Religion and Culture: Americanizing Islam as the Price of Assimilation
Journal Title: International Journal of Islamic Thought - Year 2013, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
This essay is an exploration into the social inevitabilities of culture shifts within the American Muslim community’s self-understanding of their faith. Rather than a theological explication of the reasons why and why not Islam may or can or will not assimilate in America, our approach will be strictly sociological thereby side-stepping the intricate dialectic of theological niceties in deference to the social realities of culture change. As a social psychologist, my duty is to acknowledge the inevitabilities of behavioral shifts brought about due to social and cultural pressures resulting from immigration into an alien cultural weltanschauung, i.e., worldview. Therefore in this essay, we will explicate the meaning and nature of de-ethnicization and re-enculturation as we endeavor to disentangle religion from culture, recognizing that much of what goes under the flag of religious orthodoxy is really culturally-mandated behavior and worldview. The assimilation process, however, will bear heavily upon the necessity for Muslim clergy in America to become professional by Western standards and we will in the process explore the complexities of religious secularism as a way of becoming an “American” Muslim. Finally, we will suggest liturgical and architectural “adjustments” to Western modes of public worship while indicating linguistic niceties which will prove helpful in the assimilation process which we have chosen here to call the “Islamicization of America”.
Authors and Affiliations
JOHN MORGAN
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP163736
- DOI -
- Views 118
- Downloads 0
Image and Global Resemblance in the Light of Hadith “Who So Imitates other People Becomes One of Them”
In today’s world, people from different countries, cities and institutions unprecedentedly resemble each other in every aspect of life. Likewise, the deeds and imagery aspirations of Oriental and Occidental people also r...
Mohammad Natsir’s Political Thought and Nationalism
Soon after gaining independence, discourse on making Syariah as a constitutional basis of state in Indonesia was widely regarded as a trending topic to discuss among politicians, Mohammad Natsir was one of them. This art...
نظرية أفعال العباد عند المعتزلة
The Mu’tazilites emphasizes the concept of Divine justice and the responsibility of man. According to them, Allah should reward or punish human beings according to their deeds. They maintain that man decides upon and cre...
Martydrom of al-Hallaj & unity of the Existence: the Condemners and the Commenders
Wahdat al-wujud is a very most polemical topic discussed in the world of Islamic Tasawwuf or Sufism since 2nd century of Islamic history. This issue continued to be debated from time to time until today. Wahdat al-wujud...
Karl Marx dan Konsep Perjuangan Kelas Sosial
This article explores the history of the renowned world economic and political reformist, Karl Marx with a special focus on the social class concept. It also discusses to what extent that the Marx’s concept of social cla...