“They Should Have Taught Us It Was Not Either Or”: Muslim Adolescent Girls Negotiate Their In-Between Spaces

As they navigate public schools and Islamic weekend school settings, Muslim American adolescent girls negotiate gendered, linguistic, racial, and religious identities across contexts that often frame being Muslim and being American as oppositional. This qualitative study examines how these adolescents construct in-between spaces through which they manage belonging, legitimacy, and constraint across multiple, and sometimes conflicting, social environments. Grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory and cultural studies of hybridity and third space, the study draws on three collective case studies involving interviews with six Muslim American adolescent girls from diverse racial and linguistic backgrounds, as well as three mothers and six teachers. Findings reveal four interrelated forms of in-between spaces: race and language, religion and culture, being American Muslim, and dawah and activism. Across these spaces, participants navigated both external Islamophobia and internal community hierarchies, negotiating when identity work felt empowering and when it became burdensome. The findings underscore the need for closer collaboration between public schools and Muslim community institutions to support Muslim adolescents in navigating identity without forcing binary choices between faith and belonging.