No abstract

With geopolitical concerns surrounding the rise of militant, transnational groups who draw on Islamic texts for legitimacy, the place of Islam in western societies has become a source of anxiety, fear and suspicion. The central concern is whether Muslims living in the West have the capacity to become fully active citizens. This article uses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine whether Islamic religiosity is a predictor for civic engagement and active citizenship among Muslims living in Melbourne, Australia. The findings show that organized religiosity can be a strong predictor of civic engagement, countering the discourses that demonize Islam as a source of radicalization and social disengagement. While the findings show that suspicion of divisive forces and lack of trust in public institutions might prevent some young Muslims from engaging in formal political participation, grassroots civic engagement enables Muslims to demonstrate care and feel like active citizens of the Australian community without compromising core religious values.

Cultural diversity and the digital have been identified as among the most important megatrends facing young Australians in current times. These challenges have been addressed primarily through a siloed risk/protection approach, with research and policy/programme formulation focusing on either social cohesion in the ‘offline’ world, particularly risks/protective factors for those identified as culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) youth; or digital risks/protective factors regarding cyber-safety for mainstream youth. This article contributes to scholarship that bridges the gap between social cohesion and the digital in youth research and policy agendas. Moving beyond the dominant focus on the psychosocial, we propose a sociologically informed, global digital citizenship framework for theorising and analysing social cohesion in relation to young people’s digital practices as a foundation for this agenda.

This special issue, curated by Emma Baulch, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, and Amelia Johns, marks the end of the first decade of WhatsApp’s existence and offers a collection of essays on the importance of this technology in everyday life. Considering the rapid uptake and ubiquity of WhatsApp in places beyond the Anglophone world, including Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, and Spain, the seven papers interrogate the opportunities and challenges that the app affords to activists and ordinary users through its main features: end-to-end encryption, groups, and the forward function.

This paper draws upon the findings of an evaluation of “More than a Game”, a sport-focused youth mentoring program in Melbourne, Australia that aimed to develop a community-based resilience model using team-based sports to address issues of identity, belonging, and cultural isolation amongst young Muslim men in order to counter forms of violent extremism. In this essay we focus specifically on whether the intense embodied encounters and emotions experienced in team sports can help break down barriers of cultural and religious difference between young people and facilitate experiences of resilience, mutual respect, trust, social inclusion and belonging. Whilst the project findings are directly relevant to the domain of countering violent extremism, they also contribute to a growing body of literature which considers the relationship between team-based sport, cross-cultural engagement and the development of social resilience, inclusion and belonging in other domains of youth engagement and community-building.