youth and politics tended to focus on issues of radicalisation and extremism (Bakker, 2006; Hemmingsen and Andreasen, 2007; Kuhle and Lindekilde, 2010; Spalek and McDonald, 2011), mirroring the political and policy landscape on this issue. While some of these studies attempt to disrupt popular conceptions of the link between Muslim youth and radicalisation, others have assisted in fuelling perceptions of Muslim youth as taking a more politicised stance on religious belief than their parents (Policy Exchange, 2007, cited in Field, 2011: 160). Furthermore, some have attempted to categorise Muslim youth into those who are ‘moderate’, ‘apartist’ and ‘alienated’ (Field, 2011) and, while painting a more complex picture, remain rather rigid and do little to challenge homogenised representations of Muslim youth. Media representation of Muslim youth as either politically apathetic, radicalised or vulnerable to radicalisation further contributes to misconceptions about young Muslim identities and their political agency. Such representations are gendered and embodied, for example with Muslim young men being read as the Asian ‘new folk devils’ (Alexander, 2000), as ‘militant and aggressive’ (Archer, 2003: 81) or as academic and effeminate (Hopkins, 2006).

Recent scholarship on the political participation of young Muslims in Britain has shown that young Muslims are politically engaged and developing new political subjectivities in diverse ways (O'Toole and Gale, 2013). Significantly, political engagement can lead to a sense of belonging and inclusion in Britain (Mustafa, 2015). Hopkins (2007) has explored the ways in which young Muslim men in Scotland engage with mainstream politics and their understanding of how the political system operates. Rather than being apathetic, disengaged and inert, the young men involved in this study in the early 2000s were recognised as possessing a range of carefully considered political opinions, particularly on matters relating to global politics. Building upon this earlier work, we discuss the political participation of young Muslims in Scotland, particularly in the context of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. In doing so, we challenge problematic assumptions that see young Muslims as apolitical or that having political agency suggests vulnerability to radicalisation. We then report on youth perspectives of politics in the media, focusing on the impact of media representations of geopolitics on young Muslims’ everyday lives.