Culture and Religion in Kiser's The Commander of the Faithful

During this unit of human geography, I have learned so much about religions, ethnicities, and even culture. For example, I learned about the religion Islam and how it is a religion of peace just like the Hindu religion and as well as the Buddhist religion and much more others. These religions and some others have much in common whether they accept it , these religions and some more are all peaceful religions and all teach good morals and principles to the followers, everyone following footsteps of good people and their good actions and/or deeds. When I was reading chapter 7 ( ethnicity) I learned that ethnicity also has to do with culture and that the chapter before that one, we were reading about ( folk culture) and how it much ties in with

By studying cultures and religions other than my own in Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and Greece it became clear to me that religion plays a huge part in shaping ones cultural identity. Bringing this "cultural identity" viewpoint to its

Is religion alone that powerful enough to coerce an abundance of immigrants to start afresh with a new country? One of the main reasons immigrants move to the United States or any nation for that matter is for religious freedom and independence. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, readers follow the lives and narratives of two different women and their struggle to survive their brutal society. Through the book, the subject of religion and its impact on the two women is broached and further explored. In Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, religion serves as justification of several aspects of the Afghan society; religion is used to justify violence, patriarchy, and discrimination against women.

Is religion alone that powerful enough to coerce an abundance of immigrants to start afresh with a new country? One of the main reasons immigrants move to the United States or any nation for that matter is for religious freedom and independence. In A Thousand Splendid Suns, readers follow the lives and narratives of two different women and their struggle to survive their brutal society. Through the book, the subject of religion and its impact on the two women is broached and further explored. In Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, religion serves as justification of several aspects of the Afghan society; religion is used to justify violence, patriarchy, and discrimination against women and other minority groups.

Besides ethnicity and race, Africans religion had a significant impact on African American culture and survived the psychological intrusion of American Christianity. Gomez is convincing in his accounts of Islam and Christianity. Islam, Gomez suggests, "may have influenced African -American culture in ways herefore unimagined" (82). Gomez's goal is to find out how these different peoples and societies influenced their world.

The Islamic Golen Age was a tiem of knowlegable prosparity, and intellectual gain. People from

During the last eleven years I have worked at the department of motor vehicles. I have met many people from different backgrounds and cultures. While I worked at the Tempe office, I came across many people from the Middle East, mainly Arabs and people from Pakistan and India. It was through my dealings with Middle East people that I notice how friendly and accessible they are. It was then that an interest in finding more about this culture started. When I decided to visit a mosque as part this project I was not sure what to expect. My experience is divided in two, as I ended up visiting two different mosques. On Saturday January 24 around 12:45 pm I arrived at a mosque located in

To further this argument, research conducted by Dr Kevin Dunn (Christopher & Deresky 2008) exemplified how ‘marginalised’ the minority of Australian Muslims and people of Middle Eastern origin are in the Australian society. Australians are thought to be of the opinion that people with these cultural and religious backgrounds are the least likely to be able to fit into the culture of Australians (Christopher & Deresky, 2008).

The idea of a clash of civilizations can be originated largely to Samuel Huntington. He describes a future where the majority of human conflicts will be due to “cultural differences”. (Huntington). In The Butterfly Mosque, Willow Wilson, an American, travels to Egypt, converts to Islam, and marries an Egyptian man. This places her at the fault lines of two cultures. Through her experiences, she sees the frontlines of this clash of civilizations that Huntington predicted, and tries to uncover if she can thread the needle between her two cultures. In this paper, I will argue that through her experiences with Muslims in Tura, other Westerners in Egypt, and in reactions to her writings, she discovers that the clash of civilizations is real. This clash results in cruelty, fear, self-hatred, and an internal existential crisis in Willow that leaves her uncertain about whether or not she can navigate her internal clash of cultures.

Mariam and her mother ‘Nana’, reside in a kolba (hut) outside of Herat. Her father was a successful businessman named Jalil who was a polygamist and had nine children. Mariam disobeyed her mother’s wishes and hiked into town to see her Father. Mariam returned to her kolba to her mother’s suicide – forcing her to live with Jalil until he insisted an arranged marriage with Rasheed who was thirty years elder. Once in Kabul, Mariam discovered her infertility complications. Rasheed became angry towards his wife’s inability to carry a child – in particular a son, so he became extremely abusive. Laila grew up in Kabul with Tariq who eventually became romantic despite the boundaries between unwed men and women. War took over Afghanistan and Tariq’s

The Spirit World (pg 25): Some West Africans who lived immediately south of the Sahara the Fulani’s in Senegal, the Mande-speakers in Mali, and the Hausas in northern Nigeria learned about Islam from Arab merchants and Muslim leaders called imams.

Clifford Geertz, in his essay “Religion as a Cultural System”, presents what he considers to be the definition of religion. According to him, religion is about symbols and people use these symbols as a guide for their view of the world and how they should behave in that world. Religion, states Geertz is “a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, page 90). What he is trying to do in this essay is provide the reader with a way of understanding religion by

When we interact with people from other cultures it is important to understand that there is a history behind how they view us and how we view them. Many cultures within our country, as well as throughout the world, have such different belief systems from ours that if we don’t make a point of learning about the history behind other belief systems

When discussing the various places of worship, it was apparent that children were not aware that they varied for each religion; Although, Child Three could identify a Church and a Mosque. When discussing the religions with children, it was clear they could see a difference between them and they were intrigued to learn more. This activity was intended to promote children’s respect and value towards the various religions (Bruce, 2005). Which corresponds with the Equality Act (2010), as by developing children’s knowledge of different cultures within society will help to prevent discrimination, as children will be aware of the diversities within the community (Gov., 2013).

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