Religious fundamentalism and perceived threat: a report from an experimental study

This study investigated the experimental effect of threat on religious fundamentalism (RF) and the tendency towards reprisal. We presented 102 Christians with one of three scenarios, involving the hire of a Christian biologist, evolution biologist, or a (neutral) communications expert as professor at their university, and also the subsequent sanctioning of his speeding violation. Moderated multiple regression analyses of Christian/evolutionist data found that low RF endorsed the evolutionist and high RF endorsed the Christian; further, participants levied a higher court fine on the speeding evolutionist, regardless of RF. Analyses of Christian/neutral data found that low RF discriminated in favour of the neutral candidate, whereas high RF did not discriminate between candidates; also, low RF sanctioned the neutral candidate with a speeding ticket, while high RF sanctioned the Christian. Overall findings indicated that fundamentalists were not necessarily aggressive or punitive and that they reacted no different from non-fundamentalists when values were threatened.     

Peter J.S. Duncan,Russian Messianism: Third Rome,Revolution, Communism and After

Studies in East European Thought -     

Dichotomic Structure and the Possibility of the Third Mode in Muslim Theology

The method of dichotomization (division/classification process) has been used to formalize our maps of reality and to make predictions based on those maps. This method indicates the structure and nature of information processing within the human brain. Whether in forms of opposition or complementarity, dichotomies have performed an important function in Muslim theology as a method of producing concept, knowledge and thought. The method of dichotomization has contributed to the formation of a certain epistemology, ontology and methaphysic in Muslim theology. By using the dialectical method based on dichotomies, Muslim theologians have created a third term, or mode, or value, different from dialogical Aristotelian logic, thus overcoming the dichotomies and reaching a synthesis.     

Living under threat: Mutual threat perception drives anti‐Muslim and anti‐Western hostility in the age of terrorism

This research demonstrates a common psychology of outgroup hostility driven by perceived intergroup threat among three groups and seven cultural contexts: non‐Muslim Westerners, Muslims in Western societies, and Muslims in the Middle East. In Study 1, symbolic, but not realistic and terroristic threats, predicted non‐Muslim Norwegians' intentions to join anti‐Islamic movements. In Study 2, symbolic and realistic, but not terroristic threat, predicted non‐Muslim Americans' willingness to persecute Muslims. In Studies 3 and 4, symbolic threat predicted support and behavioral intentions against the West among Swedish and Turkish Muslims. Finally, in Study 5, a comparison demonstrated that symbolic and realistic threats had the same effects on violent intentions among non‐Muslim and Muslim Danes, and Muslims in Afghanistan. Meta‐analysis showed that symbolic threat was most strongly associated with intergroup hostility. Across studies, participants with high religious group identification experienced higher levels of threat. Implications for intergroup research and prejudice reduction are discussed.     

Constructing and contesting threat: Representations of white British Muslims across British national and Muslim newspapers

White British Muslims pose a challenge to racialised representations of British Muslims as non‐white, foreign and Other. By drawing on tools from Critical Discourse Analysis to develop Social Representations Theory on a micro‐analytic level, and making connections with other relevant social psychological theories on intergroup relations, this article examines the constructions of white British Muslims as a threat in six national and two Muslim British newspapers. It looks at how discourses are used to create, perpetuate and challenge the ‘hegemonisation’ of social representations in majority and minority press. The findings show that white British Muslims are portrayed as a threat not just despite of, but because of, their position as part of the ‘white British’ ingroup. Consequently, the threat they pose often leads to their Muslimness being emphasised. This was, at times, contested, however, either through direct challenges, or by making the threat ambivalent by drawing on their whiteness.     

Disney and fundamentalism: The fetishisation of the family and the production of American family values

The propensity to sanitise and order violence, uncertainty, political conflict, and difference is one of the trademarks of Disney ‘innocence’, an innocence felt to be appropriate for children to consume. The Disney focus and delineation of a particular kind of family—which Disney locates far back in the recesses of a human biological history—is used in order to support what has come to be known as ‘American family values’. This same model of the family is evinced in those religions that have been termed fundamentalist. This paper will examine and compare the fetishisation of the family found in Disney's animated productions (productions intended to be consumed by, and to consume, children) and fundamentalism. I hope to establish a reading of the texts that demonstrates what is at stake for the propagators of this mythic model of the family, and what is at stake for those who consume such a model.     

The relationships between contact,status and prejudice: An integrated threat theory analysis of Hindu–Muslim relations in India

In the context of Hindu–Muslim relations in India, the present study (N = 87) utilized Integrated Threat Theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000 ) to examine the mediating roles of intergroup anxiety, realistic and symbolic threats and the moderating role of group membership (Hindu vs. Muslim) in the relationships between cross‐community contact, relative in‐group status and prejudice. Overall, intergroup anxiety and realistic, but not symbolic, threat emerged as proximal predictors of prejudice and partial mediators between the predictor and criterion variables. But these findings were qualified by majority (Hindu) versus minority (Muslim) group membership. As predicted, while symbolic threat was a predictor of prejudice for Hindus, realistic threat was a paramount predictor for Muslims. In‐group status was as a significant predictor for low‐status minority group only. The results are discussed with reference to their potential implications for future research and interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The mettle of moral fundamentalism: a reply to Robert Baker

This article is a reply to Robert Baker's attempt to rebut moral fundamentalism, while grounding international bioethics in a form of contractarianism. Baker is mistaken in several of his interpretations of the alleged moral fundamentalism and findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He also misunderstands moral fundamentalism generally and wrongly categorizes it as morally bankrupt. His negotiated contract model is, in the final analysis, itself a form of the moral fundamentalism he declares bankrupt.     

Atmospheres of the other: Building and feeling Stockholm's orthodox synagogue

In this article, I use the concept of atmosphere to analyse disparate sources related to the process of sacralisation of the orthodox synagogue Adass Jisroel in modern Stockholm. Using the synagogue as an entry point, I explore the affective landscapes related to its unofficially sacred places in firstly a Pietist orphanage and secondly a cinema, and how they shaped inner-communal relations. The material components of Adass Jisroel's sites elicited different emotions from different visiting bodies: its orthodox members aimed to create a space of religious continuity and communal integrity, reformed guests othered the members, while poorer orthodox Jews felt alienated. By analysing these multiple affective experiences linked to material changes of set architectural designs, I outline, for the first time, the orthodox minority's unstable position between fragility and stability in Sweden's capital from 1870 until the 1940s. On a greater scale, through this case study, I propose that the concept of atmosphere provides the field of emotional geography with conceptual muscle to both excavate silenced minority voices, and explore the role of the built environment in eliciting emotions that shape, cement, contest and transform the inner-communal hierarchal landscape that unofficially sacred places are irrevocably situated in.