Toward an Islamic Solution to the Problem of Identity Crisis

One of the worldwide theoretical and practical challenges to the people living in the twenty first century is the problem of identity crisis. It is connected with the issue of globalization, which began, with a big hue and cry, by the final years of the twentieth century. Globalization as a cultural, social, economic, and political movement, is planned and carried out by dominating secular powers of the world, during which a “cultural surprise-attack” or the so-called “cultural invasion” is discharged in order to globalize the materialist belief-system, secular values, and hedonistic life-style. Since culture is the building block of the identity of a person, a society, and a civilization, a prerequisite for such an action-plan was to destroy the cultural infrastructure of the victim individual (or society) in order to pave the way for the alien culture to intrude, which mostly culminates in identity crisis. In this paper, I will examine the nature of identity (at both individual and social levels), its importance, transformation, and crisis. Then I will analyze the determinate factors in such a crisis, and bring the discussion to an end with proposing some Islamic-based solutions to identity crisis as one of the major problems of youth living in this period of human history.