Cultural Reporter Project

The beginning of this assignment description asks us to answer the question; What is culture? Hmm..how does someone begin to answer that? Do you answer it based on what you have developed as your own definition of culture? Do you define it based on the "standard" dictionary definition? I keep running over these thoughts in my head because culture is a very complex term. It may only by 7 letters long, but the meaning of this little word can be completely different amongst different people. I have my own personal definition of culture, but I can guarantee you that my definition is going to be different than someone in a different country. Hell, I can pretty easily say that my definition of culture is going to be different than most of the people in this class. That is why culture is such an interesting thing..everyone's culture is different.

OK, rant is over now..let's get down to brass tax. Let us see what the Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines culture as; "culture: the act of developing the intercultural and moral faculties especially by education." Our textbook describes culture as "learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people." (Martin & Nakayama, 2012, p. 88) Within the discussion of culture, our book states that "culture has been defined in many ways .... Because there are many acceptable definitions of culture, and because it is a complex concept, it is important to reflect on the centrality of culture in our own interactions." (Martin & Nakayama, 2012, p. 88) Again, because culture is so varied amongst different cultures, it is one of those terms that can both connect different cultures while at the same time cultural differences have started wars and other acts of violence.

The next thing we are supposed to address in this blog is a cultural group of interest to us. Again, I probably over thought my cultural group, but, that is kind of how I tend to do things. Early on I decided that I was going to focus on a cultural group based on religion because religion is a very important aspect of my life and I feel that it is one of the most argued and discussed topics in the world. I was born and raised in a Catholic home and I still identify as a Catholic today, but, I would be lying if I told you there were some aspects of the Catholic religion I don't believe in, but that is not what this discussion is about. I wanted to pick a religion that I knew of, but didn't know very much about. Ultimately the wheel inside my head stopped on the Islamic religion and culture.

The Islam cultures and religions dating back to the 7th century. With this culture being around for such a long period of time, there have been many different variations and alternate cultures that have sprout up from the basis of the Islamic faith. The Islamic culture people are very passionate about their religion and culture and pass down their attitudes and cultural patterns to their children. According to www.muslimpopulation.com, as of 2012 there are 2.1 billion people in the world who identify with the Islamic (Muslim) culture and religion. With more than 1/4 of the world population, the Islamic culture is one of significant importance.


The history of the Islamic culture would fit in with the ethnic histories definition, histories of ethnic groups (Martin & Nakayama, 2012, p. 141), in our text book. Islam can be a very influential part of everyday society and there have been a number of wars and violent acts enacted through the instruction of their religious text, the Quran. In fact, the Quran specifically calls for Muslims to go to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule, "And slay them wherever you find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution of Muslims is worse than slaughter of non-believers."{Quran (2:191-193)} Now, I am not saying that every Muslim in the world wants to kill every non-Muslim, in fact many of today's modern Muslims choose to interpret the Quran's violent readings in their own way and do not portray any violent acts. I am not in any way undermining the Quran or it's teachings, I know the Christian Bible has its fair share of verses that can cause controversy today, I am just explaining the background of the culture.

The role of women in Muslim culture is much different than most people believe it to be. The Quran asserts that men and women are created from one soul to be partners to each other, forever. In fact the Islamic faith, marriage between a man and woman is of utmost importance.. In fact, the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, said that "marriage is half of religion." Although, the roles of men and women in society can differ, the Quran says that men are responsible for financial support of women and the Quran also states that one man can marry up to four women, but in today's time both of these issues are under criticism. In some instances the Muslim women are the financial providers of the family and some marriage contracts ensure there will only be one wife and of course in areas where polygamy is against the law, there is only one woman for every man.

This culture differs from my identity in a multitude of ways. To start, I am all for being serious about your religion and defending it to all ends, but the world is a very, very large place and you are going to run into people that do not agree with you and your religion. I won't go into far detail about my views on war compared to religion because this is neither the time nor the place, but, that is one of my main contrasts with this culture. There are other differences between my culture and theirs and I hope over the completion of this project and class I will learn to understand these differences and come to terms with them. As I said before, the world is a big place full of people that are different from you and I and it is a guarantee that people are going to fight and argue about each other, that is just how life goes sometime.

Our book talked about contact hypothesis being the "notion that better communication between groups is facilitated simply by putting people together in the same place and allowing them to interact." (Martin & Nakayama, 2012, p. 155.) So, who knows, if we can someday live amongst each other and educate ourselves about and with one another, this world may become a better place. Now, I am definitely not going to start spouting off "hippy jargon," because that I am about as far from a hippy as you can get...but who knows, maybe someday we will learn to live with and amongst each other.

Mosque located in Kazakhstan.

 References:

Kazakhstan Mosque Picture. Accessed 2-8-2013.
http://www.all-wallpapers.net/wallpaper/islam-mosque-landscape/

Muslim Population World Counter. Accessed 2-8-2013
http://www.muslimpopulation.com/World/

Merriam Webster Dictionary Culture Definition. Accessed 2-8-2013
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

Martin, J.N. & Nakayame, T.K. (2012). Intercultrual Communication in Contexts (6th ed.) Boston, MA: McGraw Hll.

Picture of passage from Quran. Accessed 2-8-2013
http://quraninstitute.net/archives/1

Picture of Muslim Woman. Accessed 2-8-2013
http://blog.buildersofzion.org/2010/02/20/muslim-infiltration-of-tea-party-events/

Picture of Muslim Crescent Moon Symbol. Accessed 2-8-2013.
http://islam.about.com/od/history/a/crescent_moon.htm

The Quran