Growing up female and Muslim in the UK: an empirical enquiry into the distinctive religious and social values of young Muslims

Abstract

What does it mean to be a Muslim young woman in Britain today and with which religious and social values do these young women identify? This paper tests the thesis that Muslim identity predicts distinctive values of public and social significance among female adolescents (13- to 15- years of age) who participated in a survey conducted across the four nations of the United Kingdom. From the 11,809 participants in the survey, the present analyses compares the responses of 177 female students who self-identified as Muslim with the responses of 1183 female students who self-identified as religiously unaffiliated. Comparisons are drawn across two domains defined as religiosity and as social values. The data demonstrated that for these female adolescents self-identification as Muslim encased a distinctive profile in terms both of religiosity and social values.