This essay is baed on Thousands of U.S. Hispanics find religious home in Islam By Evelyn Nieves. New York Times News Service. Monday, December 17, 2001. backup.

Evelyn Nieves' New York Times article presents an interesting dilemma in modern or postmodern, as it may be, social life. What is the role of the general practice of religion in community life, particularly that of displaced refugees or immigrants? I'd like you to consider this question from the perspective of several concepts:

Conceptual Links

• Tolerance of ambiguity:

  Most of us have a limited tolerance of ambiguity. Immigration or displacement by political crisis, carries considerable anxiety and ambiguity. Loss of home. Loss of community. Generally exclusion as an outsider in the new community. Loss of livelihood.

• Inclusion:

  Inclusion in any functioning community requires an understanding of its backstage behavior. Yet those who immigrate are faced with barely grasping the frontstage behavior of the new community. Even when invited into the backstage, it is difficult to sort out all the normative expectations, even frontstage from backstage expectations. Produces ambiguity and stress.

  To the extent that the new community is adversarial, the gradual acceptance of the outsiders (immigrants) means that some of them will begin to take over positions in the hierarchy that would otherwise have gone to the original members of the community. Can produce intense competition and paranoia, and lead us in the direction of xenophobia.

• Need to reduce the ambiguity by finding someone to tell you what to do. Mp> More soon . . .