THE “RELATION” BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE PLURALISTIC LANDSCAPE OF TODAY'S WORLD

The attempt to expand the discourse of science and religion by considering the pluralistic landscape of today's world requires not only adding new voices from more religious traditions but a rethinking of the basic categories of the discourse, that is, “science,” “religion,” and the notion that the main issue to be investigated is the relationship between the two. Making use of historical studies of science and religion discourse and a case study from Indonesia, this article suggests a rethinking of the categories, including giving more attention to indigenous religions.     

Muslim Experiential Religiousness in Pakistan: Meaning in Life,General Well-Being and gender differences

This study examined relationships of Muslim spirituality with positive psychology in Pakistan. In a sample of 200 university students and community members, the spirituality of Muslim Experiential Religiousness displayed direct linkages with Meaning in Life and General Well-Being subscales. Muslim Experiential Religiousness also correlated positively with single-item assessments of the Intrinsic, Extrinsic Personal, and Extrinsic Social Religious Orientations and explained the relationships of these religious motivations with General Life Satisfaction. Women scored higher than men on Muslim Experiential Religiousness, but at least some linkages of Muslim spirituality with positive psychology were more robust in men. As in other recent investigations, these data confirmed Muslim Experiential Religiousness as a valid index of Muslim spirituality beyond the Iranian cultural context in which it was developed.     

Conceptualising mental health in the United Arab Emirates: the perspective of traditional healers

Substantial investments in health-care have ensured the widespread availability of allopathic medical services across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, in spite of this accessibility traditional healers (Mutawa) continue to play a significant, albeit, unofficial role in the UAE's health sector. Citizens routinely consult traditional healers for problems that might, from a western biomedical perspective, be considered psychiatric conditions. This qualitative study explores traditional healers' conceptualisations of mental health problems, discussing their perspectives on phenomenology, aetiology, intervention and outcome. Notably, traditional healers distinguished between biomedical illness and states they attributed to demonological or metaphysical causes. The Islamic spiritual narrative was central to discussions of aetiology, intervention and outcome. Greater integration of traditional healers within the UAE's mental health-care services would, in many cases, improve patient experience and outcomes.     

Terrorism in the Age of the Internet: The Case of Muslim Arab Foreign Terrorist Organizations

This study focuses on Muslim Arab extremism online. It specifically looks at the case of Muslim Arab organizations identified by the U.S. Department of State as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The use of the Internet to communicate extremist rhetoric is not a new phenomenon nor is it one that is particular to Muslims or Arabs. This study simply focuses on this specific subgroup, partially due to the increased scholarly attention to the topic of terrorism and to the public's heightened interest in the Muslim and the Arab world since 9/11.     

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.     

“I Was a Muslim,But Now I Am a Christian”: Preaching,Legitimation, and Identity Management in a Southern Evangelical Church

Established in 2005, “Life” is a suburban, nondenominational, evangelical church in Charlotte, North Carolina, with an almost entirely white membership, yet the lead pastor is an immigrant from the Middle East. As an ex‐Muslim ethnic Pakistani who was born and raised in Kuwait, Pastor Sameer Khalid does not “fit” into southern culture, and he did not convert to Christianity until he was enrolled in college in the United States. Ethnographic data from 14 months of fieldwork reveal how Pastor Sameer uses weekly sermons to negotiate racialized stigmas, emphasize his common religious identity with the congregation, and make his immigrant background a distinctive religious resource for the church. More specifically, while all pastors require legitimation of their charismatic authority, this research focuses on the dynamics of performance through preaching within the Sunday morning services of this congregation, a performance that negotiates this lead pastor's ethnic and religious identities and accentuates his strategic use of institutionalized evangelical narratives to subvert Islamophobic threats and buttress legitimation of his pastoral identity.     

Mindfulness-based stress reduction among Emirati Muslim women

Explorations of mindfulness-based psychotherapeutic approaches are relatively scarce outside of Europe and North America. This study examined the effectiveness and the religio-cultural appropriateness/acceptability of a Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programme among Muslim citizens of the United Arab Emirates. Emirati college women (N?=?12) were enrolled in an eight-week, group-based, MBSR programme. After completing the programme, participants attended a focus group exploring their perceptions of MBSR, with a particular emphasis on exploring the cultural appropriateness of this approach. The MBSR programme was favourably evaluated, and not in any way deemed antithetical towards the participants' own theistic or cultural traditions. The results are discussed with reference to identifying bridging concepts to help better contextualise MBSR for people who spontaneously couch their experiences in religious themes, or who explicitly express a desire for faith-affiliated interventions.     

She writes in many-coloured headscarves! A conversation with Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

Shelina Janmohamed, the British Muslim writer and commentator, feels impatient with the stereotypic labels attributed by the West to Asian Muslim women. Through her memoir, Love in a Headscarf, she breaks out all the miserable images of what it is to be a British Asian Muslim woman, addressing issues that range from Asian marriages to Islamic terrorism and the question of the veil.     

Hijab in the American workplace: visibility and discrimination

While the initial purpose of this article was to outline online collective action (OCA) towards promoting the rights of hijab-wearing Muslim women in the workplace, it became apparent that there were substantial impediments to this solidarity. Thus, the bulk of it takes up these obstacles, arguing that American hijabis face structural discrimination and Muslims in the United States are subjected to heightened discrimination when they are highly visible to the mainstream culture. This article reviews two cases of workplace discrimination against hijabis and the reactions to these incidents on the Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, and hijab-oriented blogs. Findings indicate that intolerance of Muslims is prevalent across various political affiliations and apprehension associated with hijabi rights could be related to the perceived decline of white privilege. The analysis also demonstrates that there may be impediments to solidarity with hijabi rights within Muslim communities due to disagreements on the Qur’anic mandate of modesty, divergent perspectives on how Muslims can best promote their rights and ensure their safety, and misunderstandings related to the rights guaranteed under reasonable accommodation. Despite the various obstacles to solidarity with hijabis, the article traces various forms of OCA at local, national and international levels that were encountered on social media platforms.