A question for Muslims who feel they need to conform to perceived expectations

diwana · December 2, 2013, 12:17am

Re: A question for Muslims who feel they need to conform to perceived expectations

Instead of taking it from religious angle Diwana dear, and pitting resident vs non resident, liberal vs religious, go a bit deeper.

Why do people need to conform to prevelant culture around them?

Its true of everyone, including those living in Pakistan! or other muslim countries.

And perhaps the answer lies in evolution. If it was not conforming to prevalent culture, humans would not have been living in societies. Dr Gregory Berns has even elucidated the areas in brain that are involved in conforming to peer pressure.

*Neural mechanisms of the influence of popularity … [Neuroimage. 2010] - PubMed - NCBI

Sensitivity to popularity was linked to lower activation levels in the middle temporal gyrus, suggesting a lower depth of musical semantic processing. Our results suggest that a principal mechanism whereby popularity ratings affect consumer choice is through the** anxiety generated by the mismatch between one’s own preferences and others’**. This mismatch anxiety motivates people to switch their choices in the direction of the consensus. Our data suggest that this is a major force behind the conformity observed in music tastes in some teenagers.*

Hope this helps.

Bhai! I like the post for having some substance. Agree that it is the anxiety .

The anxiety and false perception of being outcast, “different”, “intolerant”, “fundamentalist” or even “terrorist” which may make people act outside their own chosen beliefs. One of my question was based on this ‘anxiety’.

Your post is related to culture however, and **I did not intend to discuss cultural conformity. ** Which is a very different topic and interestingly enough, some people are trying to justify acting against religious beliefs with an excuse of being culturally harmonious.

Sadly they cannot differentiate between the two.

To those who think it is somehow an attack on faiths of people, they need to know their is no attack on anyone’s faith, RATHER the questions were based on ACTING OUT OF THEIR FAITHS and how they justify is, what the curiosity is.

(Contniued)

P.S. I am sorry mods, I may end up posting multiple posts in a row if no one posts in between,… but I have few more posts to respond to. Feel free to merge them if I did not get the chance.