Perspective of Islamic Self: Rethinking Ibn al-Qayyim’s Three-Heart Model from the Scope of Dynamical Social Psychology

The present article proposes the perspective of Islamic self (PIS), which is guided by three core principles. First, the Islamic self is shaped by the God’s predicament: The life test. Second, the structure of the self and its spiritual virtues represent means to succeed the life test. Third, the complex dynamics of the self can be mathematically formalized into a parsimonious framework. Specifically, the PIS considers the self as a dynamical system characterized by the emergence of self-organized stable and unstable patterns taking the form of positive (“illuminating heart”) or negative (“darkened heart”) dynamics.     

Making Muslims: The Politics of Religious Identity Construction and Victoria's Islamic Schools

Islamic schools in Australia have become a subject of notable societal and academic interest, but discussions on the purpose of these schools are often approached from the perspective of concerns about national security or the integration of ethnic minorities. Given the growing popularity of Islamic schools in the Australian educational landscape, critics of such schools often assume that their pedagogical climate, curriculum and “separatist” environment does not foster the formation of cultural citizenship. This essay analyses the complex interplay between religion, Islamic identity formation and the politics of schooling in diasporic settings on the basis of an analysis of the experiences of graduates of Islamic schools in Victoria. It provides an insight into the multidimensional role Victoria's Islamic schools play and enables a better understanding of how the schooling of Muslim students in Victoria's Islamic schools relates to the development of an Islamic identity, which is critical to a conceptualizing of how Islamic schools are considered sites for religious identity construction.     

A Model of Spirituality for Ageing Muslims

Spirituality’s influence on general well-being and its association with healthy ageing has been studied extensively. However, a different perspective has to be brought in when dealing with spirituality issues of ageing Muslims. Central to this perspective is the intertwining of religion and spirituality in Islam. This article will contribute to the understanding of the nature of Islamic spirituality and its immense importance in the life of a practicing ageing Muslim. Consequently, it will help care providers to include appropriate spiritual care in the care repertoire of a Muslim care recipient. It is assumed that the framework for a model of spirituality based on Islamic religious beliefs would help contextualise the relationship between spirituality and ageing Muslims. Not only challenges, but also the opportunities that old age provides for charting the spiritual journey have underpinned this model.     

Wilāyah (authority and governance) and its implications for Islamic bioethics: a Sunni Māturīdi perspective

Juridical councils that render rulings on bioethical issues for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands may have limited familiarity with the foundational concept of wilāyah (authority and governance) and its implications for their authority and functioning. This paper delineates a Sunni Māturīdi perspective on the concept of wilāyah, describes how levels of wilāyah correlate to levels of responsibility and enforceability, and describes the implications of wilāyah when applied to Islamic bioethical decision making. Muslim health practitioners and patients living in the absence of political wilāyah may be tempted to apply pragmatic and context-focused approaches to address bioethical dilemmas without a full appreciation of significant implications in the afterlife. Academic wilāyah requires believers to seek authentication of uncertain actions through scholarly opinions. Fulfilling this academic obligation naturally leads to additional mutually beneficial discussions between Islamic scholars, healthcare professionals, and patients. Furthermore, an understanding derived from a Māturīdi perspective provides a framework for Islamic scholars and Muslim health care professionals to generate original contributions to mainstream bioethics and public policy discussions.     

Negotiating Multiple Identities,Constructing Western‐Muslim Selves in the Netherlands and the United States

This article evaluates the psychological processes, discursive practices, and sociopolitical mechanisms underlying the identity reconstruction of Muslim immigrant women in the United States and the Netherlands. Specifically, it focuses on the ways in which Muslim immigrant women who are embedded in both Islamic and Western cultures negotiate their traditional and modern identities and self‐representations and construct a coherent self‐narrative about their bicultural existence as “Western‐Muslim.” The qualitative evidence presented here expands existing theoretical and empirical discussions on biculturalism and acculturation by demonstrating the ways in which contextual factors define the negotiation repertoire that is available to bicultural individuals. The findings of this article also call into question some of the earlier findings on cultural conflict hypothesis, because it shows that successful negotiation of bicultural identities depends not so much on whether the individual perceives these identities and cultures to be compatible with each other, but rather on the availability of a coherent self‐narrative of belonging to both cultural worlds.     

Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists

Early Muslims wrote extensively about human nature and called it Ilm-al Nafsiat or self-knowledge. In many cases, their works seem to be the original ideas for many modern day psychological theories and practices. What is interesting however is that a lot of what the early scholars wrote was blended with Islamic philosophy and religious ideas. This paper covers major contributions of prominent early Muslim scholars to psychology and outlines the challenges faced by today's Muslims in adapting to the Western theories. It also offers a few recommendations on the indigenization of psychology for Muslim societies interested in seeking the Islamic perspective on human behaviors.     

Self‐Esteem: A Human Solution to the Problem of Death

Terror management theory (TMT) posits that the need for self‐esteem develops out of the socialization process in which children learn to abide by parental and, eventually, societal standards of ‘goodness’ to feel securely embedded in a cultural belief system. According to TMT, feeling safely immersed in a meaningful conception of reality (i.e., the cultural worldview) ultimately functions to protect people from anxiety due to the uniquely human capacity to be cognizant of their eventual death. After presenting the basic tenets of this perspective, we review several lines of research supporting it and then address some common questions and criticisms of the theory such as how is a TMT view of anxiety consistent with evolutionary principles, why do people commit suicide, and how is self‐esteem pursued in non‐Western, self‐effacing cultures? Finally, we discuss some implications of TMT for understanding social problems and for pursuing meaning and self‐esteem in healthier, more socially productive ways.     

Health and adaptedness

The purpose of this paper is to give an explication of the concept of health which does not rely on the concept of disease. The explication is informed by a view of the human individual as an acting subject and it therefore places the abilities of agents in the centre. Abilities may be qualified in different ways. The qualification essential for understanding the dimension of health and illness relates abilities to environmental circumstances and high-ranking projects in the life plan. For this purpose generalized adaptedness is introduced as the overarching construction. The dimension of health and illness is characterized in terms of the adequacy of the repertoire for generalized adaptedness. Some immediate consequences concerning the notion of care are noted.     

Understanding the Perception of Islamic Medicine Among the Malaysian Muslim Community

This study was conducted to identify and describe the patients’ perceptions of Islamic medicine based on gender, age, marital, educational level and working status among the Malaysian Muslim population. A nationwide interviewer-administered questionnaire survey was conducted in 2013. An open-ended questionnaire pertaining to Islamic medicine was used to increase the probability of capturing maximum data. This survey implemented a multistage design, stratified by state, proportionate to the size of the state population and was representative of the Malaysian population. Post-survey classification of results was performed accordingly. Complex data analysis was carried out using SPSS 16.0. The discussion was identified and categorised into various sections. The paper concludes that Islamic medicine has a major influence in the Malaysian Muslim community compared to other alternatives. Further, its potential for growth and importance especially for treating spiritual ailments cannot be denied. The respondents indicated that two factors motivate Islamic medicine in Malaysia: (1) the Muslim community opts for alternative healing because of their dissatisfaction with conventional methods; (2) Islamic medicine focuses only on healing spiritual-related problems. The average perception of respondents is that the function of Islamic medicine in healing physical diseases is undervalued and that it is not suitable to replace the functions of modern health institutions.     

Experiential self‐understanding

The notion of insight is at one and the same time central to psychoanalysis and to the self‐understanding that is part of everyday life. Through clinical material and critical engagement with contemporary philosophical work on self‐knowledge, this paper clarifies one crucial aspect of this key notion. Self‐understanding of the sort we have in mind, while of course involving cognitive elements, is not sufficiently accounted for by cognition about one's affects, motivations, or other aspects of the psyche, nor by the simple conjunction of such cognition with felt affect, motivational urges, etc. Nor is it best modelled in terms of internal self‐observation. Rather, it is the product of an ongoing process of the unfolding articulation of one's psychic life. The notion of experience is important here in three ways. First, lived experience is that out of which the self‐understanding arises. Second, this self‐understanding is a development and articulation of these aspects of our inner lives; it is a part of that same lived perspective. And third, this understanding in turn shapes one's experience of one's inner world: as it is attained, one's experience of oneself thereby changes. Central here is the emphasis upon a developing process involving the ability to speak from one's subjective perspective while experiencing one's subjective perspective as the perspective that it is.     

Muslim anti‐secularist discourse in the context of Muslim‐Christian relations

This article observes and critically evaluates some of the main components of Muslim anti‐secularist discourse: the assumption that there is ‘no separation between religion and politics’, that the Shari^c a represents the antithesis of secularism, that secularism is a specifically Western or Christian phenomenon, and that secularism is causally related to a crisis of values in contemporary Western civilization. After observing some recent attempts to justify secularism on Islamic grounds, the article draws conclusions not just with respect to the discourse but also with regard to the underlying issues. The relevance of this topic to Muslim‐Christian relations emerges in two ways. Firstly, attention is paid to the way in which Christianity, or the West (the two are sometimes conflated), provides a significant Other for the purposes of self‐definition; and secondly, a comparative perspective on certain issues reflects shared concerns between Muslims and Christians on the role of religion in the modem nation‐state.     

Cultural issues in disease management for chinese americans with type 2 diabetes

The purpose of this study is to highlight culturally unique experiences and responses to type 2 diabetes among Chinese immigrant families. Patient and spouse narratives from 16 different families were elicited in a series of group interviews on this topic. Using interpretive phenomenology, 5 primary cultural considerations in diabetes management emerged from the narratives: (1) conceptualization of diabetes, illness and health, (2) significance and meaning of food, (3) perceptions of Chinese and Western medicines, (4) exercise and physical activity, and (5) effects of the disease on family dynamics. The relation of these cultural considerations to an interdependent view of the self, collectivistic social orientation, Chinese cultural beliefs and norms, and acculturation processes are discussed. Clinical recommendations for culturally appropriate disease management strategies are outlined.     

Cyber-apostasy: its repercussions on Islam and interfaith relations*

In relations between Islam and the West, apostasy has been an issue of perennial contention. Although the Qur’ānic perspective on apostasy is ambiguous, the ?adīths and later Islamic legal thought prescribe harsh sanctions against apostasy, making repudiation of Islam extremely difficult, if not impossible, in the Muslim world. Such a coercive approach contravenes the Western value of freedom of conscience and the correlative right to religious freedom. Moreover, the rise of a parallel form of Islam—online- or cyber-Islam—has complicated the issue of apostasy even further. For countless Muslims worldwide, this parallel expression of their religion, although virtual, is even more ‘real’ than its offline, analogue expression. In this new Islamic expression, freedom of conscience can indeed be exercised. Online dissent, even to the point of engaging in ‘cyber-apostasy’ and encouraging others to do likewise, has given rise to a new level of reciprocity between Islam and other religions interacting with it in the ‘marketplace of religions’, thus opening a new chapter in the history of Islamic interaction with other faiths in the contemporary world.     

Cultural relations between the west and the world of Islam: Meeting points and possibilities of co‐operation on the academic level

Faced with world‐wide political and ecological problems the West and the world of Islam stand in need of dialogue and cooperation. For these to continue and succeed, the discrimination of the West against Islam must stop. However, Islam is misunderstood also in its own camp. Efforts to research Islam on the academic level, as impartially and as free from prejudice as possible, are therefore of the utmost importance. Western civilization and technology have been adopted in the Islamic world, whereas as far as the humanities are concerned, an attitude of unconditional acceptance coexists with one of total re‐jection. Critical discussion and argument with the West can and must in no way be separated from a thoroughgoing Islamic self‐criticism.     

ISLAMIC MODERNITY AND THE CHALLENGES FOR SECULAR LIBERALISM

In his recent book Islam Evolving: Radicalism, Reformation, and the Uneasy Relationship with the Secular West, Taner Edis discusses Islamic responses to the modern world and how the West deals and should deal with them. He argues convincingly that the biggest threat to secular liberalism is not fundamentalism but an Islamic form of modernity. He attributes some of the latter's success to Western neoliberalism and to the failure of secular liberals to come up with persuasive arguments. He thus puts part of the blame on the West. However, although self‐criticism is an essential aspect of a well‐functioning democracy, we should not take it too far. Instead, there exist convincing reasons why a secular liberal society is strongly preferable to a religious conservative one.     

The Role of the Self in Responses to Health Communications: A Cultural Perspective

To the extent that cultures vary in how they shape individuals' self-construal, it is important to consider a cultural perspective to understand the role of the self in health persuasion. We review recent research that has adopted a cultural perspective on how to frame health communications to be congruent with important, culturally variant, aspects of the self. Matching features of a health message to approach vs. avoidance orientation and independent vs. interdependent self-construal can lead to greater message acceptance and health behavior change. Discussion centers on the theoretical and applied value of the self as an organizing framework for constructing persuasive health communications.     

Reading Literature: An Islamic viewpoint--a broad overview

The centrality of literature to cultural, sociological and political studies is undeniable. And so are the connections between literary studies and religious studies. However, sometimes some of us tend to deny that there is anything Islamic about literature, especially Western literature. In this think-piece article I set out to argue that literature can at least be read with an Islamic perspective in mind, notwithstanding whatever un-Islamic elements there may be.     

中国国民心理健康素养的现状与特点

本研究以系统的全国抽样调查方式, 了解我国国民心理健康素养现状。结果显示, 我国成年公众的心理健康素养总体处于中偏低水平; 其发展水平在地域、人口学分布上比较均衡; 在结构上, 公众心理健康素养的发展表现出心理健康维护和促进的素养高于心理疾病应对的素养, 自助的素养高于助人的素养两个特点。调查还发现, 个体心理健康素养中, 知识观念部分个体差异较大, 态度和习惯部分个体差异较小; 在心理健康素养的社会性影响因素方面, 社会经济地位是所考察变量中效应最大的因素, 且其对素养的知识观念方面影响较大, 对素养的态度习惯方面影响较小。调查结果提示, 要充分认识心理健康素养提升任务的艰巨性; 在实践策略上, 宜以提升心理疾病应对的素养作为当前的工作重点和突破口。     

Why self‐regulation success is not the opposite of failure

Inspired by some of current Western societies' most pressing problems, much research attention has been devoted to understanding self‐regulation failure. While this has yielded some very valuable insights, the current paper underlines that understanding self‐regulation failure does not mean that we also understand self‐regulation success. Whereas failure and success are semantic antonyms, in terms of self‐regulation research, they should not be regarded as mere opposites. First, on the process level, self‐regulation success versus failure is not simply a matter of inverse explanatory factors (e.g., the capacity to inhibit impulses vs. a lack thereof). Second, on the outcome level, self‐regulation success versus failure is not strictly a matter of inverse behavioral action (e.g., abstaining from versus indulging in immediate gratification). This has significant implications, the most important one being that to understand self‐regulation success, researchers need to take a more holistic perspective rather than mainly considering single instances when studying self‐regulation.     

How Ethical is Islamic Banking in the Light of the Objectives of Islamic Law?

Islamic banking is based on moral foundations that make it distinct from conventional banking. Some argue that because of its foundation in Islam, Islamic banking may represent a more morally appealing alternative. Yet, evidence shows that this is not the case. Indeed, the current practice of Islamic banking has not been able to achieve its goals which are based on Islam's moral values: to enhance justice, equitability, and social well‐being. This essay examines the extent to which Islamic banking is ethical and concludes that the practice of the industry does not seem to be de facto ethical from the Islamic perspective of ethical values. It only consists in trading the same instruments of conventional banks without genuinely enforcing Islam's ethical vision. The practice of Islamic banking misrepresents Islam and does not contribute to solving social problems. The interaction between maqasid al‐shari?a (objectives of Islamic law) and qiyās (deductive analogy) provides a supplementary tool for interpreting the failure of the prior in terms of the practical misuse of the latter by Islamic banks. This essay provides an interpretive approach to the current debate about why Islamic banking has failed and suggests ways to move cautiously in the future.