Islam,immigrants and the state: Religion and cultural politics in Australia

This paper explores the relationship between religious practice and the cultural marginality of Islam in the West. Its focus is the religious organization and practice of Muslim immigrant communities in Australia. It interprets immigrant religious culture as a dimension of the process of incorporation of migrants in class cultures. Its theoretical approach derives from Bourdieu's analysis of the social world as both a symbolic system and system of power relations. It argues that the process of incorporation of immigrants structures the reconstitution of religious culture in migration selectively, creating a distinctive Islamic culture linked to new social movements in the Islamic world.