Career guidance : perspectives from Islam and from Muslim cultures

Abstract

The vast developing body of knowledge and practices in career guidance today is almost exclusively built on Western theories drawing on psychology, sociology, economics and management, among other disciplines. And yet today most countries are multicultural, with social practices such as career guidance called to adjust to different ways of seeing the world, and of being in it. Millions of Muslims live in the West, from among a worldwide community of 1.6 billion faithful spread across the five continents. This chapter sets out to explore how faith and culture impact on our understanding of career guidance, and on how it could be delivered in ways that are sensitive to diversity. A distinction is made between, on the one hand, ‘Islamic culture’ – as it stems from the divine sources of the Qur’an and the Sunna – and Muslim culture(s) on the other – taken to represent the outcome of several civilisations that interacted together over more than 1400 years of history. In particular, the chapter challenges the imputed impact of Islam on an adherence to fatalism, which would be inimical to the exercise of free will in the choice of one’s career path. It also draws on the Qur’an and the Sunna to extrapolate Islamic approaches to guidance in general. Finally, the chapter considers the wealth of Muslim cultures, which, despite their diversity, enjoy a shared set of general features that need to be taken into account when designing career guidance services, particularly so in the West.