Islamic Religion - The Basics

Group Selection   

The phenomenon of social identity means the ways that individuals' self-concept gets based on their social group membership—for instance, gender, religions, nationalities, sports teams, and ethnic groups. The group I focused on is the Islamic religion since I knew nothing about it, and I wanted to learn more about its history and culture. Like other religions such as Christianity, Islamic faith claims that it is universally accommodating within the context of its culture. Islam is among one of the religions that have a wide parameter of regulations and rules. Secondly, Islamic culture and traditions are unique compared to other religions.

History 

Islam is a significant universal religion promulgated in the seventh century by the prophet Mohammed. According to Ahmed (2017), Islam means surrender, and it illuminates the critical religious idea of the Islamic culture, which suggests that a believer should accept submission to Allah's will. In the Islamic world, Allah gets perceived as the sole God, sustainer, and creator of the universe. Secondly, in the Islamic world, Muhammed gets regarded as the last prophet. From the start of the Islamic religion, Muhammed had in stored a sense of brotherhood among his followers. Every Muslim segment community is bound by a common faith as well as a sense of belongingness to a single society. There exists a reflection of the Islamic values in Islamic Culture. Islamic culture discourages open obscenity and also hidden obscenity (Ahmed, 2017). The Islamic culture declared every type of obscenity unlawful, and it does not allow the doings of actions that are against an individual developed and dignity. According to Smith (2012), some of the Islamic traditions include Shahada, which means the declaration of faith. Sawn is an Islamic tradition that involves the fasting of Muslims. Islam religion has its own sets of values in which it molds individuals' character. The Islamic faith also views Jesus, Moses, and Abraham as prophets, in comparison to Christianity, where they perceive Jesus as the Son of God

Statistics   

In regards to population, I learned that there are about 1.9 billion Muslims across the globe (2020). The Islamic religion makes up 24.1% of the world's population. Most individuals who practice Islam come from two denominations: Shia, which has roughly two hundred and forty million Muslims to three hundred and forty million. Secondly is the Sunni, who get made up of about one billion, five hundred million Muslims across the globe. In the US, there are about six million Muslims, and it is among the fastest-growing religion in the country. The Islamic faith is the second largest after Christianity, and Judaism follows.

Privilege and Oppression   

Islamic culture is full of peace, excellence, constructive and gets based on people's welfare and well-wishing. The atmosphere of the Islamic culture gets prevailed by modesty, sincerity, and purity. According to Doosje et al., (2016), the rapid growth and migration of Muslims incorporated with the Islamic state impact and other Islamic extremist groups make the Islamic religion to get perceived as a terrorist religion in the US and across the globe. Muslims Americans are continually having concerns about their place in society, but they still have faith in the American dream (Doosje, 2016). According to Di Stasio et al. (2019), many cases of religious discrimination have been reported in workplaces; many people assume that since an individual practices Islam, they are terrorists hence oppressing them for no reason. The privilege that the Islamic group has is that most of their countries are blessed with a lot of natural resources such as oil making their nations to be extremely rich.

Institutions 

"The Organization of Islamic Cooperation" is an example of a national cultural institution associated with the Islamic group. The organization was started in 1969, and it comprises of fifty-seven states with a population of more than 1.8 billion people ("Organisation of Islamic Cooperation," 2020). The organization gets regarded as the voice of the Islamic world, and its work is to safeguard the interest of Islam. An example of a local institutions that gets associated with Islam is a mosque.

References

Ahmed, S. (2017). What is Islam?: The importance of being Islamic. Princeton University Press.

Smith, W. C. (2012). On Understanding Islam: Selected Studies (Vol. 19). Walter de Gruyter.

Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. (2020). Retrieved 5 March 2020, from https://www.oic-oci.org/home/?lan=en

Doosje, B., Moghaddam, F. M., Kruglanski, A. W., De Wolf, A., Mann, L., & Feddes, A. R. (2016). Terrorism, radicalization and de-radicalization. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 79-84.

Di Stasio, V., Lancee, B., Veit, S., & Yemane, R. (2019). Muslim by default or religious discrimination? Results from a cross-national field experiment on hiring discrimination. Journal of Ethnic and Migration studies, 1-22.