The religious and social correlates of Muslim identity : an empirical enquiry into religification among male adolescents in the UK

For the first time in 2001 the Census for England and Wales included a question on religious identity. The assumption was that religious identity predicts distinctiveness of social and public significance. This paper tests that thesis among male adolescents (13- to 15- years of age) who participated in a survey conducted across the four nations of the United Kingdom. From the 11,870 participants in the survey the present analyses compares the responses of 158 male students who self-identified as Muslim with the responses of 1,932 male students who self-identified as religiously unaffiliated. Comparisons are drawn across two domains defined as religiosity and as social values. The data demonstrated that for these male adolescents self-identification as Muslim encased a distinctive profile in terms both of religiosity and social values