Service providers perform essential functions as they help refugees identify strengths to build on in making the transition and find ways to honor cultural and religious traditions while adapting to a new sociocultural environment.

Conclusion

Resettlement can be a challenging and overwhelming experience for refugees from every cultural background and country of origin. Service providers perform essential functions as they help refugees identify strengths to build on in making the transition and find ways to honor cultural and religious traditions while adapting to a new sociocultural environment.

Working with Muslim refugees involves both special challenges and remarkable rewards. Muslim refugees’ cultural backgrounds and approaches to religious observance vary widely, and individual Muslims’ understanding of the world and their place in it grows out of a complex combination of cultural and religious factors. The challenge for service providers is to understand the strengths and meet the needs of each individual; the reward lies in seeing the creative ways that each individual finds to adapt to the United States and become a contributing member of its population.

This guide provides information on the beliefs, customs, and traditions that may inform the worldviews of Muslim refugees, and suggests ways of helping them integrate those beliefs, customs, and traditions successfully into their new lives in the United States. The authors hope that the information and suggestions given here will make service providers’ work with this diverse population both more successful and more rewarding.

The Cultural Orientation Project--http://www.culturalorientation.net, for more information contact sanja@cal.org
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