Raising Resilient Muslim Youth: Strategies for Building a Strong Muslim Identity in Children

"The development and maintenance of a healthy identity is key to promoting emotional, mental, and spiritual resilience. While identity formation is usually associated with adolescence, in reality it begins early in life and develops in stages. Thus, as Hanan recognized, one must address the question of identity in children’s early and formative years. Children constantly explore questions about who they are and who they will become physically, relationally, socially, emotionally. Our children will face difficulties at every stage in their lives, so prioritizing their identity development is one of the greatest services we as parents can provide to help them weather the inevitable storms, and—even more—grow through them.

Psychological research has found that religious identity provides a sense of continuity across time and place, and allows an individual to develop a sense of internal consistency despite the unavoidable changes that time brings to society, relationships, and self. Societal standards are constantly in flux, so if our children’s sense of self stems solely from their surroundings, confusion is inevitab

le. Instead, our goal as parents is to help our children forge a durable identity through the stability offered by Allah’s guidance—an identity based on the truth of Islam..."

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