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Cultural Differences Between Saudi Arabia And United States

Decent Essays

Julia Nebrasky
Paper 2
Dr. Knight
September 30, 2015

Cultural Differences: Saudi Arabia and United States of America

Culture refers to a lifestyle of a people including all their ideas, values, knowledge, behavior, and materials or objects that they share (Knight 2015). Cultures vary from groups and societies as big as continent to continent, and as small as family to family. A great way to observe cultural differences is to look at two different countries. Saudi Arabia and the United States of America are societies that both have their own independent cultures. The two countries have very different cultures from one another. We can observe this by looking at the different cultural traditions, customs, behaviors, norms, values, beliefs, and materials that are immersed into each society’s culture. These cultural aspects are preserved and transmitted by the members of one generation to the next (Knight 2015). Saudi Arabia is a Middle Eastern country that occupies most of the Arabian Peninsula. It is the original homeland of the Arab people and of Islam. The current population in Saudi Arabia is 28.83 million (Worldbank, 2014). The main spoken language of the country is …show more content…

All Saudi Arabian citizens are Muslims, and half or more of the immigrants are also Muslims. This is likely due to the fact that non-Muslim faiths are not allowed to practice in Saudi Arabia. Much of everyday life in Saudi Arabia is shaped by the rituals included in the practice of Islam. Muslims partake in five daily prayers that constitute one of the five pillars of Islam (Al-Farsy, 1982). Islam is so deeply embedded into Saudi Arabian culture that their national flag is green, the color of Islam, and bears a white inscription that translates as, "There is No God but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God” which comes from the third pillar of Islam, one of the five main philosophies practiced by

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