[wvns] New Study Examines Muslim Youth
New Study Examines Impact of Islamic Religion on Muslim Youth
Illinois Wesleyan University
http://www2.iwu.edu/CurrentNews/newsrelease07/fac_DoranFrench_507.shtml
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – In the days since al-Qaeda became a household
word, Westerners have grappled with the distinction between radical
Islam and Islam as practiced in mainstream Muslim culture. To gain
insights into the impact of religion on Muslim youth, the first phase
of a long-term study has found that social success is strongly linked
to religious involvement within the Islamic majority nation of
Indonesia, according to the study's co-author Doran French, professor
and chair of psychology at Illinois Wesleyan University.
This study of Muslim 13-year-olds found a correlation between
religious involvement across many indices of social competence or
success. French and his collaborators found that adolescents with
higher degrees of spirituality and religious practice were more
popular with peers, had greater academic achievement, displayed more
prosocial behavior (being helpful to others), had greater self-esteem,
and were more able to regulate their behavior. Those with higher
religious involvement were less likely to exhibit deviant behavior or
experience negative "internalizing behavior" such as depression or
anxiety.
French suggested that a key to interpreting these findings is
understanding the context of a homogenously religious culture, where
religion permeates society and is a public, community identity rather
than a compartmentalized, private experience as in the U.S. For
example, he said, the team's research assistants would stop meetings
to observe the call to prayers, for which television shows also are
interrupted.
"I think within a homogeneous religious society, being a competent
person, being a successful person also means being a religious
person," French said.
The team's work didn't compare believers vs. nonbelievers or Muslims
vs. Christians, but variations within an all-Muslim group. Unlike many
studies of religion and social adjustment, which are often based on a
single factor such as church attendance, French noted that their study
factored in both the practice of outward religious rituals and
internal spiritual activities such as meditation.
Their research involved 183 Muslim adolescents in Indonesia.
Indonesia is home to the world's largest Muslim population, but has a
democratic government and a judicial system based on Western law
rather than Islamic law.
French presented his research, "Islam and Peer Relationships and
Competence in Indonesian Adolescents," at the biennial meeting of the
Society for Research in Child Development in Boston last month.
Co-authors on the work include Nancy Eisenberg and Julie Vaughan of
Arizona State University and Urip Purwono and Telie Ari of Padjadjaran
University in Bandung. Their research is supported by The Institute
for Research on Unlimited Love - Altruism, Compassion, Service at the
School of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, and by the
Fetzer Institute.
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