New Muslim Generations: Shaping Self-Image, Reshaping Religion: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Inter-Religiosity with Muslim Youth in the Alps-Adriatic Region

Abstract

This paper focuses on the everyday religious practices of second-generation Muslims who have been born, raised, and socialized in the Alps-Adriatic region. These individuals are developing their own forms of religiousness and perspectives on religion. Religious practices are often regarded as a mere continuation of Islamic traditions in the countries from which their parent generation migrated. However, this generation practices religion in ways that are shaped by socialization in a largely secularized postmodern society and by inter-religiosity, i.e., interaction between people with different beliefs that provokes them to reflect on attitudes, altering their perspectives. Whereas their parents or grandparents more or less lived in their own bubble, mainly because they did not speak the language well enough, the new generation see inter-religious interaction and communication as a matter of course—part of the everyday practices that they take for granted. The empirical section of this paper looks at the experiences and everyday practices of the new Muslim generation. It draws on a participatory project focusing on the photovoice method, which involved Muslim youth not as the subjects of research but as co-researchers. In addition to this approach, the methodology incorporated phenomenological anecdotal research and reading. Adopting a participatory approach, the young people reported on their specific everyday experiences and everyday inter-religious practices. In the process, they described not only their experiences of foreignness and exclusion but also transcultural strategies and ways to address such experiences, such as adopting a self-confident position, taking action, and developing hybrid life plans.

1. Introduction

Although there is a long tradition of critical engagement with the issues of culture, identity, and nationality and their importance for social coexistence, few studies have examined the everyday religious practices of young Muslim people in German-speaking countries. It is true that the position of the Muslim population in society and their marginalization are seen as cultural or ethnic problems, with the view often being expressed that there are two issues that need managing: cultural conflict and the modernization gap (Fuhrer and Uslucan 2005, p. 11; Yıldız 2018, (adopting a critical approach); Dollahite and Marks 2019; Rydz and Romaneczko 2022; Donlic 2024). However, the circumstances of Muslims’ lives and their attempts to fit in and cope with society have generally been given only secondary attention. In many cases, scientific analyses and reports have fallen back on clichés that are presented as categories or “ontological givens” (Giddens 1995, p. 101). The realities of people’s lives are thus reduced to a simple “us and them” (Beck-Gernsheim 2007; Ammerman 2021). The same applies to the media and to political discourse, in which Muslims are often, for example, portrayed as victims of their circumstances. People who are talked about (cf. Spivak 2008, pp. 74f) are deprived of their agency and of the ability to speak for themselves (ibid.); they are de-individualized. The dominant discourse around migration in Austria, as in other European nations, thus focuses—or continues to focus—on “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2003; Beck 2006, p. 514f.; Ohnmacht and Yıldız 2021). Other perspectives on migration, mobility, and religiousness in the context of globalization have mostly gone unnoticed, and the structure of individuals’ lives and everyday activities has been overlooked, resulting in an epistemic blind spot. This study aims to critically discuss the dominant discourses in academic disciplines and in society, and—moving from cultural stereotyping to the deconstruction of such stereotyping—to explore everyday Muslim practices in all their plurality. This lifeworld-based approach aims to put stereotypes into perspective and counter the oftenhostile perception of Muslims, providing insights into their circumstances, attitudes, and ways of life. In addition to examining marginalization, discrimination, and the reversal of common preconceptions about Muslims, the study investigates the circumstances in which its participants live, how they participate in society, their successes, and the inter-religious encounters that they consider a matter of course. It facilitates active dialog between young people and sheds light on the differences between the individual religious practices of young Muslims living in the Alps-Adriatic region by portraying such practices in their biographical and social contexts. It examines how young Muslims in this region experience inter-religiosity in the context of interaction with people of other beliefs.

The Alps-Adriatic region comprises Slovenia; parts of Croatia; the Austrian provinces of Carinthia, Styria, and southern and central Burgenland; the westernmost parts of Hungary; and the Italian regions of Friuli–Venezia Giulia and Veneto. It is characterized by multilingualism, multiethnic links, multifarious “cultural interconnections” (Hill 2014, p. 89), and diverse religious institutions (Schmitt 2023). This article moves from an ethnic/national focus to an examination of the diverse practices and realities of people’s lives. It tells their stories, opens up alternative ways of thinking, and uncovers multiple modes of experience (Yıldız and Donlic 2023). Looking at new Muslim generations, the article examines the ‘Muslim difference’ and brings to light perspectives and stories that have remained invisible until now. The focus is on the experiences, forms of articulation, and practices of second-generation Muslims in Austria—people who were born, raised, and socialized there and who are now developing their own perspectives and inventing their own religiosity. The investigation scrutinizes the attitudes, lifestyles, interactions, and dialogs that have resulted from this process. Studying the empirical findings, diverse strategies are used to show how members of this generation address experiences of discrimination, stigmatization, and exclusion and how they exercise self-determination as they position themselves in their lifeworlds. (Donlic and Yıldız 2022)

A participatory approach was deployed (Chambers 2002; McMurdie et al. 2013; James and Fine 2015; Hurrelmann et al. 2019) to shed light on the religiousness of young people aged 18–22. Young Muslim people in the Alps-Adriatic region were trained as co-researchers to investigate the issues that affect them; interviews were conducted with them, and they evaluated and reflected on the results with the researchers (cf. von Unger 2014). The photovoice participatory method (cf. Wang and Burris 1997; Suprapto et al. 2020; von Unger 2014; Etmanski et al. 2022) was used to explore the young people’s learning and life experiences, including their attitudes toward other faiths, their experience of other faiths’ attitudes toward them, their interactions and encounters with people of other faiths, and also the potential and limitations of participation itself. The interviews were analyzed using phenomenological anecdotal research and reading (Rathgeb et al. 2017; Krenn 2017; Agostini 2016; Rathgeb 2019; Agostini and Peterlini 2022).

In summary, this article investigates how young people move through their lifeworld: how they are both conditioned by it and can act performatively to shape it. It looks into the negotiation, participation, and social positioning that emerge as they do so. The article begins with the genesis of the theory on new-generation Muslim youth and religious practices (Section 2 and Section 3). This theoretical material is followed by an explanation of the methodology used for the empirical study on which this article is based (Section 4) and then by the results (Section 5) and a summary (Section 6). In the empirical section, everyday practices are presented and discussed, using photographs taken by the research subjects and anecdotes as prompts. The young people tell their own stories about how they approach everyday religious practices, highlighting hitherto marginalized perspectives. The article ends with a conclusion and a description of future implications (Section 7).

2. Theoretical Perspectives: New Muslim Generations and Religious Practice

A range of studies were consulted in the preparation of this paper, all of which were conducted in response to criticism of perceptions of the Muslim generation. The studies scrutinized the broad spectrum of lifeworlds of the second and third Muslim generations; people growing up in Austria. One of the first studies on the second generation and Islam in Austria, by Nikola Ornig (2006), mapped young adults’ religious lifeworlds on the basis of the general religious, regional, and national identities that they adopt. Seeking and identifying new ideas, Ornig reported empirical findings ranging from “Islam as a self-evident guiding framework” to “religious convictions that are too traditional and ethnically based” (Ornig 2006, pp. 203–8); “Islamization. Intensive Individual Adoption of Islam”; “Precarious Faith. Between Engagement and Distancing”; “Unbelief—The Alterity of Islam”; and “Issues of (Non)identification with Islam” (Ornig 2006, pp. 212–36). Ornig’s work laid the foundations for an examination of the various ways in which religious, regional, and national identities are formed. Another study, “Muslim Diversity” (Muslimische Diversität) (Aslan et al. 2017), offered a multi-layered insight into the realities of Muslims’ everyday lives. Deploying qualitative analysis (70 interviews) and quantitative analysis (n = 650), the authors investigated approaches to religion and everyday interaction with it that go beyond mosque associations or religious organizations and then offered practical recommendations for action relating to Islam in Austria. They identified and reconstructed a variety of approaches, dividing them into pragmatic religiousness, open religiousness, religiousness as a cultural habit, and residual unaffiliated religiousness. A further influence is “Everyday Lived Islam in Europe” by Dessing (2016), which addresses Muslims’ everyday practices and their manifestations in European ethnographic case studies. The authors pointed out that Muslims’ lifeworlds cannot be reduced to religious practice; they encompass multiple cultural, social, and political dimensions. The study also emphasized that, rather than being a monolithic and homogeneous set of practices, Islam is dynamic; it is constantly transforming and adapting to the contexts in which it finds itself. The authors concluded that Islam in Europe is heterogeneous and diverse and part of a pluralistic society.

Meanwhile, Badawia and Uygun-Altunbaş (2022) concentrated on encounters with religion in the media. Their qualitative, empirical explorations involved interviews with youth group leaders in mosque congregations and religious educational institutions and with leaders of student groups throughout Germany. Exploratory interviews were combined with expert interviews to build their theory. The authors examined how the media affect religiousness in Muslim families and among young Muslims. Focusing on how the family, media, and young Muslims’ approaches to religion interrelate, their paper took as its starting point the transformation of Muslim lifeworlds in Germany in the period following migration. Case studies painted a clear picture of the opportunities and challenges surrounding religious educational opportunities. Luma Issa AlMasarweh added a transnational perspective in her “Religious Fields and Subfields: Transnational Connections, Identities, and Reactive Transnationalism” (AlMasarweh 2022), scrutinizing the relationship between religion and transnationalism and the influence of second-generation religious organizations. The author underscored the discrimination experienced by Muslim Arab Americans after 9/11 and argued that this experience has had an impact on transnationalism. The study was based on 32 semi-structured interviews with Arab immigrants from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. One key insight was that religious organizations such as mosques create transnational social spaces in which the second generation is able to live out its religious affiliation and form transnational identities. Another paper, “Religion, Belonging, and Active Citizenship: A Systematic Review of Literature on Muslim Youth in Australia” (Ozalp and Ćufurović 2021), by Mehmet Ozalp and Mirela Ćufurović, presented an analysis of the literature on Muslim youth in the West and Australia over the two decades since 9/11.The authors grouped their research into three main themes: (1) the impact of terrorism policy and discourse on Muslim youth and their identities; (2) the relationship between religion (Islam) and the civic engagement of young Muslims; and (3) young Muslims as active citizens. One finding from this literature review is that most studies are outdated because young people have since undergone significant change and evolution. The authors point out that factors affecting adolescents in general and external social factors unrelated to Islam have impacted Muslim adolescents. The authors called for research on young people who were born and raised in Australia and who are positively engaged, as well as on the extent to which educational networks influence the formation of identity. They also argued that active civic engagement should be promoted among Muslim youth to encourage positive transformation. Previous studies (Donlic and Yıldız 2022; Donlic 2023) have emphasized the religious lifestyles and orientations of young Muslims descended from immigrant families. In the eyes of their parents’ generation, the religious traditions and practices of new Muslim generations bespeak a more open approach to religion. New generations are not defensive about their religiousness, as their immigrant parents are; their religious practice is more performative and emancipatory. Those involved in the study grew up and attended school in Austria. The results section (Section 4) examines the forms of articulation employed by new Muslim generations in this context.

3. The Road to Inter-Religious Openness

Inter-religiosity is characterized by everyday interactions, dialogs, and encounters between people of different beliefs, which, although taken for granted by new generations, alter their perspectives and cause them to reflect on ways of thinking/attitudes. It also fosters participation at the societal level and promotes acceptance throughout society (Espelage et al. 2021). It explicitly includes encounters and interactions. The studies consulted for the purpose of the present paper showed that religions, religious orientations, and religious practices are themselves in flux: they have become “more ambiguous, contradictory and hybrid” (Yıldız 2020). The present special issue deals with the question of the present and future of inter-religiosity, focusing especially on inter-religious dialog and inter-religious interaction. This contribution draws on Abu-Nimer et al. (2007, pp. 7–8), who defined dialog as a “safe process of interaction to verbally or non-verbally exchange ideas, thoughts, questions, information, and impressions between people from different backgrounds (race, class, gender, culture, religion and so on).”

Religious practices and dialogs have changed from one generation of Muslims to the next. Unlike the first generation, which was more defensive and had to position itself on the fringes of society, new Muslim generations are more on the offensive, compiling a new “genealogy of the present.” They use a variety of means to confront the social conditions in which they grew up, and they are self-determined with regard to their interests and life plans. Dealing with social characteristics ascribed to them by others, they deploy a range of counter-strategies, self-designations, and multiple identities. They resist the imposition of categories from the outside and do not allow themselves to be reduced to religious or other differences. They ‘translate’ their religion, reinterpreting their everyday religious practice in the external world for the benefit of that world (Donlic and Yıldız 2022). This practice too is an aspect of inter-religiosity.

My empirical results show that young people are more confident and proactive about their own religion and use their own experiences as evidence when discussing religion with their friends, whether in shisha bars, in fast food outlets at youth clubs, or at home. These spaces can be understood as ‘in-between spaces’ or ‘Third Spaces.’ In this case, the Third Space should be seen not as a metaphor but rather as a creative and transformative resource for negotiating and articulating interfaith openness, allowing the co-existence of different languages, cultures, and ways of thinking (Schiffauer 2010). In the Third Space (Bhabha 1994), interfaith interactions can include young people of different religions discussing and comparing experiences or Muslims and non-Muslims coming together. The Third Space always includes at least two interlocutors, which fosters dialog (Donlic 2019). Interfaith interactions can range from celebrating festivals together (for example, Christmas, Eid, or the Feast of Sacrifice) to volunteering or discussions about everyday life. Interactions such as these constitute an inter-religious dialog that enables people to come to know each other, listen to each other, and ask questions on religious topics, all of which break down prejudices and stereotypes (Stalov 2007) and promote an understanding of togetherness (Sejdini and Kraml 2020). All these approaches constitute inter-religiosity. This kind of Third Space can be understood as promoting discussion and self-reflexivity. It is a space of translation between people that goes beyond traditional forms of inter-religious dialog: it is a space for inter-religiosity.

4. Methodology

The empirical data in this paper come from the study “Postmuslimische Generation und ihre Praktiken/Artikulationsformen,” which was conducted in 2022. This study was designed as a participatory study using different methods, such as writing rap lyrics, the photovoice method, and anecdotal research. The paper “Rap Texts as a Means and Expression of Postmigrant Self-Constitution” (Rap-Texte als Mittel und Ausdruck einer postmigrantischen Selbstkonstitution, Donlic 2023), which includes self-recorded raps, will be published in the journal ZDfm. The article explores the processes of negotiation, participation, and social positioning that are revealed when young people process experiences from their lives in rap lyrics. The six individuals in the reference group, who were also co-researchers, were involved in writing the research question prior to the evaluation. The methods selected for this analysis were the photovoice method and phenomenological anecdotal research. The photovoice method was chosen as the first step to reveal the participants’ lived experiences. The participants were young people and adolescents of the Muslim faith aged 18–22. The founders of the photovoice method intended it to be used as an arts-based participatory research method (Wang and Burris 1994, p. 179) to proactively empower people to tell their stories (Liebenberg 2022). The goal is a “process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique” (Wang and Burris 1997, p. 369). One of the theoretical sources that Wang and Burris drew on when developing the method was the development of critical awareness (Freire 1970, 1973).

The young people participated as co-researchers in the following steps: (1) planning and preparation; (2) training of co-researchers; (3) in the field phase, taking photographs; (4) reflecting on experiences; (5) evaluation, results, and recommendations for action; (6) publication and use of results; and (7) evaluation (von Unger 2014; Boamah et al. 2022). The young people created drawings or took photographs depicting an experience or memory of a moment of faith, and these images served as discussion stimuli. During the open-ended conversation, the following questions were asked of the reference group: “What do you see in the photos?;” “What affects you?;” and “What bothers you?” The co-researchers described the photographs. Subsequently, the individual who took the photograph explained the experience or story behind the image. This photograph, as a lived experience, served as a prompt for the interview, which covered a range of topics from the young people’s lifeworlds, such as their everyday lives, religious practices, school days, circles of friends, or foods. These topics were noted on colorful cards in the context of a participatory discussion. Then, based on the phenomenological conversations, anecdotes were written down by the researcher. The anecdote method was developed by the educationalist Max van Manen (1997) and introduced in his book Researching Lived Experience. The theory underlying Lived Experience Descriptions (LEDs) was developed by Dilthey, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty. Max van Manen described an anecdote as “a very short and simple story. An anecdote usually relates one incident […] begins close to the central idea, […] includes important concrete detail, […] often contains several quotes, […] closes quickly after the climax,” and “requires [a good] punch line” (van Manen 1999, p. 20). The goal of van Manen’s research was to render lived everyday experiences tangible: “In drawing up personal descriptions of lived experiences, the phenomenologist knows that one’s own experiences are also the possible experiences of others.” (van Manen 1984, p. 54). Van Manen justified the phenomenological research method as follows: “Stories or anecdotes are so powerful, so effective, and so consequential in that they can explain things that resist straightforward explanation or conceptualization. Anecdotes bring things into nearness by contributing to the vividness and presence of an experience” (van Manen 2014, p. 251). In Austria, vignette and anecdote research began at the University of Innsbruck, with the 2009 FWF project “Personale Bildungsprozesse in heterogenen Gruppen” at lower secondary schools known as Neue Mittelschulen (Schratz et al. 2012; Agostini and Peterlini 2022). It was developed further by researchers from Brixen/Bolzano (Baur and Peterlini 2016), Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, and Vienna through the Phenomenological Vignette and Anecdote Research network, extending it from schools to society as a whole. The research network defines an anecdote as a “a noteworthy story in which events with particular impact are put in a nutshell and related to the researcher from remembered experience” (Rathgeb et al. 2017, p. 130). Anecdotes can also be briefly summarized as “short, concise narratives” (Schratz et al. 2012, p. 34). Writing an anecdote involves a five-step sequence that aims to come close to what was experienced: (1) a preparation phase; (2) phenomenologically oriented research interviews; (3) transcription of the interview recording; (4) writing of an initial version; and (5) refinement by the research group through recursive processes based on audio recordings and transcripts (Krenn 2017, p. 214). The special feature of the present research project was that co-researchers were trained in phenomenological anecdote research and helped to validate the anecdotes. The objective in writing anecdotes is to capture what jumped out to the person relating them, especially in phenomenological conversation. This moment may be one that provoked delight, disquiet, upset, or curiosity. Remembered experiences are condensed, leaving out surplus material. The raw anecdotes are validated and refined by the co-researchers considering the following questions. (1) Reading the anecdotes aloud, where do I become stuck? What affects me? What do I recognize? What bothers me? The resulting anecdotes are summarized in the subsequent step: evaluating the reading. In phenomenological anecdote research, resonance reading (Eloff et al. 2023) is designed “to reveal the full, rich spectrum of experience articulated in [anecdotes] and to show as many of its facets as possible” (Schratz et al. 2012, pp. 38f., author’s translation). Resonance reading is understood as a “phenomenologically oriented form of evaluation” (Agostini 2016, p. 77); “different ways of reading emerge through the reflective and productive comprehension of the potential, never fully controllable ambiguity of a text or experience” (Agostini 2016, pp. 79f.; Peterlini et al. 2021). (2) What is revealed to me? What is revealed in the anecdote in the participatory environment? Resonance reading is transformative because, rather than reading between the lines of the text, the readers engage with the text together (Sontag 1966; Peterlini 2020). (3) What can I learn from the anecdote? This means of interpretation involves reading things into and reflecting upon anecdotes. It can thus offer new insights and form the basis for participatory reflection.

5. Results

The young people were able to choose from different participatory methods, such as writing rap lyrics, creating memes, or discussing graffiti art. They opted for the photovoice method. They were introduced to the method by the researcher during a workshop, and the stages in the photovoice method were developed jointly. For this project, I drew upon Suprapto et al. (2020), von Unger (2014), and Etmanski et al. (2022). The task was to take a photograph of everyday religious practices before the next workshop. This open-ended task produced photographs of different experiences, such as a transcultural understanding of religion, experiences of discrimination with the headscarf, and expressions of inter-religious approaches. Different aspects of intersectionality emerged (Lutz 2010; Brah and Phoenix 2004; Carbin and Edenheim 2013), in particular, intersectional categories, such as language, gender/sex, socioeconomic status/educational background, assignment to a linguistic/cultural minority, everyday racism, and religion. This section brings together the four images and the phenomenological anecdotal research that emerged from the participatory setting. The photographs and anecdotes were evaluated with the reference group.

5.1. Anecdote: Samira—A Ramadan Chocolate Calendar, a Really Cool Idea!

Samira is 22 years old and was born in Carinthia, Austria. She attended primary and secondary school there and graduated with the highest upper secondary qualification. She is now in the second semester of a technical mathematics degree in Graz. Her parents fled from Sarajevo to Austria during the Bosnian war. She was raised very religiously by her mother. Religion plays a large role for Samira, and she prays five times per day. Samira has many hobbies. She likes to bake cakes and surprise her family with creative gifts. She likes to travel to Bosnia with her family and spend her vacations there. She loves Bosnian food and the country’s coffee culture. Every day, she watches videos on Instagram and TikTok about Bosnian culture, religion, and spiritual texts and shares the content with her friends. Samira reports that the photograph she has chosen is very important to her. Every year at Ramadan, she says, she decorates a dresser with Muslim pastries. For her, it is a very special moment, when she lives her faith and makes it visible. She also shares that her family invites their neighbors to their home to celebrate Eid together. She notes that her neighbors bring flowers and homemade cakes. She is happy that people accept her religion and are interested in it (Figure 1).

Samira recalls coming across a Ramadan calendar (Figure 1) containing chocolates while shopping. “A Ramadan chocolate calendar is a really cool idea,” Samira observes excitedly. Speaking in a proud tone, she puffs out her chest. “We were all delighted to buy some, because you only ever really know the Advent calendars you got from your parents.” Samira bought the Ramadan chocolate calendar to “support the idea, somehow.” She told everyone around her to buy more to strengthen demand in Austria too, and “then maybe there will be more choice in the future, and it will become more common.” Media coverage of the idea led parents to start making their own Ramadan calendars for their children. Samira tells the story with a smile and leans back: “Then I thought, okay, so it would be a nice idea.” Samira gave her Austrian neighbors a Ramadan calendar “because they’re sort of happy for us, even though the holiday doesn’t mean anything to them.” For Samira, this is a happy event. She is beaming.

5.2. Anecdote: Esmira—Get Rid of That Rag

Esmira is 19 years old and was born in Carinthia. She attended primary and secondary school. She started vocational school but dropped out after two years, and she currently works in the production department of a technology company. Her parents fled to Austria from a small village during the Bosnian war. She has three siblings. She is married and lives with her partner on the Slovenian border. Esmira likes to attend fairs with her friends and enjoys smoking shisha with them. Her hobby is shopping for fashionable clothes. When she turned 18, Esmira decided to wear a headscarf. She is also trying to become an influencer, sharing her story and experiences. Explaining why she chose the photograph (Figure 2), Esmira describes people on the street telling her to take her headscarf off: “Get rid of that rag!” Esmira approaches such people and tries to explain why she wears a headscarf. Many assume that she was not born in Austria, and express surprise that she speaks native German. She approaches people in this way because she has experienced discrimination and exclusion, and things have sometimes been bad for her. However, she feels comfortable wearing the headscarf. She also chose the photograph because she likes going to funfairs.

When asked about her first day wearing her headscarf, Esmira remembers that she cried a lot when she put it on. Esmira works in an information technology company and had not worn a headscarf there before. Esmira describes her first day at work in a shaky voice: “And then when I wore one, people said, ‘Take that off. Or what do you need that for, it’s so hot anyway. What are you doing; you have such beautiful hair.’” She lifts her right hand and straightens her headscarf, adding, “the moment was formative for me.” In a strong voice, she says, “Yes, but if I were to put 10 piercings in my nose right now, no one would ask, ‘Do you really need to?’ or put me down. And I think because there is this racism and a lot of bad things in this world.” So she told herself, “But what’s important is how you feel and whether you accept that yourself.” Her eyes light up.

5.3. Anecdote: Liam—In Deep Talks with Friends We Mostly Talk about Religion

Liam is 19 years old and was born in Carinthia, close to the border with Slovenia. He attended primary and secondary school and, at the time of the project, was completing the third year of an apprenticeship as a retail salesman. He would like to study business law in Vienna after his apprenticeship. His parents fled to Austria from a small village during the Bosnian war. He attended a Koran school until the age of 12, but after that age, he did not want to any longer because his friends had already finished it, so he dropped out. His hobbies are driving, playing football, and meeting friends. Having attended a bilingual school, he speaks Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and Slovenian. Liam chose his photograph to show his attachment to religion. Liam was given this prayer chain by his grandfather, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He and his family fast every Ramadan. Religion has a special role in his everyday life. His Mercedes (Figure 3) also plays an important role in the conversation. In his free time, Liam visits what he calls his “mishmash” friends, meaning friends from different religions. His friends often ask questions about religion and bring it up in a variety of contexts.

Looking back, Liam says that they often discuss different topics and “get into deep discussions.” Then, Liam emphasizes, “mostly religion comes up, and then they really talk for hours about religion, about the different religions.” His gaze wanders upward. He often talks about religious topics with his friends in his free time. Liam thinks for a moment and leans his head on his left hand. In a loud voice, he gives an example: “I think it was six months ago, in winter, at McDonald’s in Villach, we sat and talked about why the Bible and the Koran are so similar in structure and whether there might not be connections, that is, between the religions.” After a brief hesitation, he continues in a bubbly tone, “And yes, so we talk—well me and my friends talk, I would say—a lot about religion.” In a proud tone, Lian affirms, “I explain it to them. And then they say, ‘Oh, okay.’ So my parents told me completely different things about Islam and stuff.”

5.4. Anecdote: Esra—Drink Gin and Tonic and Then Pray at Night … Alhamdulillah That I Live

Esra is 21 years old and was born and raised in Carinthia. She successfully completed primary and secondary school, and evening classes at high school. She currently works as an accountant in a public institution. Esra’s parents fled Bosnia in the 1990s and work in the service sector. Esra tells me that her parents taught her the basics about Islam but have left it up to her to decide how she practices the religion. She visits the gym at five o’clock every morning and often meets her friends in the evening for a glass of wine. Esra grew up multilingual and speaks German, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, English, and Italian fluently. She enjoys traveling with friends to Dubai, New York, and Miami and likes to experience new cultures. Esra chose the picture with the gin and tonic (Figure 4) to show how she lives out her religiosity. Esra says she is religious and a practicing Muslim, which is what her parents taught her. Her passion is going out with friends, drinking alcohol, and going to parties. She finds it liberating to go out after work with her friends, talk with them, and enjoy their company.

When asked what role religion plays in her everyday life, Esra looks up and nods. She explains firmly that she thinks about God in her everyday life and that she says her prayers, especially before going to bed. Sitting up straight and with a broad grin, Esra says in a clear and firm voice: “Normal Muslims who live the faith as it is set down, let’s say—that is, not strictly religiously—didn’t change this; this is what Islam says, as it was taught 100 years ago, as our grandmothers, grandfathers, and so on lived it: for me, these were normal Muslims.” She continues to grin, loudly emphasizing the words “normal Muslims” and adds energetically, “I drink alcohol and actually try not to put the word God in my mouth when I’ve been drinking alcohol.”

6. Resonance Reading on Lived Religious Experience—A Transformation of Everyday Religious Practice

This section describes the approaches to religion and belonging adopted by young Muslims from new generations, based on a reading of the four anecdotes. The second and third Muslim generations are beginning to live more openly and performatively with regard to their everyday religious practices. They cope, participate, negotiate, and express themselves differently, and they are overcoming entrenched ways of thinking (Donlic and Yıldız 2022). In the conversation with Esra, she describes her everyday religious rituals, such as saying a prayer before going to sleep. As Émile Durkheim stated, “rites are the rules of conduct which prescribe how [individuals] should comport [themselves] in the presence of […] sacred objects” (Durkheim 1994, p. 67). Pierre Bourdieu noted that rituals “may have, strictly speaking, neither meaning nor function, other than the function implied in their very existence, and the meaning objectively inscribed in the logic of actions or words that are done or said in order to ‘do or say something’ (when there is ‘nothing else to be done’), or more precisely in the generative structures of which these words or actions are the product” (Bourdieu 1990, p. 18). Esra describes herself as a “normal Muslim,” showing that new Muslim generations define themselves as normal rather than subscribing to the view presented in the media of “us” (the majority society) and “the Muslims” with predominantly negative stereotypes. In the case of Esmira’s headscarf, the German language becomes an inter-religious mediator: Esmira translates her religious practice for others, as well as pursuing it proactively. The example of the Eid celebration in Samira’s photograph shows what inter-religious openness can look like in local neighborhoods. The exchange depicts a generation that has grown up in Austria and is practicing its religion there.

In public discourse in particular, with hybrid behaviors such as drinking alcohol (as seen in Esra’s example), young people are beginning to make small adjustments to their religiousness (Yıldız 2020, p. 23), and these religious orientations and reorientations are accompanied by inter-religious understanding. Someone who drinks alcohol, but adopts the ritual of not drinking before Eid and the Feast of Sacrifice, is demonstrating religious flexibility. New Muslim generations are beginning to set their own rules and negotiate their own access to their religion. Inter-religious dialog is also evident in Liam’s example of talking about religious issues and everyday topics with his friends. Fixed stereotypes about how Muslims live are challenged through communication and everyday experiences, broadening an interfaith education process (Schweitzer 2014; Klinkhammer and Neumaier 2020). Young people meet in places where they can discuss issues without a pre-set hierarchy. The headscarf is generally discussed in public discourse as being perceived “negatively.” Wearing the headscarf in the professional world and in everyday life often provokes discrimination and racism, as Esmira’s example shows. Young women are starting to resist and discuss cultural stereotypes and to develop their own strategies. Esmira’s experience shows that the way she wears and ties the headscarf can also create a stir. As bell hooks (1989) explained, speaking about such experiences can be seen as an empowering act. Samira’s Advent calendar, meanwhile, indicates that new Muslim generations have a transcultural understanding of time. This appropriation and transcoding (Hall 1994) into a Ramadan calendar can be understood as inter-religious education (Yıldız 2020, p. 24), emerging as “historical normality, uncovering other experiences and forms of knowledge, telling other stories” (Yıldız 2020, p. 24).

The locations referred to in all the above examples can be seen as Third Spaces. Third Spaces can be anywhere: at fairs, at home with neighbors, fast food outlets, or even in bars. They are creative and transformative resources that foster the negotiation and articulation of inter-religious openness by allowing for different languages, cultures, and ways of thinking.

7. Conclusions and Discussion

The focus of this contribution is to explore the everyday religious practices of young people in the Alps-Adriatic region by means of a participatory approach. The aim was not to research about young people but with them. Using the photovoice method, they were empowered to take photographs and thus illustrate how they address notions, ideas, and perspectives on religiousness and everyday practices. Discussions with co-researchers on questions such as “What do you see in the photo? What is shown in the photo? What is upsetting in the photo?” led to new creative perspectives on religions, everyday religious practices, and inter-religious interactions. The phenomenological approach, using anecdotal and participatory research alongside the photovoice method, revealed that these everyday religious practices and shared experiences are an example of “co-experienced diversity.” New Muslim generations are developing a hybrid form of religiousness and everyday religious practices by combining and transforming different elements for themselves depending on their situation. Young people’s beliefs and religion are in constant flux as they grow up, socialize and live out their religiousness in a variety of ways in the Alps-Adriatic region. The Alps-Adriatic region is characterized by multi-native links, cultural interconnections, multilingualism, and religious diversity. The findings show that one major aspect of that diversity is inter-religious dialog: young people talking with friends about religious topics, breaking down cultural stereotypes, and dissolving the rigid boundaries between religions. The articulation and translation of everyday issues can be seen as inter-religious education because new Muslim generations use that articulation and translation to proactively address religious issues, everyday issues, and experiences of discrimination, as the above empirical findings show. Inter-religiosity can also mean a person repeatedly re-negotiating his or her own religiosity through everyday interaction with others. From that point of view, a person’s own religiosity could thus be seen as inter-religious. Religious faith is never unambivalent: interaction with others makes it multivalent. That multivalence is the result of everyday communication, which is always implicitly inter-religious. In this context, inter-religiosity means that religiosity is never unambivalent: it is always ambivalent and “in-between.” Inter-religiosity is part of what distinguishes new Muslim generations from their forebears. New generations resist categories imposed on them from outside and do not allow themselves to be reduced to religious or other differences. The empirical results showed that there is not one single, unique form of religiousness: they revealed hybrid everyday practices and life plans, plural affiliations, interconnections, overlaps, and inter-religious encounters (Donlic and Yıldız 2022). Such everyday practices can be summarized under the umbrella concept of religious transtopias (Yıldız 2013, p. 177). They include spaces that connect transcultural religious elements and condense them into positioning and everyday practices. Seen from this perspective, religiousness is an everyday, multi-layered process of translation. The participatory and phenomenologically oriented findings of this study reflect religiousness, question fixed cultural stereotypes, and help to develop counterstrategies.