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What is cognitive dissonance and how does it develop among Muslims?

11/28/2012

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A famous experiment was conducted in the 1950’s that involved several social scientists infiltrating a doomsday cult by enlisting themselves as fellow doomsday members. The message of this particular cult was simple: the world will come to an end on December 21st, 1954.

Thus, hiding in plain sight, the social scientists covertly investigated a simple, but undoubtedly interesting, phenomenon: what would happen if, on that very day, the world remained as it was?

What do you think happened? Perhaps you believe, in the face of excruciating evidence - i.e. everyone is still alive - people would just leave their humble doomsday temple never to return? If the entire cult’s philosophy revolved around earth’s destruction on a particular day, and it didn’t happen, then perhaps it’s time to pack your bags and look up some other doomsday cult or at least re-evaluate your beliefs, right? Actually, if people were so simple, I would’ve never started this blog.


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What's wrong with the Muslim community?

11/8/2012

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Several weeks ago, I was told the police wanted to see me. No worries, they just wanted to organize a meeting concerning an issue they were having difficulties with. With us were several school principals, several representatives of youth centers, several researchers, the police of course, and me. We were perhaps 20 in total, and none of us were Muslim besides me and a cop. Naturally, this last piece of information would be quite negligible if the subject of our meeting wasn’t concerning the Muslim community. Indeed, we were meeting because there are gangs of youth, primarily of North African descent, causing havoc in a certain area of Montreal.

So I was sitting there in the meeting, constantly shaking my head in disappointment - I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t disappointed that they’re helping these youth; after all, this is a communal problem, and the police deserve a little credit for seeking consultation rather than throwing these kids in juvenile prison where they learn to become better criminals. We discussed the difficulties that Muslims families go through, the hardships of Muslims adolescents, the school system, the consequences of discrimination, etc. It wasn’t comprehensive - the meeting only lasted about two hours - but at the very least we touched upon different strategies to prevent Arab Muslim youth from ending up on the streets, and perhaps different ways we can intervene.


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