APA handbook of psychology, religion, and spirituality (Vol 2): An applied psychology of religion and spirituality (original) (raw)

Research in the psychology of religion has grown dramatically in the past 2 decades, and researchers and practitioners have gained some important insights into the impact of religious beliefs and practices on the psychological well-being of the individual (Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009; Paloutzian & Park, 2005; Pargament & Abu-Raiya, 2007). This field of inquiry, however, has focused almost exclusively on Christian populations and largely neglected people from other traditional faiths, Islam in particular. Systematic, rigorous, and large-scale scientific psychological research on Muslims has been particularly sparse (Abu-Raiya, Pargament, Stein, & Mahoney, 2007). This oversight is striking given the fact that Islam represents the fastest-growing religion in the United States and the world. An estimated 1 billion to 1.8 billion Muslims live in the world, and 6 to 7 million of them reside in the United States (U.S. State Department, 2001). Historically, the psychology of Islam has relied almost entirely on theological speculation, clinical observations, and anthropological methods of inquiry (e.g., Carter & Rashidi, 2003; Dwairy, 2006; MacPhere, 2003). Recently, this picture has begun to change as empirical studies on the psychology of Islam have grown in number. Collectively, this emerging body of empirical research has underscored the centrality of Islam to the lives of Muslims and has identified clear connections between Islamic beliefs and practices and the well-being of Muslims. In this chapter, I summarize the major findings of the emerging empirically based psychology of Islam, point to the challenges that researchers in this area might potentially face, and suggest future directions for research in this field of inquiry. To help the reader who is unfamiliar with Islam, I start with a summary of the basic tenets of this religion.