Correlation of Civil and Religious Aspects of Social Identity

Abstract

The paper presents an experience of research of a complex identity as identification of a conflict between civil European and religious Islamic cultures. Social identity is a person’s representation of himself/herself in social structures of different scales: national, ethnic, and religious. It is proved that religious identification forms social, as well as personal identity of a Muslim. The authors consider the development of Islamic personal identity in the process of self-identifying reflection and intragroup and extragroup relations in the religious community. The parameters of identity are defined by: a) individual interpretation of
Islam by the religious person, b) interpretation of Islam in the religious community, c) relations between the religious person, community and other social groups. The concept of a complex social identity (S. Roccas, M. Brewer) was a theoretical construct used for determining the compatibility of civil and religious identity and evaluating its complexity. The study involved Muslims with different levels of Islamic
personal identity: missing, determined, found and acquired.
The study established the tendency of the reduction in the level of civil social identity under the influence of the religious identity of people who identified themselves with Islam. The problem of their social identity was studied in metaphors of conflict and balance from the European social and psychological practice. The metaphor of
conflict is based on the impossibility of acculturation of the Islamic communities and predicts the development of destructive relations between the religious people, their religious communities, and other social groups. The metaphor of balance presupposes the collapse of Islamic personal identity as a result of the reduction of radicalism in
the religious communities and encouragement of individualization of Muslims by means of political, social, and cultural recognition in the society.