Transmission and Transformation of Religion Among Muslims in Canada and West Germany

Abstract

In many countries across the Western world, religion is in decline, with public secular environments increasingly outweighing family-based religious socialization. Canada and West Germany exemplify this trend, where younger generations often perceive religion as something to be justified within predominantly nonreligious peer groups. Muslims, as a religious minority, display greater resilience to secularization, yet their religiosity is also subject to transformation. Drawing on narrative family interviews spanning two to three generations, this study examines the conditions shaping religious continuity and discontinuity within Muslim families in Canada and West Germany. Focusing on second- and third-generation Muslims, we find that practicing religion with children is the most significant factor in successful transmission, especially when rituals are woven into daily life. Yet family practice alone is insufficient: embedding children in faith-based community networks and fostering open dialogue about religion prove crucial for sustaining confidence, belonging, and adaptability. Religious transmission also intersects with ethnic and cultural identity, though ethnic ties alone do not guarantee continuity. Ultimately, we observe that transmission involves transformation: parents are changing the way they approach religion, placing a greater emphasis on their children making their own choices. Muslim families, like other faith communities, shift toward more individualized and reflective forms of religiosity, negotiating their identities within secular and often critical societal contexts.

1. Introduction

Many countries across the Western world are noticing a declining trend of religion in their societies, with many adopting nonreligious outlooks. Canada and West Germany are no exception. This trend is reflected in the decreasing attempts to transmit religion within families, where the influence of public secular environments outweighs religious socialization. Religion, particularly for younger generations, increasingly becomes something to be justified or defended, especially as they find themselves in the minority among nonreligious peers.

Both Canada and West Germany have experienced long-term trends of religious decline, particularly among the native-born population. In each context, younger generations are increasingly raised without religious socialization, and practices such as prayer, regular service attendance, and family-based rituals have steadily declined across cohorts (Müller et al. 2025, pp. 294, 304). In West Germany, around 25% of the population is non-affiliated while in East-Germany that number increases to 73% (GESIS (Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften) 2019). In Canada, approximately 35% of the population is non-affiliated—more than double what it was two decades ago (16.5%) (Government of Canada, Statistics Canada 2022). In a representative survey conducted by our project in 2021, we found that approximately 40% of Canadians and in Germany 26% in the West and 71% in the East identified as non-religious. Not surprisingly, non-religious affiliation is highest amongst the Millennial generation. According to the same survey, 55% of young Canadians identify as non-religious (Beyer and Legault-Leclair 2025, pp. 136–37). In West Germany, while 71% of those born before 1948 were raised religiously, only 54% of those born between 1985 and 2003 reported the same (Gärtner et al. 2025, p. 51).

Muslims, like other religious minorities, appear to be more resilient to this declining trend. While migration has contributed to the growth of Muslims, Muslims born in Canada and Germany tend to retain their religion at higher rates compared to non-Muslim populations (Beyer and Legault-Leclair 2025, pp. 147–48; Gärtner et al. 2025, p. 66). Research suggests that religiously conservative families and immigrant families are more likely to be successful in transmitting their religion in secular contexts (Güngör et al. 2011; Smith 2021). Here, religion appears to become deeply intertwined with identity, culture, and ethnicity. At the same time, critical political, media, and social discourses about Islam and Muslims in both countries significantly impact Muslim identity and experience (Cummins 2022; Kunst et al. 2012; Zine 2022), often prompting Muslims to find meaning and comfort in their faith amidst adversity and to seek solace within Muslim enclaves.

With these contexts in mind, our paper is interested in examining the following:

• What factors most significantly contribute to successful intergenerational transmission of religion in Muslim families? Do Muslims differ from other faith communities? If so, how?
• How do ethnic and cultural identities shape the transmission of Muslim religious practices, values, and beliefs?
• In what ways does the broader societal context impact religious transmission and transformation?
• How does religiosity—or the form and expression of religion—change across generations?

This study uses narrative family interviews across two to three generations to explore how religious transmission occurs within Muslim families in Canada and West Germany.1 Muslims come from a diverse array of theological and cultural backgrounds and experiences, which ultimately impacts religious identity, practice, and expression. We pay particular attention to second- and third-generation Muslims—those born in either country—and examine the roles of context, family, and community in shaping their Muslim identity and religiosity. Our findings reveal a complex dynamic: while secularization trends affect Muslim families in our sample, critical discourses around immigrants, Islam, and Muslims compel our interlocutors to negotiate and reconcile their cultural and religious identities in their secular locales. Through this process, we observe a transformation of religion and transformation of transmission across generations.

This paper explores the conditions that influence the continuity and discontinuity of Muslim religiosity in Canada and West Germany, highlighting both differences and similarities between the two contexts and wider participant samples. We begin by examining the literature on religious transmission in families, and within immigrant families in particular. We then highlight the societal contexts in Germany and Canada, pointing to their similarities and differences. In the analysis sections, we present the results of our study beginning with religious transformations across contexts and generations. Next, we investigate the factors that nurture and facilitate religious transmission among Canadian and German Muslims in our sample. A separate section will be dedicated to the roles of subcultural networks and communities in nurturing religious identity and continuity across transitions. Finally, we conclude with a comparative reflection on our results.

2. Transmission and Transformation Through a Theoretical Lens

The transmission of religious beliefs, values, and practices is most commonly shaped by family socialization (Bengtson et al. 2013; Smith and Snell 2009; Zehnder Grob et al. 2009). Families pass on religion through daily practices, shared values, and the emotional bonds between generations (Gärtner et al. 2025). However, they do not operate in a vacuum—families are embedded within broader institutional and societal frameworks. Bengtson et al.’s (2013) theory of ‘intergenerational religious momentum’ emphasizes the combined role of parent–child relationships, religious organizations, peer groups, schools, and cultural shifts in shaping how religion is transmitted or transformed across generations.

2.1. Generations as Carriers of Change

Transmission is not only familial but generational in a historical sense. Drawing on Karl Mannheim (1964), we understand each generation as shaped by distinct cultural, political, and social environments. Grandparents, parents, and children belong to a lineage (Kohli and Szydlik 2000, p. 11), yet each generation responds differently to their time’s moral and social crises (Gärtner 2016). This dual belonging—to both a family and a historical generation—explains why transmission is rarely linear or static.

Following Bengtson et al. (2013) and Wohlrab-Sahr et al. (2009), we use a multi-generational approach to examine how transmission unfolds at the intersection of family dynamics and broader societal shifts.

2.2. Transmission as Negotiation, Not Inheritance

Religious transmission is not a simple, top-down handoff of values, beliefs, and practices. It involves active negotiation within families—processes shaped by shared family identity (Radicke 2014), personal experiences, and generational reinterpretation and negotiation. As Rosenthal (2000) argues, transmission and transformation are intertwined: the act of negotiating religion reshapes it.

Each generation selectively affirms or distances itself from the family’s religious frame, especially as broader cultural shifts enter family life through school, media, and peer groups. The result is a family-specific adaptation of religion, filtered through both shared identity and personal agency.

2.3. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood

Adolescence is a pivotal stage in religious identity formation. In this developmental phase, young people form foundational moral convictions and action patterns (Gärtner 2016, p. 295). It is a period marked by individuation, peer influence, and exposure to broader cultural values that often challenge inherited religious norms (Gärtner and Hennig 2022; Nynäs et al. 2022; Smith and Denton 2005). It is also a phase when religiosity often declines (Malone 2023; Stanford et al. 2023; Thiessen and Wilkins-Laflamme 2017; Uecker et al. 2007).

Emerging adulthood—typically spanning the late teens through the twenties—extends this process into a life stage characterized by exploration, instability, and identity negotiation. In contemporary Western societies, this period unfolds in a shared socio-cultural context marked by the digital age, precarious work, growing pluralism, extreme individualism, environmental crisis, advanced urbanism, and expanded higher education (Wilkins-Laflamme 2023). Unlike adolescence, emerging adulthood often involves significant autonomy from parental oversight, creating both opportunities and challenges for religious and cultural retention.

Turning points—critical moments of transition or redirection—frequently occur during emerging adulthood, signalling shifts in roles, perspectives, or self-understanding, including religious ties (Fiori et al. 2004). Common examples include entering university or college, starting a new job, moving away from home, forming or ending romantic relationships, international travel, becoming a parent, experiencing a mental health crisis or breakthrough, or coping with the illness or death of a loved one (Barry and Abo-Zena 2014).

The Young Adults and Religion in a Global Perspective (YARG) study shows that young people actively reinterpret and personalize religious experiences across varied contexts and at critical turning points (Klingenberg and Sjö 2019). This underscores the agency of adolescents and young adults in shaping their religious paths.

2.4. Generativity, Choice, and Changing Parent–Child Relationships

Intergenerational relationships are central to how religion is negotiated within families. King (2002) describes this in terms of ‘generativity’—the parental capacity to balance guidance with respect for autonomy—allowing children to make religion “their own” and supporting what Christel Manning (2015) calls the “narrative of choice.” Rather than imposing conformity, parents increasingly emphasize independence, intimacy, and emotional openness (Bengtson et al. 2013; Gärtner 2016). This more liberal approach to parenting encourages children to engage personally with religion—reinterpreting, selectively retaining, or even rejecting inherited traditions (Cummins and Beyer, forthcoming; Gärtner et al. 2025; Nunner-Winkler 2001; Pickel 2022). While such personalization can deepen commitment, it also creates space for disaffiliation, particularly when communal or familial supports for continuity are weak.

2.5. Closeness, Autonomy, and the Ambiguity of Transmission

While high-quality family relationships are generally associated with stronger religious continuity (Bengtson et al. 2013; Day et al. 2009; Spilman et al. 2013; Pratt et al. 2008), this connection is complex. Silverstein and Bengtson (1997) point to the affinity dimension of closeness—that is, the sense that religion operates within a broader framework of familial solidarity, agreement, or shared identity—which can both support and complicate transmission.

Children who feel close to their parents may be more likely to adopt their religious values—but this closeness can also empower them to reinterpret or reject aspects of their religious heritage. In some cases, maintaining family harmony takes precedence over enforcing religious conformity (Beyer and Legault-Leclair 2025). Thus, family closeness supports negotiation as much as transmission.

In the following section, we situate our study within the broader literature on transmission among religious minorities, highlighting key findings, ongoing debates, and gaps in current scholarship.

3. Transmission Among Religious Minorities—State of the Art

While religious socialization has declined across generations in many contexts, families with a migration background and ties to minority religions often show higher rates of religious transmission (Baumann and Nagel 2023; Bramanti et al. 2020; Fleischmann and Phalet 2012; Jacob 2020; Maliepaard and Lubbers 2013). In Canada, Muslim families show more resilience in maintaining religious continuity than their Christian counterparts (Beyer and Legault-Leclair 2025).

3.1. Key Factors in Muslim Religious Transmission

Studies on Muslim families show that common predictors of successful transmission include consistent and intentional religious socialization and practice, such as attending the mosque regularly, enrolling children in Qur’an classes, and community-based religious instruction (Fleischmann and Phalet 2012; Güngör et al. 2011; Maliepaard and Lubbers 2013). Further, social cohesion within migrant communities and strong community networks also play key roles in nurturing religious identity (Voas and Fleischmann 2012). For religious minorities, the community often becomes a vital support structure for continuity.

3.2. Interwoven Identities: Religion, Culture, and Ethnicity

In minority and immigrant contexts, religion often operates not merely as a set of beliefs or personal convictions but as an integral strand in the fabric of shared ethnic and cultural identity—carrying shared histories, collective memories, and moral frameworks that bind communities together (Foner and Alba 2008; Levitt 2003; Molteni and Dimitriadis 2021). For many Muslim families in North America and Europe, religious rituals, symbols, and intergenerational storytelling become vehicles for transmitting not only faith but also language, heritage, and cultural pride (Bramanti et al. 2020; Jacob 2020; Phalet et al. 2013).

Religious institutions often double as sites of cultural preservation, where language, norms, and heritage are passed down (Ebaugh 2003). Family networks, kinship ties, and close friendships extend these spaces into everyday life, ensuring that religion, culture, and ethnicity function as overlapping and mutually reinforcing systems of belonging (Dashefsky et al. 2003; Putney et al. 2013).

3.3. Community Support and the Experience of ‘Otherness’

Community and subcultural networks often buffer individuals from secular pressures (Berger 1967). Places of worship, cultural centers, and social institutions can help support religious continuity across life stages (Bengtson et al. 2013; Cummins and Beyer, forthcoming).

For racialized and historically persecuted communities, this communal belonging is reinforced by shared religious and ethnic consciousness (Putney et al. 2013). Experiences of discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice can deepen feelings of ‘otherness’ and lead to stronger identification with the in-group (Kramer 2016). With the rise in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment, this context can inadvertently create an environment of isolation and seclusion, leading to stronger affiliation with one’s in-group.

3.4. Transmission as Transformation

As discussed earlier, transmission is not static or one-directional—it involves negotiation, reinterpretation, and adaptation. Shifting parenting trends are also evident amongst minority parents. Parenting practices among religious minorities increasingly reflect conscious decisions about how to balance religious values with secular societal norms that prioritize autonomy and integration (Bossi and Marroccoli 2022; Karam 2020; Miglietta et al. 2024). Parents may seek to pass on their faith while also preparing children for life in liberal, multicultural societies.

Second-generation Muslims often renegotiate religion in light of broader cultural shifts—such as, but not limited to, gender norms or sexual liberalism (Karim 2024)—adopting a more selective or individualized relationship to tradition (S. M. Abu-Laban 1991; Beyer 2013; Donlic and Yıldız 2024; Jacob 2020; Ramji 2013). This personalization can influence how and whether religion is subsequently passed on to the next generation.

Yet variation within the second generation remains significant. As Voas and Fleischmann (2012) note, some become more secular while others adopt more devout, yet often distinct, forms of religiosity—sometimes critiquing their parents’ limited religious knowledge.

Understanding the dynamics of intergenerational religious transmission within Muslim communities thus requires us to consider not only family practices and shifting parental strategies but also the broader socio-political conditions in which these families live. Community networks, societal pressures, experiences of exclusion, and the changing salience of religion in public discourse all shape how religious identity is maintained, negotiated, or transformed over time. These complexities become especially salient for religious minorities navigating integration, belonging, and recognition in secular or Christian-majority societies.

4. Similarities and Differences Between the West German and Canadian Contexts

While both Germany and Canada are secular and increasingly multicultural contexts with sizable Muslim populations, their religious landscapes, migration histories, and national approaches to diversity differ significantly. Within each context, Muslims are not a homogeneous group, but a diverse population encompassing multiple ethnic, cultural, and religious affiliations. Some individuals and communities experience an additional “double minority” status due to their specific traditions, schools of thought, or identity labels. In Germany, structural integration is hindered by legal disadvantages, limited institutional recognition, and a narrower conception of national belonging. In Canada, official multiculturalism offers a more inclusive framework, yet systemic discrimination—particularly in Quebec—continues to affect the public perception and lived experience of Muslim communities. Despite this diversity, Germany’s Muslim population is more strongly associated with a single national origin group (Turkish), whereas Canada’s Muslim population is notably more heterogenous in terms of religious tradition, ethnicity, culture, and language. Muslim communities in both Germany and Canada face common challenges: marginalization, rising Islamophobia and hate related crimes, and constrained institutional support. Intergenerational religious transmission in these settings occurs within broader narratives of exclusion, negotiation, and resistance, shaped by both the internal diversity of Muslim traditions and the external pressures of the surrounding society.

4.1. West Germany: From Guest Worker Assumptions to Religious Pluralism

Our focus is on West Germany because the growing religious diversity in Germany, of which Muslims form a significant part, is largely the result of immigration to West Germany after the 1970s. Smaller Christian and non-Christian religious communities now make up around 8% of the population in the west of the country, compared to just 1.5% in the east (GESIS (Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften) 2019). Today, West Germany reflects an almost equal distribution between Catholics (34%) and Protestants (32.5%), with a growing proportion of non-affiliated individuals (25%) (GESIS (Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften) 2019).

The growth of Muslims in Germany is tied closely to postwar labor migration. Although there were only around 1000 Muslims at the start of the 20th century, numbers rose significantly after labor agreements with Turkey (1961), Morocco (1963), Tunisia (1965), the former Yugoslavia (1968), and other countries. For decades, Germany operated under the assumption that these “guest workers” would return home. Nevertheless, by the 1980s, most had settled permanently. Migration induced by war, such as that from the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq since 2015, has also contributed to the growth and diversification of the Muslim population. Today, Muslims represent 6.4–6.7% of the population, or roughly 5.3–5.6 million people (Pfündel et al. 2021).

Most Muslims in Germany are of Turkish origin (45.1%), followed by those from the Middle East and Southeast Europe (19.2% each). The majority are Sunni (74%), with Alevi (8%) and Shi‘i (4%) minorities (Pfündel et al. 2021, pp. 42, 46). These communities are highly decentralized, with over 2600 local organizations, many rooted in migrant associations aimed at preserving cultural and religious identity. Today, around 90% of mosque communities are organized into supra-regional community associations (Sauer et al. 2023, p. 51).

Despite their numbers, Muslim communities in Germany face significant legal and institutional barriers. Unlike the Protestant and Catholic churches, which enjoy public legal status and tax-based funding, Muslim organizations lack centralized representation and receive no equivalent state support (Phalet et al. 2013, p. 129). As a result, they rely heavily on local resources and volunteerism.

Islam’s public image has deteriorated since 9/11. Islamophobia is widespread, with polls showing that nearly half of Germans view Islam as a threat (BMI (Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat) 2023, p. 50). Muslims are excluded from the national narrative and negative and harmful stereotypes continue to dominate public discourse (Foroutan 2017). Anti-Muslim hate crimes are now tracked separately: in 2017, there were 238 attacks on mosques; in 2019, 184 cases involving religious institutions were recorded—though underreporting is likely (BMI (Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat) 2023, pp. 64–70). Muslim youth, particularly digital natives, must navigate both public discrimination and the constant circulation of negative portrayals of Islam and Muslims online (Donlic and Yıldız 2024). Responses within Muslim communities vary, from defensive identity reinforcement to efforts at civic integration and image repair (Holtz et al. 2013; Peek 2005).

4.2. Canada: Settler Colonialism, Multiculturalism, and Growing Diversity

Canada’s religious landscape is shaped by a distinct historical trajectory. As a settler colonial state, Canada was built on the displacement of Indigenous peoples and the imposition of Euro-Christian norms through institutions such as the residential school system. While Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations dominated early Canadian religious life, this colonial legacy continues to shape both Indigenous-settler relations and public attitudes toward religion and religious others today.

Over the past two decades, the religious composition of Canada has shifted markedly. By 2021, just over half of Canadians (53.3%) identified as Christian—down from 77.1% in 2001. During the same period, the proportion of Canadians identifying as Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh more than doubled, rising from 2.0% to 4.9% for Muslims, 1.0% to 2.3% for Hindus, and 0.9% to 2.1% for Sikhs (Government of Canada, Statistics Canada 2022). Together, these demographic shifts reflect both the growing religious diversity of Canadian society and the increasingly multicultural context in which religious identities are formed and expressed.

Muslim presence in Canada dates back to at least 1871, when just 13 individuals—mainly Turkish and Syrian—were recorded in the census (B. Abu-Laban 1983). Immigration remained racially selective until the mid-20th century, and it was only after the abolition of race-based immigration policies in the 1960s and the introduction of refugee recognition in 1978 that the Muslim population began to grow significantly (McDonough and Hoodfar 2009). From the 1970s onward, Muslim migrants from South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East settled in Canada, often fleeing conflict, political instability, or seeking educational and economic opportunities. The community doubled in size each decade and by 2021 reached approximately 1.8 million, representing 4.9% of the Canadian population (Government of Canada, Statistics Canada 2022).

Canadian Muslim communities are highly diverse in ethnicity, culture, language, theology, and practice. Traditions represented include Sunni, Salafi, Sufi, Twelver Shi‘i, Ismaili, and Ahmadi interpretations of Islam. Among these, the Shi‘i Ismaili community offers a vivid example of how global events and migration patterns have shaped religious landscapes in Canada. Following the expulsion of Asians from Uganda and broader Africanization movements in East Africa in the 1970s, many Ismailis resettled in Canada as part of government-sponsored refugee programs. This marked Canada’s first large-scale resettlement of non-European and predominantly non-Christian refugees in the postwar era, a landmark event that critically influenced the creation of the more inclusive 1976 Immigration Act (Cummins 2021, pp. 83–84). Subsequent migrations from South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and other parts of Africa have further contributed to the internal diversity of the Canadian Ismaili population (McDonough and Hoodfar 2009). The community is now estimated to be more than 80,000 (Cummins 2022).

While Canada promotes an official discourse of multiculturalism, public attitudes toward Islam remain ambivalent. A 2023 Angus Reid survey found that 39% of Canadians outside Quebec and 52% inside Quebec hold unfavorable views of Islam (Korzinski 2023). These sentiments are reflected in the growing number of hate crimes and exclusionary legislation such as Quebec’s Bill 21, which bans public servants from wearing religious symbols—disproportionately affecting Muslim women who veil.2

Such normalization of Islamophobia has had tangible, often devastating, consequences. Canada has witnessed a troubling rise in hate crimes against Muslims in recent years (Minister of Canadian Heritage 2024), including the tragic Quebec City Mosque shooting (2017) and the vehicular attack on a Muslim family in London, Ontario (2021). In 2023, the federal government created the position of Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia to advise on strategies to address anti-Muslim hate and racism. These realities deeply affect how Muslims in Canada experience and express their faith, influencing everything from public religious visibility to intergenerational transmission of belief and practice.

5. Data Collection and Analysis

Our data are drawn from the qualitative component of the research project, The Transmission of Religion Across Generations: A Comparative International Study of Continuities and Discontinuities in Family Socialization. We conducted 16 in-depth interviews with families in Germany and 16 with families in Canada. We intended to select the families according to contrasting criteria, focusing on different religious affiliations and the religious-cultural contexts in both countries, with the aim of achieving a diverse sample. In Canada, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent health restrictions, we accepted those with similar demographics and religious affiliations.

All family interviews were conducted between October 2019 and September 2021. To enhance clarity regarding the generational distinctions used in this study, we define these terms in

Table 1. Terms and Definitions.

Term	Definition
Familial Generations
	G1 (Grandparent Generation)	Refers to the oldest generation interviewed, corresponding to grandparents.
	G2 (Parent Generation)	Refers to the middle generation interviewed, corresponding to parents.
	G3 (Child Generation)	Refers to the youngest generation interviewed, corresponding to children.
Migrant Generations
	First or 1st Generation	Refers to the migrant generation, individuals born in their country of origin who later migrated to the new context (Canada or West Germany).
	1.5 Generation	Refers to those who migrated to the new context (Canada or West Germany) before the age of 12.
	Second or 2nd Generation	Refers to those born in the new context (Canada or West Germany).
	Third or 3rd Generation	Refers to individuals born in the new context (Canada or West Germany) to parents who are themselves second generation.

.

Each interview involved members from two to three generations (grandparents, parents, and children). Interviews were sometimes conducted with all generations present, and sometimes separately—depending on participant preference and availability. We opened every interview with the same prompt:

We are interested in how you have passed on from one generation to the next values, beliefs, and what is important to you in general, and in what has changed in the process over time. Can you tell us a bit about the role religion played, if any, in your family?

Following the interviews, we collected demographic data over five generations (including births, educational trajectories, career decisions, marriage, divorce, migration, deaths, religious orientation and change, and special life events) to create a genogram (family tree) for each family (Bengtson et al. 2013, p. 14; Hildenbrand 2007). All interviews were transcribed and anonymized before being analyzed by our research group using the method of Objective Hermeneutics, which is a line-by-line analysis (Oevermann 2000).

This article draws specifically on a subsample of families who identify as Muslim–whether religiously, culturally, or both—but discussed in relation to the greater interview sample, where both religious and non-religious identities were captured. In Germany, we interviewed four Muslim families with different ethnic backgrounds (F7, F12, F-T2, F-T3). We interviewed three family branches of one Muslim family (F12) from Palestine that migrated to Germany in the early 1960s, and another family (F7) in which both the grandparental and parental generations converted to Islam, lending the youngest generation raised in the Muslim faith. We have interviewed two generations (G2 and G3) in each of two Turkish families with migrations to Germany in the 1960s/1970s.3 In Canada, we interviewed four Muslim families (F4, F11, F11.5, F13), all of whom trace their roots to East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, or a combination). Family 4 was the only family where we had three generations present and Families 11 and 11.5 are joined through marriage in G3 (see

Table 2. Interviewed family members and birth data.

Family Identifier	G1	G2	G3
Canada
F4	Shabuddin b. 1941	Aliya b. 1963	Khalil b. 2000
	Born in Uganda	Born in Canada	Born in Canada
	Immigrated in 1972
F11		Shamim b. 1957 Born in Kenya	Shazya b. 1984 Born in Canada
		Immigrated in 1977	Married to Rahim
F11.5		Rasul b. 1951 Born in Tanzania Immigrated in 1979	Rahim b. 1985 Born in Canada Married to Shazya Rizwan b. 1986 Born in Canada
F13		Begum b. 1957	Rayna b. 1993
		Born in Tanzania	Born in Canada
		Immigrated in 1972
Germany
F7	Jana b. 1939	Aisha b. 1966	Omar b. 1995
	Born in Germany	Born in Germany	Born in Germany
	Converted to Islam in 1978	Converted to Islam in 1991
F12	Leila b. 1944	Amina b. 1967	Sara b. 1989
	Born in Palestine	Born in Palestine	Born in Germany
	Immigrated in 1968	Immigrated in 1968	Zainab b. 1998 Born in Germany
		Saida b. 1969 Born in Germany	Rana b. 1989 Born in Germany
		Safia b. 1978 Born in Germany	Shaima b. 2003 Born in Germany
F-T2		Murat b. 1961	Emre b. 1992
		Born in Turkey	Born in Germany
		Immigrated in 1971
F-T3		Fatma b. 1975	Osan b. 2001
		Born in Germany	Born in Germany

). All of these families migrated to Canada during the 1970s, driven by political or economic instability in the context of Africanization and post-independence movements. They all belong to the Shi’i Imami Nizari Ismaili Muslim4 tradition (henceforth, Ismaili). While this sample is necessarily limited in scope and does not represent the full diversity of Muslim populations in Canada or Germany, it offers detailed insight into how ethnicity, culture, migration experiences, and internal diversity within Muslim traditions intersect to shape processes of religious continuity and transformation.

Our research design allows us to explore the intersection of familial and historical generations. The youngest generation in our sample is born between 1984 and 2003, allowing us to explore a longer developmental span and processes across two- to three generations compared to previous studies in which the younger generation was born between 1973 and 1987 (time of the survey: 1998–2002; Maliepaard and Lubbers 2013) or between 1972 and 1990 (time of the survey: 2007–2008; Güngör et al. 2011, p. 1361). This enables us to examine how the post-9/11 context and biographical turning points—such as relocation, higher education, or starting a family—affect religious continuity, and how 1.5 and 2nd generation Muslims, in turn, raise their own children.

6. Religious Transformation

In the following section we begin presenting our results by focusing on transformation that unfolds on multiple levels. In Muslim families with migration histories, migration itself marks a radical shift in social context, often disrupting the structural supports that sustain religious identity and practice. In both Canada and Germany, broader cultural changes—especially rising secularism and liberal shifts in general and in parenting in particular—also affect how religion is transmitted across generations. These shifts have led many second- and third-generation Muslims to develop new, context-specific ways of being Muslim, as they navigate the intersection of inherited traditions and contemporary realities.

6.1. From One Context to Another

For many Muslim immigrants, entering societies with Christian legacies introduces an immediate and often disorienting shift in religious experience. In their countries of origin, religion is typically embedded in public life, shaping daily rhythms and cultural norms. In contrast, their new environments offer fewer institutional or societal supports for religious practice, requiring families and individuals to negotiate, innovate, and adapt.

Take, for example, East African Ismailis. In places like Uganda, Tanzania, or Kenya, attending jamatkhana5 daily with family and friends was common. These spaces were centrally located within religious communities and integrated into daily life. After migration to Canada, however, jamatkhanas were no longer geographically central and attendance often dropped to weekly. The dispersed nature of the community in Canada required more intentional and personal efforts to maintain religious practice, shifting the burden of religious socialization more heavily onto the family.

In Turkey, the primary country of origin for many Muslims in Germany, the situation differs somewhat. Following the rise in Kemalist secularism, public religious practice declined significantly in many urban areas. For example, in one Turkish family (F-T2), only the great-grandparents regularly prayed; religious practice had already waned by the grandparent generation (G1). In another family (F-T3), the grandparents were raised in a Western-oriented, secular urban context and were not socialized religiously at all. These cases highlight how differing trajectories of religiosity in the country of origin—shaped by factors such as colonial histories, state secularism, or rural–urban divides—affect how cultural and religious identity are reshaped after migration.

Often, communal spaces did not exist immediately in the early settlement contexts and had to be established. Ismailis in Canada, for example, initially met in homes or rented school and office spaces until purpose-built jamatkhanas emerged in the 1980s. Some even attended Friday prayers at mosques with other Muslims (Nanji 1983). While there is nothing preventing Ismailis from congregating with other Muslims for festivals and prayers, it is only within jamatkhana space that Ismailis can fully observe the unique traditions of their tariqa6.

In smaller towns, Ismailis who had immigrated in the 1970s, sometimes travelled to larger cities to participate in important religious festivals. Rasul (F11.5G2) and other local Ismailis would gather in a home for prayers and make long journeys together to attend major religious festivals in larger cities. Shamim (F11G2) described taking long bus rides in traditional South Asian attire—which was impractical in Canadian winters—just to attend jamatkhana services. Despite the hardships, she insisted that being in the jamatkhana was worth it due to the cultural familiarity it offered: “We didn’t have to explain ourselves, everybody understood what we were saying without all the explanations that go with it… [jamat]khana was our link to our old life.” The jamatkhana space was also where she would meet and later marry her husband.

Born in rural Palestine in the 1930s, Leila’s husband Abdul (F12G1) was not particularly religious in Palestine or Kuwait, where he worked in the 1950s, nor immediately after migrating to Germany in the early 1960s. However, a personal crisis at the end of his career, triggered by unemployment, led him to turn toward Islam. His renewed religiosity inspired him to establish the first mosque in his region in the early 1980s. This mosque became a space where he found community, meaning, and purpose. Leila became involved in mosque activities, and their daughters—Amina (b. 1967), Saida (b. 1969), and Safia (b. 1978)—received religious education there. This mosque became not only a site of worship but a vital socializing agent for youth in an otherwise secular environment—an important theme we will revisit later.

Taken together, these examples show how religious spaces helped first- and 1.5-generation migrants exchange social and cultural capital, build community, and maintain a sense of religious and cultural continuity. Despite differing levels of religious observance in their countries of origin, disruption of familiar social and cultural contexts in the host countries brought questions of religious identity and practice to the forefront.

6.2. Parenting Shifts: Giving Children Freedom of Choice

The change and decline in religious practice among many migrants illustrate how non-Muslim contexts can hinder the continuity of religious observance and the intergenerational transmission of faith. For many first-generation Muslim migrants, the desire to preserve their heritage led to intentional efforts to pass on religion and culture to their children—often through consistent and deliberate socialization, especially when religion was central to family life.

In contrast, broader societal trends—especially in increasingly secular settings—have influenced how parents of various faiths, including Christians in majority contexts, approach religious transmission. Since the 1990s and 2000s, parents have had to consciously decide whether and how to pass on their faith, as external cultural reinforcement of religion has weakened. This shift coincides with broader liberalizing parenting styles and places parents in the position of actively negotiating their stance vis-à-vis dominant secular and liberal norms. One major transformation in this context is the growing emphasis on children’s freedom and autonomy in matters of religion.

Among our Muslim families, this parenting trend is evident as well—though outcomes differ somewhat. Religious discontinuity is less common, and even when children step back from formal practice, cultural or ethnic identity often remains strong. Still, this freedom of choice can conflict with the deep parental desire to transmit religious values. In secular societies, parents who wish to raise children with strong religious commitments must do so not only with increased intentionality and effort, but also delicately.

The trajectory of the Palestinian family (F12) in Germany illustrates this complexity. Abdul (G1), initially non-observant due to secular pressures and financial demands, re-engaged with religion later in life and sought to socialize his children religiously. By that point, however, his eldest daughter Amina had already been shaped by a secular, non-Muslim peer environment. At age 13, when her father began imposing a stricter religious upbringing, she resisted. In contrast, her youngest sister Safia grew up in a more religious environment from early childhood. Interestingly, all three daughters resisted pressure to wear the headscarf, reflecting broader liberalizing trends in Germany and a generational questioning of religious authority—a pattern we also observed among some Christian participants. Amina’s influence, shaped by her peers and environment, may also have influenced her younger sisters’ perspectives, highlighting that siblings, too, can play important roles in religious transmission and transformation.

In her own parenting, Amina places the ‘narrative of choice’ at the center. While she values Islam as both a religion and cultural framework, she asserts her right to practice it personally: “For me personally, it is my freedom to practise my faith as I see fit”. Her approach to parenting, rooted in reaction to a strict upbringing, emphasizes exposure to religion without coercion: “I put you there and said […] there’s a mosque […] you can go there, I’m not forcing anyone. That’s prayer—you can decide. And in the end […] you’ve decided on the path that’s right for you now.” Her daughter Zainab, though not formally practicing religion, avoids pork and identifies as Muslim for cultural reasons.

Safia, Amina’s youngest sister, aims to instill religious values more deliberately but also adapts her approach to the contemporary norm of acknowledging the autonomy of children (see Barrow et al. 2021). While she teaches that religious rules are binding, she avoids the strictness of the previous generation and emphasizes intellectual engagement, independent reasoning, and personal understanding. Both sisters have made intentional choices about how to raise their children, reflecting the evolving nature of religious socialization.

This parenting shift is also evident in the Canadian sample. For second- and third-generation Muslims born in Canada, attendance at religious services often remained symbolically significant, but practical observance became more flexible. Most participants grew up attending jamatkhana weekly, but parents tended to allow greater flexibility as children aged, with secular activities often competing with religious ones. Parents from the 1.5 and second generations often adopted more flexible religious parenting styles. Aliya (F4G2), born in Canada in the mid-1970s shortly after her family arrived following the 1972 Ugandan Asian expulsion, was raised under her father Shabuddin’s strict, authoritarian parenting style. He insisted on daily attendance at jamatkhana and limited his children’ s engagement outside of the faith community. As a teenager, Aliya began to resist, opting instead to spend time with non-Muslim friends on Friday nights. When she became a parent herself, her approach shifted dramatically. Although she brought her son, Khalil to weekly prayers and enrolled him in religious education classes, she emphasized choice and autonomy. She encouraged him to explore his faith while also fostering friendships outside the community.

The ‘narrative of choice’ can sometimes contribute to distancing from religion altogether. Begum (F13G2), having spent most of her emerging adult years in Canada, adopted a more liberal approach to parenting than what she grew up with. She recounts allowing her daughter Rayna (b. 1993) to engage with religion on her own terms during adolescence, leading Rayna to drop out of religious education classes. To her disappointment, Rayna ultimately chose not to return to religious practice—a decision that lingers in her mother’s reflections: “My husband and I sometimes talk about it—‘did we go wrong somewhere? Were we too free with our kids when we said, ‘whatever you believe, it’s okay?’ (laughs) And now they’ve just gone on this path, you know?!’” This case illustrates how strong, open family relationships can enable both transformation and decline in religious life.

However, such freedom can also nurture unexpected forms of renewed engagement. Returning to Aliya (F4G2), she deliberately avoided imposing religion on her son, Khalil. Surprisingly, this resulted in him becoming more religious than she is: “I exposed him to it, but it was more freedom of choice for him to decide if he wanted to pursue that or not… and he’s pursued it far greater than I have.”

Such strengthening of religious identity in the third generation appears more common among Muslims than among members of Christian groups. Minority status—especially in societies where Muslim identity is frequently politicized or ‘othered’—can make turning toward Islam a form of affirmation, belonging, or even resistance.

This process, however, can generate tension across generations. Amina’s daughter Sara (F12G3), for instance—who acquired a more culturally rooted Muslim identity during her upbringing—turned to religion following a personal crisis in her twenties. She now raises her children as devout and practicing Muslims. While Amina respects her daughter’s autonomy, she is challenged by the stricter religious upbringing of her grandchildren—particularly when it seems to contradict the freedom she intended to instill: “I’m not going to interfere in the upbringing of my daughter’s children, but when they come to visit grandma and grandpa, they still get their [non-halal] wine gums.”

6.3. Identity and Engagement with Religion Among Muslim Youth in the Contexts of Islamophobia and Multiculturalism

Muslim youth growing up in Western diasporic contexts face a complex array of challenges that shape their cultural and religious identities and practices. In particular, the post-9/11 sociopolitical climate has had profound effects on how Muslims are perceived and how they navigate their identities within majority non-Muslim societies. Here, we explore three interconnected dynamics: the impact of Islamophobia on identity management, the rise in intellectual engagement with religion among younger generations, and the simultaneous development of interfaith openness within multicultural contexts. Together, these processes highlight the nuanced ways Muslim youth negotiate faith, belonging, and social integration.

6.3.1. Islamophobia and the Politics of Muslim Visibility

The intensification of Islamophobia in many Western societies after 9/11 profoundly impacts younger generations of Muslims. Visible markers such as Muslim names, cultural dress, or the wearing of the headscarf (hijab) became politicized symbols that could elicit suspicion or discrimination. Consequently, some participants described experiences of “code-switching” or strategically concealing aspects of their Muslim identity to navigate social environments that they felt were unwelcoming or worse, hostile.

This shift is vividly illustrated in the experiences of Family 7 in Germany. Aisha, who embraced Islam at the age of 25, proudly became part of a Sufi tariqa and confidently veiled in public, changed her behavior following 9/11. Previously proud of giving her children distinctively Muslim names, she later expressed regret over these choices because they unintentionally forced her children to repeatedly explain themselves and sometimes face exclusion: “We were so enthusiastic, yes, about our new faith [laughing] and we thought it was so great and everyone has to know […] I wouldn’t do it like that nowadays, I’m sorry”.

Her son Omar’s experience at school further highlights the challenges of Muslim visibility. Although he wore a prayer cap, it was mistaken for a Jewish kippah, and he did not correct these assumptions, reflecting a nuanced form of identity management aimed at minimizing stigma: “Most people didn’t associate it with Islam either, they always thought I was a Jew. […] The Muslims, the Turkish Muslims, didn’t understand the meaning of the cap either.” Omar’s position as an outsider—not only among predominantly Christian or secular peers but also among Muslims with different backgrounds—exemplifies the social complexities Muslim youth face in negotiating their identities in secular and multicultural environments.

Similarly, in the Canadian context, Shazya (F11G3) recounted growing up in a multicultural classroom with many non-Muslim peers but feeling a sense of exhaustion from constantly needing to explain or defend her Muslimness. The tendency among participants to retreat into familiar religious communities suggests that politicized understandings of Islam can reinforce the importance of communal religious spaces as sites of social and cultural support, even as they underscore the pressures of living as visibly Muslim in majority non-Muslim societies.

6.3.2. Intellectual Engagement with Religion in a Secular Context

Beyond navigating external prejudice, many second and third-generation Muslims articulated a pronounced desire for intellectual engagement with their faith and culture. This development, which surfaced in the parental generation but flourished among their children, responds to the realities of growing up in largely secular and multicultural societies where religious belief and minority cultures are often marginalized or regarded as exceptional.

In such environments, religious individuals face pressure to rationalize and defend their beliefs and practices. Consequently, younger Muslims increasingly question inherited traditions and seek religious identities and expressions that address contemporary social issues, including gender equity, interfaith and internal diversity, and public representations of Islam.

In Canada, Rasul (F11.5G2) witnessed these shifts firsthand while volunteering at the local Ismaili religious education centre, where his children attended. He observed that youth had become significantly more inquisitive: “They had questions. And if you didn’t answer those questions, you could not get through the armour to the faith… In the old days, I would ask my dad [questions] and he would say, ‘that’s the way it is.’” In response to these evolving needs—particularly in a diaspora context shaped by secularism and cultural and religious diversity—the Ismaili community responded by developing a rigorous and intellectually grounded religious education curriculum. This curriculum was not merely a transmission tool, but a pioneering initiative designed to nurture critical engagement, foster a strong sense of Muslim identity, and instill pride among younger generations navigating complex cultural landscapes.

Higher educational access has also played a role in shaping religious engagement among second- and third-generation Muslims. For example, Amina (F12G2), whose parents had limited formal education, was able to attend university in Germany. Although she pursued a science degree, she proactively sought out Islamic studies through courses and independent reading—opportunities unavailable to her father, who had to prioritize economic survival and integration.

Amina’s experience exemplifies how first-, second-, and third-generation Muslims navigate distinct structural opportunities and constraints, influencing the construction and expression of their religious identities. This differential access shapes not only personal religious trajectories but also influences the nature, depth, and expression of religious engagement.

6.3.3. Multiculturalism and the Emergence of Interfaith Openness

Despite the persistence of discrimination and Islamophobia, the broader multicultural contexts of Canada and Germany have also fostered conditions for interfaith dialogue and openness. Many Muslim participants expressed confidence in their religious identities alongside a growing appreciation for religious diversity and pluralism.

Safia (F12G2), a second-generation Muslim from Germany, credits her Protestant school teacher with sparking a deeper interest in religious thought and also encouraged interfaith dialogue and exchange during classes on religion. The validation she received during those classes prompted meaningful discussions within her own family, challenging their religious conservativeness, and nuancing preconceived notions about the hijab and women in Islam among her non-Muslim colleagues, and peers, “I think my open-mindedness, despite my headscarf… means that I am very well received by non-Muslims because… I am very integrated and my children are too.”

Similarly, Shazya (F11G3) from Canada reflected on her interfaith experiences growing up, including attending Christian peers’ rites of passage such as confirmations, which deepened her appreciation of religious diversity. She, in turn, welcomed non-Muslim friends into her own religious celebrations: “I remember we went to our friends’ confirmations… [and] I would bring them to Kushali7 with me. [I’d bring them] to Kushali celebrations every year and my parents encouraged that, they encouraged us to bring friends who were not Ismaili so they could learn about our traditions and celebrate with us.”

In both cases, interfaith engagement served as a bridge between integration and religious identity—demonstrating that the two are not mutually exclusive. Rather, participants’ openness to other faiths became a way to assert their own identities in inclusive and socially meaningful ways.

The post-9/11 era has shaped Muslim youth’s religious experiences through heightened Islamophobia, necessitating complex identity negotiations and strategic visibility management. Simultaneously, intellectual engagement with religion and expanded educational opportunities have fostered more personalized and critical approaches to faith. In multicultural settings, interfaith openness emerges as a dynamic site where Muslim identity and broader social integration intersect, offering pathways for both religious affirmation and social belonging. These broader social and cultural pressures underscore how religious identity is actively negotiated in response to societal contexts.

7. Socialization Matters: Factors That Nurture Continuity Across Generations

Religious socialization plays a pivotal role in nurturing continuity across generations. This section examines key factors that contribute to the transmission of religious identity and practice, including active participation in religious practices and routines and open dialogue about faith. The importance of community engagement will be explored separately, following this section.

7.1. Practicing Religion: A Family Affair

Families are pivotal in nurturing religious identities and values across generations. While mothers seem to have a greater influence than fathers, grandparents seem to play supportive roles in reinforcing religious continuity. Beyond these key actors, the single most important factor in transmitting religion is intentional religious socialization. Practising religion with children, in both private and communal settings, emerges as the most effective way parents can pass on their faith, especially in secular societies where Muslim and immigrant identities are subject to scrutiny.

In our broader interview sample, families who regularly prayed and attended religious services together were significantly more likely to transmit religion across generations. These practices were not occasional but woven into the fabric of everyday life—ritualized elements of a family’s identity.

This trend was also evident in our Muslim sample, where communal and familial religious practices were often normalized—if not prioritized—over secular activities. Extended family members played particularly important roles in these contexts. As Putney et al. (2013) note, extended families in ethnic communities tend to have more frequent contact, reinforcing family identity and values.

This dynamic is evident in the case of Amina (F12G2, Germany). As previously discussed, although she did not emphasize religious observance with her daughters Sara and Zainab, sustained connections with her extended family ensured religion remained present. After a personal crisis, Sara returned to Islam, describing this as a reconnection with “family values” that encompassed both cultural belonging and spiritual comfort. This case illustrates how religious identity can be reclaimed through extended family ties, even when direct parental socialization is limited.

Similarly, in Canada’s Family 4, maternal grandparents played a crucial role in Khalil’s religious development. Although his mother Aliya supported his religious education and community involvement, she preferred a more moderate religiosity. However, Khalil’s strong bond with his grandparents, particularly his grandfather who taught him Ismaili Ginans8 and accompanied him to jamatkhana, ultimately fostered a deeper religious pride and commitment.

These examples underscore the vital role grandparents and extended families can have in religious socialization, especially among immigrant Muslim populations where religion is deeply integrated into family life. Supportive familial and communal environments provide the foundation for confident and resilient Muslim identities.

Conversely, when shared religious practices and parental agreement are lacking, religious transmission may weaken or shift toward a broader cultural identity. For instance, grandparents Osman and Hanife (Family F-T3, Germany), influenced by secular Kemalist ideology, were inconsistent in religious observance. Osman’s strict but irregular approach, coupled with Hanife’s limited religious knowledge, resulted in their daughter Fatma not adopting religious practices. This was further complicated by Fatma marrying an Alevi Muslim man critical of her Sunni Islam. As a result, Osan (G3) was exposed to conflicting religious influences: his Alevi father forbade attending the Sunni mosque and Qur’an classes, leading Osan to develop a vague, largely cultural Muslim identity with minimal practice. This case illustrates not only the importance of religious congruence between parents, but also how inconsistent socialization can lead to diluted religious identities, highlighting the importance of cohesive familial affinity and religious engagement.

7.2. Talking Religion: Dialogue, Continuity, and Change

Importantly, while consistent practices provide a structural foundation for religious identity, the conversations families have about faith are also important. Open, ongoing conversations about religion within families appear crucial in nurturing resilient identities, particularly in secular societies where religious beliefs and identities are frequently challenged. Coupled with regular religious practice, such dialogue seems to help children and adolescents negotiate, innovate, and adapt faith in the face of external pressures, supporting religious continuity even when practices and interpretations vary.

Our broader sample reveals that families who engage in non-judgmental, consistent discussions about religion tend to foster stronger, more positive religious identities. These conversations are most effective when integrated into everyday routines, such as family meals or post-worship gatherings, complementing religious practice with meaningful reflection.

For Muslims, who navigate between cultural worlds, this mode of engagement is especially necessary, prompting frequent reflection and dialogue to reconcile competing worldviews, to navigate Muslim identities in majority non-Muslim societies, and to deal with intra-Muslim diversity.

In Germany’s Family 12, sustained internal dialogue allowed family members with differing understandings of faith to coexist peacefully. Negotiations around practices such as veiling or fasting fostered mutual respect and prevented fracturing, illustrating how open communication can accommodate diversity within shared religious identity, even if transformations occur alongside each generation. Such open discussions can also lead to divergence, underscoring that transmission is not about rigid adherence but about meaningful engagement with tradition in changing contexts. Safia (F12G2) prioritizes independent reasoning in her children’s religious education, recognizing the necessity of equipping them for secular societies that demand autonomy and critical thinking. Thus, dialogue functions both as a mechanism for continuity and a catalyst for transformation.

In Canada, a similar dynamic is evident in Family 11.5, where open discussions about religion were a routine part of family life. Rasul and Rahima, the G2 parents, used weekly Sunday breakfasts as a time to discuss religion in relation to contemporary issues and moral dilemmas. These conversations enabled their sons, Rahim and Rizwan, to situate their religious values within the broader multicultural landscape of Canadian society. According to Rasul, these sessions were initiated by his wife: “Sunday morning, we would have a group breakfast meeting, my wife insisted on it… but [we’d talk about] good versus bad, right versus wrong.” For Rasul, the point of these discussions was not dogmatic instruction but moral formation through religion within the wider multicultural Canadian context: “Religion is going to help us live a good life and a valuable existence. To help ourselves [and] help everyone around us. We’ve left the world in a better state than we found it. Any faith will do that for you. We think Islam is unique, but there are all kinds of wonderfully devoted people out there…”

Shazya’s (F11G3) development of an Islamic Feminism is attributed to the women in her family, who consistently engaged her in discussions about religion and social issues. These exchanges, embedded in close family bonds, provided Shazya with tools to navigate religion critically and intellectually. She explains:

I think of faith in a very feminist women’s space kind of terms. Because faith has come to me only through women for the most part… These conversations in my mum’s family [were] always [with]… very strong-willed, very articulate women, and [we had] conversations around faith and… there was all of this diversity [of opinion] even within the family, but they would have these incredible conversations, and it was normal, and they all still love each other and… nobody was mad in the end, it was a really lovely thing.

Together, these examples illustrate that the transmission of religious identity is not solely dependent on ritual observance; it is also shaped by ongoing, meaningful dialogue. These dialogues provide young people with the tools to articulate, justify, and sustain their faith amid often indifferent, challenging, or hostile public environments. However, successful religious transmission requires some degree of flexibility—families must allow space for questioning, dissent, and negotiation, especially when religious norms conflict with contemporary values like gender equity or individual autonomy. Open conversations about faith provide young people with the tools to interpret tradition, navigate competing cultural expectations, and integrate moral and spiritual values into daily life. They foster resilience, critical thinking, and ethical reasoning, allowing religious identity to remain relevant and adaptable in the face of secular pressures and social change. In this way, talking religion emerges as a central mechanism for both continuity and transformation, ensuring that faith is not only inherited but also actively engaged, reflected upon, and reimagined across generations.

8. The Role of Community and Subcultural Networks in Religious Continuity

Having already highlighted the significant role of communal and subcultural networks in previous sections, this section will explore how these networks provide ongoing religious and cultural socialization, particularly through religious education and extracurricular activities. It will also examine the implications of community embedding, or the absence thereof, for religious continuity during life transitions when identity may be questioned or destabilized.

8.1. Community as a Site of Religious and Cultural Socialization

Community and subcultural networks play a significant role in both religious and cultural socialization by modeling desired lifestyles and fostering a sense of collective identity and belonging. In nearly all cases of strong religious continuity in our sample—regardless of religious affiliation—families had established robust ties to a religious community. Participation in religious spaces was often routine, and this consistent engagement appeared to deepen both practice and commitment over time.

Muslim participants frequently emphasized that faith and culture were so closely intertwined that they could not be disentangled. Conversely, when community ties were weak or absent, we often observed a decline, or even abandonment of, the parents’ religious tradition.

Early socialization into religious communities was especially important for cultivating belonging and identity. Forming friendships and social bonds in religious settings had a long-term anchoring effect—particularly when those relationships persisted through major life transitions. For many families, religious community spaces also served as sites for transmitting values, ethics, and cultural norms, embedding both faith and culture into everyday life.

Rizwan (F11.5G3) reflected on how communal prayer contributed to a holistic spiritual, ethical, and cultural upbringing:

We would pray [in congregation] Fridays, Saturdays… [we] would be going to [jamat]khana and it was just sort of part of our upbringing in terms of ethics… there was a big emphasis on the ethics of our faith… [Faith] was huge part of how we identified ourselves, you know, very much bound up with culture, obviously… If you had asked us how we would have identified… We would have just said, we’re Ismaili.

His older brother Rahim confirmed this sentiment, “You couldn’t separate the religious beliefs from the rest of our lives.”

In Germany, Aisha (F7G2) engaged with a translocal Sufi network centred around a sheikh in the wider region, attending monthly and occasional home-based gatherings. Later, she enrolled her children in mosque-based religious education offered by the local Turkish Muslim community. When the local Sufi order dispersed due to relocations of other members, she and her husband intensified home-based practices with the few remaining families. In this case, we can see that the local Turkish community was unable to fully compensate for the loss of the Sufi order, which had its own specific rituals and a strong sense of collective identity.

Not all families had equal access to religious or subcultural community networks, and the effects of this were especially visible in the second and third generation. As previously discussed, Osan (F-T3G3) grew up without meaningful exposure to either side of his religious heritage due to parental disagreements about religious engagement. In contrast, families with strong communal ties—such as Family 12 in Germany and Family 11.5 in Canada, where multigenerational involvement in religious institutions helped anchor identity—benefited from sustained community support. Osan’s upbringing, by comparison, was shaped by the absence of a cohesive Turkish Muslim network. His mother, Fatma, had herself learned about Islam primarily through public-school instruction due to the weak Turkish community presence in her youth. Although opportunities for communal religious life expanded in the 2000s, the family remained largely disconnected from these networks out of habit. This detachment was compounded by intra-Muslim diversity within the family: theological and ritual differences between Sunni and Alevi traditions introduced uncertainty and hesitation around religious practice. As a result, the family did not celebrate major Muslim or cultural holidays such as Eid or Bayram—key rituals that typically reinforce both religious and cultural identity. For Osan, this lack of communal belonging meant that Islam never became a meaningful part of his identity, underscoring that collective religious belonging depends not only on parental attitudes, role modelling, and engagement, but also on the presence of supportive community networks and cultural-religious integration.

8.2. Religious Education: Cultivating Identity and Community Bonds

Formal religious education was another key avenue for transmission. Studies show that ethnic and religious minorities increasingly turn to religious instruction to support identity formation (Dillon and Wink 2007; Putney et al. 2013). These spaces not only nurture pride in religious identity and belonging but also provide opportunities to build lasting peer bonds.

In Canada, the Ismaili community offers religious education classes known as Bait-ul-‘ilm (henceforth, BUI), typically held on Saturdays. Developed by the Institute of Ismaili Studies in the UK, this curriculum was intentionally crafted for a growing diaspora, mindful of the challenges of living among non-Muslims and Muslim diversity in secular liberal environments. It was designed to not only foster pride in Muslim identity but to also equip students with the intellectual tools to build resilient, confident identities in multicultural environments and under external scrutiny.

All second- and third-generation Ismailis in our Canadian sample attended BUI at least until adolescence, when many parents allowed children to decide whether to continue. Most reported positive experiences: classes were not only intellectually stimulating but also offered valuable social connection. Shazya (F11G3) recalls enjoying the academic side of BUI, particularly its engagement with religious history and ethics. Like her maternal grandfather, she was drawn to the intellectual dimensions of faith and eventually went on to study Islam at university and now serves as an al-Waeza, a community preacher delivering sermons.

Yet not all experiences of religious education were equally affirming. While Rayna (F13G3) attended jamatkhana regularly with her family and was enrolled in BUI classes, a negative experience among peers in these classes led her to build social bonds outside the community and gradually disengaged from community life around adolescence. Rather than finding connection within her religious community, Rayna developed a stronger sense of connection among her multicultural school peers and now describes herself as more spiritual than religious.

In Germany, mosque-based education became more widespread from the 1970s onward, following the establishment of local mosques. Unlike her older siblings, Safia (F12G2) benefited from community-based teaching. She credits a compassionate Qur’an teacher with deepening her religious engagement more than her strict father, who lacked the tools for religious explanation. Many G2s received some form of religious instruction during their youth, though often informally and inconsistently. For G3s, mosque-based classes were more accessible, but parental decisions to enroll children were often shaped by concerns about teacher quality and style. Aisha (F7G2) only sent her children once a compassionate, non-authoritarian teacher was hired. Osan’s parents (F-T3) chose not to enroll him at all, citing disinterest or lack of fit with their family’s mixed Sunni-Alevi background. Safia (F12G2) emphasized how the increasing professionalization of mosque-based education has enabled her generation to offer their children a more meaningful, engaging, and quality religious education than what they themselves received.

While both Canadian Ismailis and German Sunni Muslims developed religious education systems to support faith transmission in diasporic settings, their approaches reflect distinct community structures and pedagogical priorities. In Canada, BUI offers a centralized, professionally developed curriculum that aims to foster both religious literacy and pride in Ismaili Muslim identity within a secular multicultural society. In contrast, mosque-based education in Germany developed more organically alongside local mosque infrastructure, leading to significant variation in quality and approach. Over time, however, both communities came to recognize that religious education is not only about doctrinal knowledge—it is also a key site for nurturing religious and cultural continuity, community bonds, and collective identity.

8.3. Camps, Volunteering, and Extracurricular Engagement

Participation in camps, volunteering, and community-based extracurricular activities plays a pivotal role in shaping collective identity and fostering a sense of belonging. Engagement in these youth activities was found across our sample and was shown to nurture in-group identity. For Muslim families, these initiatives often served as vital alternatives to secular options, offering spaces where young people could engage with their religious and cultural identities in supportive, peer-based environments.

In Canada, the Ismaili community’s summer camps and organized sports leagues, for example, created spaces where young people could build friendships, internalize community values, and feel pride in their Ismaili Muslim identity. In Germany, similar outcomes were observed through Turkish-run soccer teams and youth clubs, which—while not always overtly religious—helped preserve cultural cohesion and offer moral frameworks rooted in faith. These forms of extracurricular engagement reveal how religion and culture are woven into the everyday lives of minority youth, shaping identity through participation rather than doctrine.

Volunteering, in particular, provided a more active means of community involvement, nurturing a sense of purpose alongside belonging. Khalil (F4G3, Canada), a regular volunteer at jamatkhana, describes volunteering as central to both his faith practice and social life: “I think I started volunteering at the age of like 6 or 7, as soon as I started volunteering I just kind of like fell in love with it. For me, now personally, [jamat]khana is really fun for me… I’ll go as much as I can.”

In both Canada and Germany, volunteering was often intergenerational, passed down as a familial, cultural, and religious value. In Germany, Safia’s family (F12) exemplifies this continuity: her daughter Shaima (G3), now 18, teaches Arabic at the local mosque after having been involved in community activities from a young age. These cases illustrate how sustained participation fosters deep community ties—ties that ethnic or cultural background alone cannot guarantee.

8.4. Community as Agent for Religious and Cultural Retention

Community and subcultural networks play vital roles in retaining religious identity, especially during major life transitions such as relocation, entering university, or starting a family, when young people have to navigate new contexts and experience challenges to their faith, practice, and belonging. This trend cuts across religious affiliations. In the Canadian context, many of our Ismaili Muslim participants recalled joining the Ismaili Students Association (ISA) as a means of connecting with like-minded peers in unfamiliar university environments. These subcultural networks offered continuity during a period when young adults often experience existential questioning and identity shifts. Importantly, participants did not stumble into these spaces—they actively sought them out to recreate a sense of familiarity and grounding amid new surroundings.

For instance, Rahim (F11.5G3) recalls his faith being challenged upon encountering Muslims at university who did not fit the mold he had grown up with. He emphasizes that the campus-based ISA—and meeting his future wife Shayza, who regularly attended jamatkhana—played a critical role in helping him stay connected to his faith tradition. Without that community support, he believes he might have drifted away entirely.

However, access to religious subcultures is not always equitable. When ethnic and religious identity do not overlap—as is often the case with converts—entry into ethnically bounded networks can be limited or unavailable. For example, Omar’s parents, German converts to Sufi Islam, were not part of the local (mostly Turkish) Muslim migrant community. While their joint religious activities with other members of the Sufi tariqa offered some spiritual cohesion for the parents, Omar himself felt isolated: “I think it’s the religious community that most people nowadays still somehow associate positivity with religion… that was never the case for us. We never had a religious community, except at the very beginning. Otherwise it was really just the family.”

Though his siblings distanced themselves from religion, Omar found temporary belonging through extended Sufi retreats in Cyprus and during a formative year at a religious school in Istanbul. But upon returning to Germany for studies, he again found himself disconnected from a local religious community. His quest for a collective identity remains a persistent struggle amid dominant secular and non-Muslim societal norms: “I still have incredible problems… standing by my religion.”

During his undergraduate years in Canada, Rizwan (F11.5G3) found meaningful connection and support through the ISA and the daily campus jamatkhana. Hoping to recreate this experience during graduate studies in the UK, he was met instead with a local Ismaili cohort that was too consumed by academic and secular pressures to maintain campus-based community life. Without access to familiar subcultural networks, Rizwan’s religious engagement became increasingly individualized and eventually diminished altogether. Now living in the United States, he finds regular attendance at jamatkhana geographically difficult. He is engaged to a Sunni Muslim, and both now identify as culturally Muslim but no longer practice. Despite this shift, Rizwan continues to seek out communal events for the sense of cultural connection.

Taken together, these narratives underscore the critical role that community plays in reinforcing religious and cultural identity, especially at critical turning points like attending university and moving away from home. Religious communities provide a shared collective identity that helps members navigate the pressures of secular or dominant cultures. For immigrant communities, this function is amplified: religious spaces often serve as anchors of cultural and spiritual continuity and help soften minority experiences, especially for first- and 1.5 generation newcomers. Friends and extended kin, often embedded in these networks, also reinforce collective identity across life stages. However, as more members of these communities are born and raised in secular Western societies like Canada and Germany, the task of cultivating strong community bonds falls increasingly on families and religious institutions. These bonds must compete with the pressures of the majority culture, which often marginalizes or misunderstands minority religious worldviews.

9. Conclusions

This study explored the continuity, discontinuity, and transformation of Muslim religiosity in Canada and West Germany, focusing on how religion is shaped and transmitted across contexts and generations within Muslim families of specific origins, affiliations, and experiences. As we demonstrated, religious transmission cannot be understood apart from external pressures—such as migration, secularization, and Islamophobia—it also requires attention to interpersonal conditions, including the diversity of Muslim traditions, cultural and ethnic orientations, and pre-migration experiences. Religious transmission in Muslim families often reflects broader patterns evident in other religious families. Practicing religion with children emerged as the most significant factor in faith transmission, especially as societies become increasingly non-religious. When ritualized, identity-forming routines are absent, transmission may be limited to nominal religious identity. Family practice alone, however, is insufficient: embedding children in faith-based community networks, such as religious education classes, youth programming, and volunteering, reinforces commitment and collective belonging through meaningful social relationships. Continuity of religiosity is further strengthened when practice is normalized within the extended family, though this effect depends on a degree of religious homogeneity, which can shift through generational change or marriage. Open conversations about faith, when paired with regular practice, foster continuity, pride, confidence, moral engagement, and adaptability, especially in secular societies where external reinforcement is limited. Supportive mentors, teachers, and peers often play a critical role in helping youth navigate non-religious values and environments. For Muslim youth in particular, these networks provide resources to confront and nuance anti-Muslim stereotypes, thereby reinforcing in-group pride, identity, and belonging.

As demonstrated, community and subcultural networks play a pivotal role in nurturing religious, ethnic, and cultural identities. These spaces provide models of practice, collective identity, and belonging, which are particularly important during emerging adulthood when social ties change and acquired religiosity may be challenged or questioned. While ethnic or cultural identity alone does not guarantee religious continuity, for Muslims, the alignment of religion with ethnicity and culture plays a distinctive role. Participation in religiously and culturally bounded networks not only nurtures a shared identity but also strengthens collective resilience in contexts where Muslims are a minority. Unlike some other religious groups, where ethnicity and religion may be more easily separated, for many Muslims, religious identity is deeply entangled with ethnic and cultural belonging. Even when formal practice declines, ethnic or cultural identity can keep religious belonging salient, often expressed in symbolic or “culturalized” forms of Muslim identity. This differs from parallel trends in other faith communities, where religious belonging may persist more on institutional or denominational grounds rather than through ethnic-cultural anchors.

In contexts where Muslims are a minority, strong ethnic, cultural, and religious networks reduce the discomfort of navigating Islamophobia, secularization, and multicultural tensions, helping sustain continuity when identities are stressed or challenged. For older generations, immersing in these networks may have been a matter of preference, but for younger Muslims, they increasingly become the only viable anchors of identity, resilience, and belonging—offering continuity in faith and culture amid shifting societal landscapes.

Our study illustrates how religious transmission is inherently transformative, reflecting broader societal changes across generations. Migration marked a radical shift and disrupted the structural support that sustains religious identity and practice. Yet efforts to re-establish religious infrastructures—such as establishing mosques and jamatkhanas—help to sustain intergenerational socialization. Unlike the native Christian majority, Muslim families and communities often must independently develop and maintain these educational and religious infrastructures, which must continually adapt to remain meaningful and relevant for subsequent generations. The early first-generation Muslim communities had to establish structures because they did not exist in non-Muslim societies. In the second generation, parents, regardless of their religion, must deliberately create supportive conditions for faith transmission, as societal structures often do not reinforce religious identity and expression.

In addition, liberal shifts in parenting styles and the wider secular and Islamophobic contexts contribute to a shift among second- and third-generation Muslims toward more individualized and intellectually engaged forms of religiosity. Like other religious families in our larger sample, they increasingly feel the need to justify their faith and adapt it to evolving liberal contexts. Further, G2 parents not only have to explain religious norms in ways that resonate with their children, but also allow space for personal adaptation and negotiation. For our Muslim parents, the added challenge is to demonstrate that Islam can be practiced and adapted in ways that are relevant to contemporary life while preserving its core essence. In post-9/11 contexts, where Islam is frequently scrutinized, young Muslims may be compelled to engage more consciously with their faith and strengthen community bonds—sometimes leading to deeper appropriation of both religious and cultural identities.

The study found more similarities than differences when comparing the Canadian and German contexts. Both societies are increasingly secular, multicultural, and liberal, and both struggle with Islamophobia, which shapes Muslim experiences and identity negotiations in comparable ways. The main distinction in our findings arose from the sample itself: the German participants reflected more diverse Muslim affiliations, whereas the Canadian sample was composed primarily of Ismailis of East African background. In Canada, Ismaili participants appeared more organized and benefited from stronger transnational institutional support, illustrating how intra-Muslim affiliation and belonging can influence religious identity and (dis)continuity. While our Ismaili participants stemmed from contexts where religious practice was embedded in daily routine, some families in the German sample were relatively secular or came from societies already undergoing secularization, which impacted their engagement with religion in the new context. Regional variations in the presence of religious communities also shaped the conditions for transmitting traditions, which differed significantly from case to case. Despite these differences, a unifying feature across both groups was the strong commitment to volunteerism, which played a central role in building and sustaining community throughout different life stages. Our findings suggest that communities rely heavily on volunteers for the development and maintenance of programming, underscoring the central role of grassroots efforts in religious transmission.

Although our qualitative findings are not generalizable, they highlight the complexity and diversity of Muslim families in Canada and West Germany. Successful religious transmission emerges from the interplay of everyday practice, open dialogue, family and community engagement, and shared identity. While these dynamics are particularly salient in Muslim minority contexts, they also reflect broader patterns applicable across religious groups. Continuity and transformation of faith thus depend not on passive inheritance, but on active, context-sensitive engagement. With our sample situated within relatively moderate and liberal interpretations of Islam, future research should explore how these dynamics unfold across Muslim communities of varied affiliations, such as more conservative affiliations, beyond those studied here, and how intergenerational transmission interacts with shifts in gender, class, race, sexuality, climate consciousness, and broader geopolitical forces.