ʿAbdolkarim Soroush’s Approach to ‘Experience’ as a Basis for His Reform Project

During the past few decades, many Muslim scholars and reformers have established new principles of reform through various hermeneutical approaches towards primary sources of Islam. Thus, Islamic thought, like any other religious tradition, has undergone a process of development in the modern period and will surely continue to do so in the future. ?Abdolkarim Soroush (b. 1945) is undoubtedly one of the most influential religious reformers in contemporary Iran and he has gained an international reputation. One of the central ideas that consistently appear throughout Soroush’s writings is that religion can be linked to a type of human ‘experience’, a theme that has long been the concern of Western scholars of religion. This article argues that the theme of experience became the fundamental element in two aspects of Soroush’s reform project, namely his approach to qur’anic rulings and his philosophy of religious pluralism. Indeed, the article shows that Soroush’s conception of revelation as a religious experience of the Prophet Muhammad is not only confined to a theological depiction of God’s relation to humanity, but also has legal and social implications for approaching Islam in the context of the present time.     

Federal District Court Decision Making in Public Forum and Religious Speech Cases, 1973–2001

This article investigates federal district court decision making in First Amendment lawsuits concerning religious expression and public forums. As trial courts, district courts are the first to adjudicate claims concerning religious speech in public places and thus they determine whether a public forum is open to expression in general, as well as grant or deny access to that forum for a religious speaker. With a comprehensive database of all district court cases concerning religious expression and public forum doctrine, we use logistic regression to measure the significance of several legal and extra-legal variables in order to explain district court outcomes.     

Examining the Effects of Exposure to Religion in the Workplace on Perceptions of Religious Discrimination

Charges of religion-related employment discrimination have doubled in the past decade. Multiple factors are likely contributing to this trend, such as the increased religious diversity of the US population and the increased interest of employees and some employers in bringing religion to work. Using national survey data we examine how the presence of religion in the workplace affects an individual’s perception of religious discrimination and how this effect varies by the religious tradition of the individual. We find that the more an individual reports that religion comes up at work, the more likely it is that the individual will perceive religious discrimination. This effect remains even after taking into account the individual’s own religious tradition, religiosity, and frequency of talking to others about religion. This effect is stronger, however, for Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and for the religiously unaffiliated. In workplaces where religion is said to never come up these groups are among the least likely to perceive religious discrimination. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Evangelical Protestants are more likely to perceive religious discrimination in the workplace even if they say that religion never comes up at work, which makes the effect of exposure to religion in the workplace weaker for these groups. These results show that keeping religion out of the workplace will largely eliminate perceptions of religious discrimination for some groups, but for other groups the perceptions will remain.     

Negotiating Apostasy: Applying to “Leave Islam” in Malaysia

In Malaysia, freedom of religion has clear limitations, especially regarding Muslims wishing to leave Islam, who may currently find it difficult to secure legal acceptance. However, such applications are received under a Sharia legal provision in Negeri Sembilan – the only state in Malaysia that allows a Muslim to change his religion for reasonable cause. The application is made at the Sharia High Court, and is then forwarded to the Mufti's Department, which in turn arranges a consultation for the applicant to reconsider his decision. This article critically reviews this process of application to leave Islam and also provides a clear mapping of principal court decisions and an analysis of the legal rationale for accepting some applications and refusing others. The paper is critical of the disproportionate discretion afforded to Muslim bureaucrats in the Mufti's Department with regard to determining an individual's religious rights and argues that, in Malaysia, the power to legally determine or classify religion should be confined to the Sharia Court. Finally, the article evaluates how “applications to leave Islam” are reconciled with and distinguished from the Islamic prohibition of “apostasy” and so is relevant to Islamic countries beyond Malaysia.     

Religion and Decisions About Marriage,Residence, Occupation,and Children

Using data from the first wave of the Portraits of American Life Study (PALS), we consider the extent to which people report that religious factors influence their decisions about career choice, marriage, residency, and number of children. We find significant positive relationships between the importance of religion or religious faith and the perceived influence of religious factors on one's choice of occupation, decision about whether or whom to marry, decision about where to live, and decision about how many children to have. We also observe significant interactions between the importance of religion or religious faith and religious tradition, but we find no consistent patterns across our decision‐making outcomes. Our preliminary conclusions raise significant questions about the broader relationship between religion, perception, and decision making.     

Advocacy,brainwashing theories,and new religious movements

Advocacy by scholars in the field of new religious movements emerged during the ‘cult wars,’ which in the U.S. had their peak between 1970 and 1990 and continued in Europe and Japan in subsequent decades. Advocacy focused on the question of whether the ‘cults’ used a persuasion technique known as brainwashing. The idea of brainwashing was born during the Cold War, and originally applied to Communist techniques of indoctrination, but was lately first extended to religion and subsequently used as a tool to distinguish between legitimate and non-legitimate religions, labeling the latter as ‘cults.’ Prominent psychologists and sociologists were involved in these battles, with most scholars of new religious movements appearing in court in order to criticize the brainwashing theories advocated by psychologist Margaret T. Singer and a handful of anti-cult academics. After the Fishman decision of 1990, which seriously hit the anti-cult camp, advocacy in this field did not disappear but became somewhat less partisan.     

Church Voting Recommendations,Voter Preferences,and Political Decisions

In Switzerland, two key church institutions—the Conference of Swiss Bishops and the Federation of Protestant Churches—make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this situation to directly measure religious organizations’ power to reflect and shape human decision making. That is, using a direct measure of voters’ commitment to their religious institution, we analyze whether they are more likely to vote in line with this organization's voting recommendation. We find that these recommendations do indeed wield influence, implying that even in a secularized world, religion plays a crucial role in voting decisions. Our results hold for both aggregate and individual-level voting decisions.     

Privatization or Deprivatization: British Attitudes About the Public Presence of Religion

Achterberg and colleagues conclude there is in train a significant change toward deprivatization in Europe. In the late 1990s Christians were more pro public religion in countries where they were least numerous and in the Netherlands in particular there had been an increasing difference in attitudes between believers and nonbelievers over 25 years. Examining more recent survey data on British attitudes (1998 and 2008), we find a firm consensus among the nonreligious against religion having a high public profile, while Christians are more likely to object to antireligion sentiment and people belonging to non‐Christian religions are more likely to support public religion. Nonreligious people appear to be no more hostile now than in the late 1990s, and where there has been a decrease in sympathy for public religion it is among religious groups.     

Religious Engagement,Civic Skills,and Political Participation in Latin America

To what extent has the growth of Evangelicalism in Latin America contributed to political participation across the region? A number of scholars of religion and politics in the United States have suggested that Evangelicalism promotes the development of civic skills necessary for political engagement, while the Catholic Church, due to its hierarchical structure, provides fewer opportunities for skill acquisition. In this paper, we apply this debate to Latin America to test whether civic skills developed in Catholic and Protestant church activities lead to differential participation rates in 18 countries. We utilize the 2014 Pew Religion in Latin America survey to test these effects, and find that Protestant churches do indeed promote skill-developing activities at higher rates, but that Catholics, when involved, are more likely to translate this religious participation into political action. We conclude that political scientists must better understand the organizational role of religion in promoting political engagement worldwide.     

Notes on Autocephaly and Phyletism

Changing one’s religion is increasingly common in multicultural societies. Such changes are made more likely when there is greater contact between individuals of different creeds. Conversion is also the result of proselytising activities carried out by various religious faiths or groups. This paper analyses the recognition of the right to change religion and the safeguarding of this right under international treaties, giving special attention to Europe. The study shows the content and limits of this right and examines the role of the state in its regulation. Both having membership of a given faith and changing religion can have legal consequences with respect to the state. This fact has been demonstrated by the legal battles that have arisen in a number of European countries as a consequence of changing religion. According to the international human rights legal system, the function of the secular state should be to safeguard equal treatment for all citizens, ensuring that neither religious affiliation nor a change of such affiliation results in discrimination.     

The religion paradox: if religion makes people happy, why are so many dropping out?

As we estimate here, 68% of human beings--4.6 billion people--would say that religion is important in their daily lives. Past studies have found that the religious, on average, have higher subjective well-being (SWB). Yet, people are rapidly leaving organized religion in economically developed nations where religious freedom is high. Why would people leave religion if it enhances their happiness? After controlling for circumstances in both the United States and world samples, we found that religiosity is associated with slightly higher SWB, and similarly so across four major world religions. The associations of religiosity and SWB were mediated by social support, feeling respected, and purpose or meaning in life. However, there was an interaction underlying the general trend such that the association of religion and well-being is conditional on societal circumstances. Nations and states with more difficult life conditions (e.g., widespread hunger and low life expectancy) were much more likely to be highly religious. In these nations, religiosity was associated with greater social support, respect, purpose or meaning, and all three types of SWB. In societies with more favorable circumstances, religiosity is less prevalent and religious and nonreligious individuals experience similar levels of SWB. There was also a person-culture fit effect such that religious people had higher SWB in religious nations but not in nonreligious nations. Thus, it appears that the benefits of religion for social relationships and SWB depend on the characteristics of the society.     

When is Faith Enough? The Effects of Religious Involvement on Depression

Although most scholars find that religious involvement is negatively related to depression, questions still remain regarding how individuals benefit from such involvement and evidence from nationally representative samples is rare. In this paper, I expand upon previous research by considering three types of general religious involvement (attendance at religious services, religious salience, and spiritual help-seeking) and three types of effects (linear, curvilinear, and stress-buffering). Using Americans' Changing Lives (House 1989)—a large, nationally representative, and longitudinal data set—I find a U-shaped effect of religious salience on depression, no significant independent effect of service attendance, and a positive effect of spiritual help-seeking. I also find that spiritual help-seeking and religious salience exhibit significant stress-buffering effects, but that these occur only when individuals experience multiple negative life events, and not when they experience any single type of discrete event. The theoretical implications of these effects are discussed, both as they contribute to research on the life stress paradigm and research on the psychology of religion.     

The Politics of Religious Heritage: Framing Claims to Religion as Culture in Spain

This article contributes to sociological theorizations of religion as heritage through analyzing the politics of religious heritage in Spain since its transition to democracy during the late 1970s. Our analysis is organized around three historical sequences of critical importance for understanding the political and legal significance of discourses that frame religion as cultural heritage in Spain: (1) negotiations that took place during Spain's democratic transition between 1977 and 1980; (2) discussions that surfaced in the context of the state's decision to recognize Islam, Protestantism, and Judaism in 1992; and (3) more recent debates regarding the incorporation of religious minorities in the context of increasing religious diversity, especially concerning places of worship. We show how framing “religion” using the language of cultural heritage has provided religious actors with a means of defending the connection between religion and national identity—and of protecting the privileges of majoritarian religious institutions without violating core tenets of secularism or pluralism. This scenario has created space for certain religious minorities to claim a place within Spain's evolving socioreligious landscape by invoking alternative heritages from Spain's multicultural past.     

Profiles of Anticipated Support: Religion's Place in the Composition of Americans’ Emotional Support Networks

In this article we analyze the role of religion in the composition of Americans’ networks of anticipated emotional support. Drawing on data from the National Survey of Religion and Family Life, which contains information on multiple sources of potential emotional support, we use latent class analysis to uncover four different anticipated support profiles, which are organized along two dimensions of variation: religiosity and breadth. We label these profiles religious, secular, broad, and limited. Our analyses demonstrate associations between these anticipated support profiles and a person's gender, family status, age, race, socioeconomic status, and religious involvement. For instance, we find that Catholics are more likely than non‐Catholics to have secular rather than religious support profiles, and African Americans tend to have profiles that are either religious or limited. Finally, we show that these profiles have implications for well‐being. We contribute to research on religion and emotional support by describing how religious and secular sources combine into overall anticipated support profiles. Our conclusion addresses the implications of these findings for current scholarship on religion and emotional support networks.     

Observations of Muslim Physicians Regarding the Influence of Religion on Health and Their Clinical Approach

Although most patients report wanting their physicians to address the religious aspects of their lives, most physicians do not initiate questions concerning religion with their patients. Although religion plays a major role in every aspect of the life of a Muslim, most of the data on the role of religion in health have been conducted in populations that are predominantly non-Muslim. The objectives of this study were to assess Muslim physicians' beliefs and behaviours regarding religious discussions in clinical practice and to understand the factors that facilitate or impede discussion of religion in clinical settings. The study is based on a cross-sectional survey. Muslim physicians working in a tertiary care hospital in Saudi Arabia were invited to complete a questionnaire that included demographic data; intrinsic level of religiosity; beliefs about the impact of religion on health; and observations, attitudes, behaviours, and barriers to attending to patients' religious needs. Out of 225 physicians, 91% agreed that religion had a positive influence on health, but 62.2% thought that religion could lead to the refusal of medically indicated therapy. Over half of the physicians queried never asked about religious issues. Family physicians were more likely to initiate religious discussions, and physicians with high intrinsic religiosity were more likely to share their own religious views. Residents and staff physicians tended to avoid such discussions. The study results highlight the fact that many physicians do not address patients' religious issues and that there is a need to clarify ethically sound means by which to address such needs in Islamic countries. Medical institutions should work to improve the capacity of medical personnel to appropriately address religious issues. The training of clinical religious advisors is a promising solution to this dilemma.     

The Religious Ethics of Labor

While unionization rates have steadily declined in the United States, there has been a renewal of grassroots labor organizing—in many cases connected in some way with religious communities. Attending to such organizing efforts holds the potential to deepen religious‐ethical reflection on questions of labor, and these religious‐ethical reflections hold the potential to enrich on‐the‐ground organizing efforts. These opportunities have largely been overlooked. On the one hand, while scholars have recently explored connections between religious ideas and economic ideas, they have often neglected questions of labor. On the other hand, labor studies scholars have often ignored the role of religion, although this is beginning to change. In this introduction we limn the resources available for religious‐ethical reflection on questions of labor and we propose a direction that the field could take, bringing together engagement with religious traditions and attunement to grassroots organizing.     

COLLECTIVE RELIGIO‐SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSIONS ON ISLAM AND HIV/AIDS: I. BIOMEDICAL SCIENTISTS

During the 1990s, biomedical scientists and Muslim religious scholars collaborated to construe Islamic responses for the ethical questions raised by the AIDS pandemic. This is the first of a two‐part study examining this collective legal reasoning (ijtihād jamā‘ī). The main thesis is that the role of the biomedical scientists is not limited to presenting scientific information. They engaged in the human rights discourse pertinent to people living with HIV/AIDS, gave an account of the preventive strategy adopted by the World Health Organization, and offered an (Islamic) virtue‐based preventive model. Finally, these scientists tried to draft a number of Islamic legal rulings (a?kām), usually seen in Islamic jurisprudence as the exclusive business of Muslim religious scholars. This multilayered role played by the scientists reflects intriguing developments in the Islamic religio‐ethical discourse in general and in the field of Islamic jurisprudence in particular.     

Religious history as religious studies

What is the relationship between religious studies and religious history? Academic historical thinking emerged in part to repudiate ecclesiastical traditions of history, making the difference between religious history and histories of religion a question of denominational rivalry more than a difference in sect. Scholars working in the academic study of religion and the academic study of history have increased self-consciousness of this contingency but have not developed an account for the consequence of history as the primary mode for our thinking. As a result, scholars of religion frequently fall silent in the wake of postcolonial critiques of religious subjects, believing their work is adequately buttressed when this history (the history of the relationship between colonial oppression and religious classification) is acknowledged. Yet this is only the beginning of our work. Religious history cannot evade the methodological challenges of religious studies precisely because to identify an object as religious is to begin an inquiry into the subject of religion itself. Using the example of the year 1893, the author seeks to demonstrate how scholars of history might justify their subjects as religious, and how scholars of religion might consider their concept of history.     

Constitutional Privilege and Constituting Pluralism: Religious Freedom in National, Global, and Legal Context

Lori Beaman argues that religious freedom in Canada and the United States is well established in theory (or myth) but limited in practice, privileging Protestantism in particular and varieties of Christianity in general. Focusing on the treatment of other religions in the courts of the two countries, she defends the hypothesis that these legal systems tend to reinforce the hegemony of Christianity, using this as an implicit model of what constitutes a religion, and thereby maintaining the marginalization and restricting the freedom of other religions. The present article sets Beaman's arguments in a wider global context, exploring the extent to which Christianity does and does not serve as a global standard for religion; and addressing the question of why issues of religious freedom so frequently end up being the subject of legal judgment and political decision. The main conclusions drawn from this global contextualization are that maintenance of some kind of religious hegemony is the rule all across global society, not just in Canada and the United States, and that unfettered freedom of religion or genuine religious pluralization is correspondingly rare, if it exists anywhere. Moreover, it is argued that such limitations, frequently expressed in legal judgments and political decisions, are more or less to be expected because they flow from the peculiar way that religion has been constructed in the modern and global era as both a privileged and privatized, as both an encompassing and marginalized social domain. The article thereby simultaneously reinforces and takes issue with Beaman's position: the modern and global reconstruction of religion invites its infinite pluralization at the same time as it encourages its politicization and practical restriction. Religions act as important resources both for claims to inclusion and for strategies of relative exclusion.     

Education and the Importance of Religion in Decision Making: Do Other Dimensions of Religiousness Matter?

The relationship between education and the importance of religion in everyday decision making is examined using data from two national surveys of American adults. People who have higher levels of education are less likely to rely on the Bible and the teachings of their place of worship for guidance in their decision making. However, previously undocumented contingencies attenuate the effect of education: (1) attending religious services regularly; (2) involvement in religious activities; (3) praying more frequently; (4) believing in the literal interpretation of the Bible; and (5) greater certainty in one's personal faith. These patterns hold net of income, which is also negatively associated with religious‐based decision making—and only the socially integrative aspects of religiousness attenuate that association.