These research articles present a detailed analysis of the respondents’ journeys towards Salafism by showing how these women’s religious beginnings and personal experiences during their childhoods, adolescence or emerging adult years left them struggling to filter or make sense of their life experiences in a way that would bring the “many diverse elements together into an integrated whole” (Kroger 2010:14,15). The findings show that respondents’ emotional states were often affected by numerous factors causing tension or deep-seated anxiety, high ontological insecurity and existential angst, all of which affected their ability to effectively integrate within their own families or wider society. For both Non-Muslim heritage (NMH) and Muslim Heritage (MH) respondents, these issues stemmed from their immigrant status and settlement patterns in the UK, where, for example, key institutions such as the education system failed to adequately meet their needs in the discursive production of identity. This not only perpetuated feelings of social exclusion—most commonly expressed as feeling ‘lost’ or having ‘something missing’—but, more crucially, left them without a sense of where they came from and where they belonged (Weedon 2004:24). It was not until they reached certain “turning points” in their lives, and interpreted certain events using a “spiritual outlook”, that they sought to use religion as a “viable problem-solving route” (Roberts and Yamane 2016:135-137).
Religion ultimately became an “anchorage” for them during times of social upheaval and when confronting new or hostile situations and environments (Hunt 2003:202). More importantly, for most respondents, these feelings were the final step in what McGinty calls “an arresting self-reflective process of meaning-making” (2006:5), resulting in a long-term search for religious and spiritual guidance and, ultimately, the discovery of Salafism.
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