Is suicide the unforgivable sin? Most Western arguments against suicide stem from Christian arguments. Christianity has a long-standing position that suicide is morally wrong. However, on the issue of suicide and salvation, Christianity is divided. D...
The book and film franchise of Harry Potter has inspired a monumental fandom community with a veracious output of fanfiction and general musings on the text and the vivid universe contained therein. A significant portion of these texts deal with Prof...
Religion has long been a driving force in the process of globalization. This idea is not controversial or novel thinking, nor is it meant to be. However, the dominant reasoning on the subject of globalization, expressed by authors like Thomas Friedma...
In its declaration of principles, the 1987 Philippine Constitution provides for the separation of Church and State. While the principle honors distinctions between temporal and spiritual functions, both Church and State maintain a unique and cooperat...
According to Islamic religious teachings, some Jews confirmed the authenticity of Muhammad’s prophethood and joined him. Most Jews, however, are condemned for both rejecting the Prophet and failing to live up to their own religious imperatives....
How does Islam view substance addiction? What happens to the soul of the person suffering from addictive disorder? What happens to his relationship with God? These are some of the questions that this article tries to answer. Three models on drug addi...
This essay examines the antebellum history of interpretation surrounding the curse of Ham in Gen 9:18–29. It explores how modern notions of scientific racism were read into the story as a de facto justification for the transatlantic slave trade and t...
The notion that in previous centuries Jews were considered to be black, or seen as blacks, has gained broad acceptance in scholarly discourse on the Jewish body since the early 1990s. The present article considers the notion analytically and then exa...
Legitimate companies are key facilitators of human trafficking. These corporate facilitators include not only websites providing advertisements for commercial sex services but also hotels and motels. Analysis of all active federal criminal sex traffi...
The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) is a measure of the centrality, importance or salience of religious meanings in personality that has been applied yet in more than 100 studies in sociology of religion, psychology of religion and religious st...
The Brief RCOPE is a 14-item measure of religious coping with major life stressors. As the most commonly used measure of religious coping in the literature, it has helped contribute to the growth of knowledge about the roles religion serves in the pr...
At our core, or coeur, we humans are spiritual beings. Spirituality can be viewed in a variety of ways from a traditional understanding of spirituality as an expression of religiosity, in search of the sacred, through to a humanistic view of spiritua...
While there are Muslims who hold that the two identities Muslim and homosexual are mutually exclusive and that it is illegal to practise homosexual acts, the ongoing Muslim revisionist movement seems to provide a more understanding approach. Members...
This paper argues for the appreciation of Filipino folk religiosity as part of cultivating authentic faith expressions among Filipinos. It presents historical, anthropological, sociocultural, and theological views on significant folk religious groups...
The emphasis on health ministry within the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) movement led to the development of sanitariums in mid-nineteenth century America. These facilities, the most notable being in Battle Creek, Michigan, initiated the development of...
There is need for a brief measure of religiosity that can be included in epidemiological surveys to examine relationships between religion and health outcomes. The Duke University Religion Index (DUREL) is a five-item measure of religious involvement...
The figure of Antichrist, linked in recent US apocalyptic thought to President Barack Obama, forms a central component of Christian end-times scenarios, both medieval and modern. Envisioned as a false-messiah, deceptive miracle-worker, and prophet of...
Muslim–Jewish relations have a long and complex history. However, notions that all Jews and Muslims are eternal enemies are proven wrong both historically and by today’s survey data. A comprehensive review of the available survey data from the last t...
This article examines the roles that religious pluralism and civic rights played in Prophet Muhammad’s vision of a “Muslim nation”. I demonstrate how Muhammad desired a pluralistic society in which citizenship and equal rights were granted to all peo...
This paper is an inquiry into a contemporary heavy metal band from Sweden called Ghost. Ghost released its first studio album in 2010 and, while there is some discussion as to what their genre is exactly, they immediately became a rising star in the...
This paper explores the intersectionality of race and Islamophobia by using a set of empirical data relating to the experiences of American Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States. Through a multi-tiered methodology, the paper reveals how racial...
The classical account of the Brahmin priestly class and its role in Indian religion has seen remarkable continuity during the past two centuries. Its core claims appear to remain unaffected, despite the major shifts that occurred in the theorizing of...
In the last 50 years, measures of religious constructs have been the subject of much scientific attention. Cross-cultural considerations necessitate that empirical claims on assessments about religion are validated by local data. While religion is ty...
Any pandemic disorganizes the life of wider society. One of the manifestations of social activity is religious life. Despite progressing secularization, both religion, churches, and denominational associations have an impact on individual ethical cho...
The global threat of Al Qaeda post 9/11 and ISIL, increased Sunni-Shia conflicts, and violence in the Middle East and Pakistan dominate headlines and challenge governments in the region and globally. Both Muslim extremists and some Western experts an...
This article explores the phenomena of violence and jihad in three parts: their emergence and trajectory in the Qur’anic text, their meanings, and their entanglement with the religious cause. The objective was to examine the interactions between viol...
The concept of ‘love jihad’ has typically been studied within the context of feminism, nationalism, or religion. However, a singular approach fails to recognize the interconnected impact that each of these has on the development of India&...
Hitler had a noble purpose (to save the world) and a strong faith in the laws of Nature as he understood Nature. He was, then, a spiritual person, though his spirituality was pathological and destructive. Here, the example of Hitler, his faith, and h...
Digital platforms have empowered individuals and communities to re-negotiate long-established notions of religion and authority. A new generation of social media influencers has recently emerged in the Muslim world. They are western-educated, unique...
This article is a theoretical treatment of the ways in which local worldviews on wealth acquisition give rise to contemporary manifestations of spirituality in cyberspace. It unpacks spiritual (occult) economies and wealth generation through a histor...
The Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) is a 16-item self-report measure designed to assess ordinary experiences of connection with the transcendent in daily life. It includes constructs such as awe, gratitude, mercy, sense of connection with the...
The primary aim of this paper is to offer an overview of current research into the relationship between religion and family life and to offer suggestions for future research. In order to do this, the paper distinguishes between research in which reli...
This review was set in the context of African spirituality and ecology. Specifically, the review addressed issues of African spirituality and the environment from a Kenyan context. Through analyses on existing literature, we examined African worldvie...
This article interprets the narratives of sex manuals produced within the Malay-Indonesian archipelago before the coming of Western colonialism and the dawn of postcolonial Islamic resurgence. In the collection of Malaysian libraries and museums, the...
This article presents the findings of a national survey on Islam in Australia based on responses of 1034 Muslim Australian citizens and permanent residents. Knowing what Muslim Australians think about Islam in relation to Australian society is essent...
This paper argues that the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the Greeks of Pontus and the Greek Catastrophe, and the Nestorian and Assyrian genocide, all of which took place during the late Ottoman Empire, were not isolated historic incidents, but r...
In line with the special issue’s focus on material religion and ritualistic objects, this article focuses on the multi-sensory prayers that certain groups of Hindu women craft in cow dung at the doorstep of their residences during Divali. This yearly...
Twice in the Hebrew Bible—Exodus 17:14–16 and Deuteronomy 25: 17–19—the ancient Israelites were commanded to “blot out” the memory of Amalek, their enemy for all time (as God intended to do as well). Yet, because these texts are a part of Jewish (and...
Many conventional features of world tree motifs in the ancient Near East—including stalked palmettes, aureoles of water lily palmettes connected by pliant stems, floral rosettes, winged disks and bud-and-blossom motifs—trace largely from...
This article advocates a “glocal turn” in the religion–globalization problematic. It proposes a model of multiple glocalizations in order to analyze the historically constituted relationship between world religions and local cultures. First, the conc...
There is increasing interest regarding prayer in healthcare. Prayer is an activity related to spirituality and religion. Positive outcomes have been identified regarding spirituality in health. This study aims to investigate the effects on patients’...
The Muslim community in America has been facing turmoil, particularly after the events of 9/11. Muslims are facing a number of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim discriminatory practices, biases, and sentiments from many Americans. These religious prejudic...
The Netherlands is known for its progressive attitude towards dealing with sexuality. Sex education has a permanent place in the educational system. Dutch legislation provides schools with the opportunity to teach the subject in their own way, in lin...
This paper sheds light on the treatment of the ‘problem of evil’ and human suffering from an Islamic perspective. I begin by providing an overview of the term ‘evil’ in the Qur’an to highlight its multidimensional meaning and to demonstrate the overa...
Utilizing data from 326 cases of alleged child sexual abuse that occurred at or through activities provided by Protestant Christian congregations, this study examines demographic and contextual characteristics of alleged child sexual abuse that took...
Recent generations of young adults are experiencing a new life course stage: emerging adulthood. During this ‘new’ stage of the life course, traditional social bonds and turning points may not be present, may be delayed, or may not operat...
For several hundred years, from the late Iron Age to the end of the 2nd century BCE, the southern neighbor of Judea was “Idumea”, populated by descendants of Edomites, together with Qedarite and other Arabs and a mix of additional ethnici...
This paper seeks to advance the global study of religiosity and spirituality by conducting a meta-analysis of major approaches in the field. While the field, and thus the collected publications, are dominated by Western approaches, particular attenti...
This paper examines two sets of interrelated issues informing contemporary discussions on Islam and education that take place within both Muslim majority and minority contexts. The first set of issues concerns the academic conceptualisation of the st...
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a multi-racial and multi-religious nation, with Muslims being in the majority. Its 1973 Constitution guarantees religious freedom to all religious minorities, including Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs. This is mainly...
