Cultural Competence In Religion

Islam, a religion of people submitting to one God, seeking peace and a way of life without sin, is always misunderstood throughout the world. What some consider act of bigotry, others believe it to be the lack of education and wrong portrayal of events in media; however, one cannot not justify the so little knowledge that America and Americans have about Islam and Muslims. Historically there are have been myths, many attacks on Islam and much confusion between Islam as a religion and Middle Easter culture that is always associated with it. This paper is meant to dispel, or rather educate about the big issues that plague people’s minds with false ideas and this will only be touching the surface.

Having lived my whole life by the teachings of the Islamic faith, I understand the appreciations and values associated with the Hijab. However, also living in Canada, a pro-western society, I also see how some might see it as an oppression set upon Muslim women; objectively isolating them from the rest of society. I believe that the Hijab means much more than just a piece of cloth covering a woman’s hair. It represents their identity and their pride. It is considered to be the flag of their way of life, their religion. Unfortunately, people of other cultures see it as a horrific tradition of the past that degrades a woman’s rights and freedoms.

"A set of congruent behaviors, attitudes and policies that come together as a system, agency or among professionals and enable that system, agency or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations. The word "culture" is used because it implies the integrated pattern of human thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values and institutions of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group. The word competence is used because it implies having a capacity to function effectively."

Wearing a hijab in a society where people do not know much about the reasoning behind it is difficult. It was especially difficult for my friends who were not Muslim to understand why I wore it. As a result, they would mock me, “What’s that thing on your head? Why are you wearing a towel?” In fact, one boy even pulled my hijab off.

But before we start to investigate on this question, we need to know what the definition of the Hijab is. So what is the Hijab? The literal meaning of a Hijab means a curtain or veil which is best understood when understanding the idea of modesty. One of the

Cultural Diversity Islam is the practice of finding one’s peace by submitting in heart, soul, and deed to the Almighty God, known as Allah in Arabic. Islamic beliefs are based on the acts of faith and duty; all those who believe in Islam are referred to as Muslims (Health Care and Religious Beliefs, 2015). For Muslims, it is required to pray five times per day; it is performed at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and late

Many religions have a form of dress that is considered acceptable, and in order to follow these religions, it is only acceptable to dress in a way that respects the religious dress code. Dress is particularly important to Muslims. According to Van Voorst, the Qur’an requires Muslim women to “dress in a way that conceals her physical beauty from men” and by wearing a hijab to cover her hair, a Muslim woman is able to fulfill this religious requirement. By prohibiting a woman from wearing a hijab, a company is also prohibiting her from practicing her religion.

The only way in which Christianity and other religions exist is in concrete, definite cultural environment. We receive, live, express and transmit our faith through culture. Culture is a reality which is difficult to define because it covers everything in human life. We can look at culture as the worldview guiding our lives. Such a worldview gradually developed from millions of agreement among members of our society through the long period of time. Our leaders have taken it upon themselves to make us aware of the standards of judgment and of conduct, which have to guide us in relating with other people. Together with other members, they have conditioned us in many ways, mostly unconscious, to accept as

Dating back as early as the 14th century, Muslims have been a part of American society. However, it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that several Muslim migrations occurred and brought individuals from various parts of the world, to include the Middle East, Europe, India, Pakistan and the Soviet Union (Haque, 2004), to the United States. This very diverse migrant demographic created a unique American Muslim population that is composed of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Such diversity within a population can be problematic, especially in the scope of providing relevant and culturally sensitive assistance in the field of Human Services, but because a Muslim’s core values typically center on religion/spirituality, community and family, generalizations can be made that offer insight to the population as a whole. This, in turn, allows for case management services to create safe and culturally sensitive environments for American Muslims to utilize.

The region of the Middle East and its inhabitants have always been a wonder to the Europeans, dating back to the years before the advent of Islam and the years following the Arab conquest. Today, the Islamic world spreads from the corners of the Philippines to the far edges of Spain and Central Africa. Various cultures have adopted the Islamic faith, and this blending of many different cultures has strengthened the universal Islamic culture. The religion of Islam has provided a new meaning to the lives of many people around the world. In the Islamic world, the religion defines and enriches culture and as a result the culture gives meaning to the individual. Islam is not only a religion, it is in its own way a culture. It may be this very

According to DeSilver (2013), a senior writer for the “Pew Research Center”, each day almost 1.6 billion Muslims face in the direction of Mecca - a city in Saudi Arabia - to perform their prayers; that’s over 23% of the world’s population. They offer these prayers not once, but five times daily. Furthermore, an excess of two million Muslims journeying each year to this sanctified city in lieu of their pilgrimage is reported (Lynch, 2014); an obligation to be fulfilled at least once in a lifetime. Moreover, Muslims make up a majority of the population in 49 countries of the world, occupying over 20% of the world’s countries. Even though Islam is often associated with the Arab world and the Middle East, fewer than 15% of Muslims are Arab, nevertheless, Muslims on a universal scale attribute this significant contribution and influence to their final prophet, Muhammad PBUH . So the question arises; how did an individual born just under one and a half millennium ago gain an influence on such a large scale that his teachings and traditions became deep-rooted in multi-ethnic cultures and societies throughout the world?

The objective of this work is to examine Islam, a highly controversial sensitive issue in today's world and specifically to examine the misconceptions, beliefs, and values of those of the Islamic faith. Most people think that the majority of Muslims live in the Middle East, while in reality there are more people of the Islamic faith living in Indonesia. Islam, just as Judaism and Christianity, is practiced in various cultures, serves to shape, and is shaped by those cultures. This study examines the perceptions of those of the three faiths in various countries and how they view one another and seek to answer how a level of threat is felt by those belonging to these three religious groups in various countries. Countries examined in this study include those of the United States, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. The depth of understanding or the teachings of Islam among the various religious groups in these various countries will also be examined in terms of how these understandings impact the ways that Muslims and non-Muslims interact and communicate with one another.

Although Islam is one of the youngest of the world’s major religions (the founder being born in 570 CE), it is already the second most popular religion in the world (second only to Christianity). With 1.2 billion Muslims across the globe, they are found to be the majority in the Middle East, parts of North and East Africa, China, South and Southeast Asia, South Eastern Europe with substantial communities in former colonizing countries like France. Islam is the fastest growing religion, already those who identify as Muslim count for

At about the age of 6, I used to think everyone was equal. I genuinely believed that people did not care about appearances. Believe it or not, I did not always wear a hijab. What is a hijab, you may ask? A hijab is a head covering Muslim females wear as a symbol of religious beliefs to show modesty.

Hijab is a piece of material that mostly Muslim women wear on their heads to hide their hair and “beauty” from the public. the wearing of head scarf varies from person to person, it can be as extreme as hide all of the hair, face, eyes forehead, ears, neck and upper part of the breasts, or as casual as just cover the back of the head or as people say in Kurdistan “they are just hiding their hair clip”. Within the Muslim society there are two sides on the wearing of Hijab. The first side is the pro-Hijab side; this side is divided into two other parts, the women who wear it to practice their religion and the women who are forced to wear the Hijab. The second side is Muslim women that are against the wearing of Hijab and see it as an act of domination of men and subordination of women. In my belief Hijab should only be worn if it is for the right reasons as such, for the respect of religion and go.