Christiane Campbell                                                                                                       2/12/2020

CCNY ENGL 21002 | Prof. Shamecca Harris

Informant Description 

         The pseudonym I will be using for the person I am interviewing is “Marcia”. They are a cisgender, heterosexual female. She is nearly 18 and is White with an Albanian background. The chosen topic is Islam. This topic was chosen because I am interested in Islam and she is Muslim. I was especially interested in the general principles of Islam, such as there being an engagement period to get to know a person further instead of just dating; modesty is another important concept included in the Islamic faith that I was interested in. To my surprise, Marcia does not follow the majority of Islamic principles; this is majorly due to the general attitude in Albania towards Islam. According to Marcia, most Albanians are Muslim, but are very loose in the way they practice the religion. This is a stark contrast to other countries of the world such as Iran, where Islam is practiced in a much more conservative way. For example, mentioned earlier in this informant description is how there is an engagement period practiced by Muslims where they get to know a person beyond the friendship level. The reason for this is that boyfriend-girlfirend relationships are not permitted in Islam. However, Marica says that despite being Muslim, she and other Albanian Muslims that she knows do not follow this. For them, it’s more about being romantically involved with the right person the first time instead of being romantically involved with multiple people (like the typical person) over the period of your life. As a result of this, Marcia agrees that there is a pressure to get your love life right the first time. Another concept I mentioned that is important to Islam is modesty. In this religion, it is widely accepted that you are not supposed to show a lot of skin and in many cases you are to wear a headscarf (a hijab, in this case). Marcia and the majority of Albanian Muslims wear clothes that expose a substantial amount of skin, such as shorts and also do not wear the hijab. Overall, I was extremely surprised to learn that there are liberal Muslims and that Albanian culture is the reason that Islam is practiced with little to no conservatism there. However, I feel I should not have been surprised because there are liberal participants of every faith and culture is an influence in every country to how a religion is practiced there.