The implications of religious identity for American Muslims

مرکز و کتابخانه مطالعات اسلامی به زبان های اروپایی

منو

" The implications of religious identity for American Muslims "
Besheer Mohamed O. McRoberts

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	1103831
Doc. No	:	TLpq876605050
Main Entry	:	Besheer Mohamed
	:	O. McRoberts
Title & Author	:	The implications of religious identity for American Muslims\ Besheer MohamedO. McRoberts
College	:	The University of Chicago
Date	:	2011
student score	:	2011
Degree	:	Ph.D.
Page No	:	191-n/a
Abstract	:	Though common sense and political rhetoric suggest that identity claims play an important role in determining action, psychology and sociology research both suggest that beliefs do not have a direct impact on action. This dissertation explores the impact of the religious identity of American Muslims on issues of broad societal concern. Rather than studying identity as an abstract system of beliefs, I consider both individual measures of religious belief orthodoxy and the influence of group commitment within the distinctive social context of self-identified Muslims living in the Unites States. The dissertation draws on the Pew Center's 2007 survey of American Muslims, as well as 23 in-depth interviews to create a multi-dimensional model of Muslim identity. The dissertation finds that, in isolation, religious belief does have little impact on social attitudes; however, group commitment and social context work to link American Muslim identity to distinctive attitudes on issues as diverse as terrorism and recycling. This finding suggests that a focus on the commonalities between religious identity and other identity claims can be beneficial both to the sociological study of religion and to sociology more generally.
Subject	:	Identity
	:	Islam
	:	Islam in America
	:	Philosophy, religion and theology
	:	Social attitudes
	:	Social sciences