" ELASTIC ORTHODOXY: THE TACTICS OF YOUNG MUSLIM IDENTITY IN THE EAST END OF LONDON Daniel Nilsson DeHanas Dan Nilsson DeHanas has lived around historic Cable Street in the East End of London for six years, engaged in local community life. This chapter builds on his doctoral thesis on the role of religion in London youth civic engagement. The thesis included ethnography and interviews with young British Jamaicans in Brixton (mostly Christian) and young British Bangladeshis in the East End (predominantly Muslim). The present chapter focuses on the latter group of interviews. The author has previously been a postdoctoral researcher at Bristol University on the Muslim Participation in Contemporary Governance project, part of the UK’s AHRC-ESRC Religion & Society Programme. He is now a research fellow at the University of Kent in Canterbury. This chapter uses the lens of tactical religion to approach questions of Islamic self- identification and institutionalization in the East End. Local institutions, especially the East London Mosque, are found to be strategically influential (in de Certeau’s terms) in endowing Muslim identity with foremost importance. East End British Bangladeshi youth nearly all orient themselves around being ‘Muslim first.’ This chapter considers their tactical reasons for doing so, arguing that their styles of self-identification, which are simultaneously rigid and flexible, can be best characterized as a kind of ‘elastic orthodoxy.’ Citation: DeHanas, Daniel Nilsson. 2013. ‘Elastic Orthodoxy: The Tactics of Young Muslim Identity in the East End of London.’ In Dessing, Nathal, Nadia Jeldtoft, Jorgen Nielson, and Linda Woodhead (eds.). Everyday Lived Islam in Europe. Farnham: Ashgate.