Monday, January 19, 2004

Are American Muslims Protestantizing?

Just stopped by Gene Expression and read a post, written by Razib, entitled “Islamicization, American style." According to the post, Razib comes from a Bangledesh family of moderate Muslims now living in America and within the post Razib examines how living in America has affected their piety.  The concluding statement from Razib’s post.

"Addendum: Though the secularization of the orthodox Jewry in the United States is common knowledge, the re-confessionalization of secular anti-religious Jews is not. I have read that levels of God-belief actually increased among Jews after their assimilated into American culture, as they formed a “Jew” to slot into the “Protestant-Catholic-Jew” trichotomy. My major point is that Muslims in the United States are re-organizing along Protestant lines, where my parents took Islam as a given during my childhood, they are engaging in pro-active indoctrination with my siblings, directly mimicking the church-going of their suburban neighbors. As has been noted before on this blog, French “Muslims” actually resemble French “Catholics” in their religiosity, a secularized majority and a devout minority. I think Islam in this country is going through a period of “Americanization.” Some Muslims will become absorbed into the secular-bobo cultural complex, some will form their own Protestant-like Muslim denominations and some will probably find a genial liberal Islam. I think the the fact that Muslim immigrants to this country are selection biased for education means that more will shift toward “low tension” religious groups than might otherwise be the case."

Posted by John Venlet on 01/19 at 08:50 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages