Abstract
Identity development has been studied from a variety of perspectives within social and developmental psychology, with positive psychology most recently adding to this literature. Finding and moving forward with a unified sense of self has been the primary focus. This search embodies the different social contexts to which we belong—in other words, our group affiliations. Although religion is one factor that provides a sense of belonging and purpose to many people, the development of a religious identity has not been explored as much as other social identities. In this chapter, we begin by providing an overview of Islam and wellbeing, including a mapping of the VIA Classification of Strengths and Virtues to verses from the Quran that form the basis of a framework of Islamic virtues. We review frameworks of identity development, including stages of the development of faith. We also look at the link between religious identity and wellbeing and provide a proposed model of religious identity development for what we term, a “Positive Islamic Identity”.
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Pasha-Zaidi, N., Odeh, M. (2019). The Life of PII: Developing a Positive Islamic Identity. In: Lambert, L., Pasha-Zaidi, N. (eds) Positive Psychology in the Middle East/North Africa. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13921-6_12
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