Controversial Religious group on resume

I was "fund raising chair" for a religious community (muslim community) at my school and did a lot of fund raising and worked with budgets and what not. I worked with large sums of money, and represented a huge population. My question is: is it better to take the position off of my resume and replace it with an activity that isn't as relevant to what I will be applying for (I banking) but less controversial? Or in other words, would you or do you think others might view this in a negative light?

12 Comments
 
thebrofessor

does your specific group have a bad rep? if not, I wouldn't worry. may be naive, but I feel like people know the difference between people of muslim faith and the violent fundamentalist groups.

however, if you were finance chair for Young Jihadists of the Tri State Area, that'd be an autoding.

Thanks for the quick reply. The organization has a good rep at my school, and all of the bullet points on my resume describe work that I did in order to raise funds (the only way you could even tell it was a religious position would be by reading the title).

 

should be fine. I agree with the other guy who alluded to only putting it if you don't have enough other relevant experience. I think that religion and politics are different however, you rarely hear any breakroom arguments about the messiah and who should've followed Mohammed (family or elected person?), and therefore I think it's not a negative like saying you were a tea party fundraiser.

 

Not sure what the consensus will be from others, but I personally don't list my leadership position in College Republicans on my resume. Now it's more so because I have enough relevant info that it isn't worth the space, but before that I mostly did so because you never know whether the person reading your resume might subconsciously take it into account (positively or negatively).

 
Best Response

Like others have said, unless it's a controversial group beyond simply being an Islamic organization I don't see why you shouldn't include it. I've received plenty of resumes over the years with Hillel House and Catholic org's and charities (especially from Catholic schools) on them with leadership positions.

And forgive me if I'm wrong but if I had to gamble I'd bet your name has something of an Arabic/ME/Indonesian/etc route to it (simply based on almost all of the Muslims I've known) so by not including a Muslim org on your resume you're most likely not hiding the fact that you're not lily a white Nigel Double-Barrel name WASP with Mayflower routes. If someone's prejudiced enough to not include you because you list a college Muslim group you belonged to they're most likely going to ding you because your name suggests that you are anyway.

 
Dingdong08

Like others have said, unless it's a controversial group beyond simply being an Islamic organization I don't see why you shouldn't include it. I've received plenty of resumes over the years with Hillel House and Catholic org's and charities (especially from Catholic schools) on them with leadership positions.

This. If someone isn't going to hire you because of your affiliation with a religious group (highly illegal), you don't want to work there anyways.

 

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