Smoking,Muslim religious commitments,and the experience and behaviour of Ramadan in Pakistani men

This study examined the possibility that smoking may interfere with Muslim commitments in general and with the experience and behaviour of Ramadan in particular. During Ramadan, a sample of 29 smoking and 46 non-smoking Pakistani men responded to measures of smoking, Religious Orientation, Religious Interest, Positive and Negative Ramadan Experience, and Ramadan Behaviour. Various indices of smoking predicted a disinterest in religion, less of an Intrinsic Religious Orientation, lower levels of Positive Ramadan Experience, higher Negative Ramadan Experience, and reductions in Ramadan Behaviour. These data offered preliminary support for the suggestion that smoking presents a challenge to Muslim beliefs and practices, especially during Ramadan.     

Ramadan in Iceland: A Tale of Two Mosques

During the month of Ramadan, Muslims are required to fast from dawn to the beginning of the night. During summers in Nordic states, this means daily fasts of more than 18 hours. Two religio-juristic opinions have emerged regarding this challenge: one requires strict adherence to the commands of the Qur'an so long as night and day are distinguishable; the other encourages fasting the same number of hours as in Mecca and Medina or a nearby country where the duration of the day is moderate. This article offers an overview of these opinions, their development and how they resist common distinctions between ‘pragmatic' and ‘strict' juristic panels. On the basis of a field study conducted during 2015 in two mosques in Reykjavik, it also explores the division among Iceland's tiny minority of devout Muslims over this issue, and the contesting justifications given by leaders and attendees of the two mosques for their respective views. The discussion demonstrates the conflation of transnational and local influences (including satellite television channels) that contribute to the diffusion of fatwās in Europe, and the limited utility of the labels wasa?ī and salafī in predicting the actual practices of individuals and communities.     

Ramadan’s Radical Reform

This article argues that Tariq Ramadan’s reform agenda is relatively modest in scope and has not had the wide-ranging impact the more liberal intelligentsia may have wished for. The article is written from the perspective of a convinced and practising Christian. I am not seeking to prove myself right and Ramadan, or anyone else, wrong, but to evaluate Ramadan’s reform process. The article is divided into four main sections. The first outlines Ramadan’s argument that Muslims must move beyond slavish imitation towards a carefully thought out, contextually appropriate expression of Islam in the modern context. The second critiques Ramadan’s arguments for a realistic pluralism and his suggestion that Muslims regard wherever they live as dār al-shahāda. The third outlines two areas where Ramadan directly challenges the majority opinion within Islam, asking whether these challenges are appropriate and effective. These areas are his call for a moratorium on the Islamic penal code and his desire for greater female involvement with mosques. The fourth section briefly examines Ramadan’s critics before reinforcing the conclusion that Ramadan’s reform, while radical in the sense of returning to Islam’s roots, does not seek to bring about the changes that some might expect it to do.     

Driving in the fasting month of Ramadan: An observational study on speeding,horn honking,and using seat belts

The aim of this study was to examine how Ramadan, i.e., fasting month for believers of Islam, was associated to observable driving behaviours (i.e., speeding, horn honking, and using seat belts) as compared to non-Ramadan. Observations on speeding, horn honking, and using seat belts were held during and after Ramadan in different times of the day in the same region of the city of Ankara. Speeds of 1885 vehicles were measured by hand held radar on a two-way eight-lane road with a 50 km/h speed limit. Horn honking was recorded at a signalised intersection with a hidden camera when the light turned into green in terms of 510 traffic light cycles. Seat belt wearing of 2106 drivers was observed at the same intersection. Findings indicated that (a) mean speed was lower, (b) honked horns were higher, and (c) seat belt use was lower in Ramadan as compared to non-Ramadan, though each negative driving behaviour was prevalent in both periods. Thus this study showed that the Ramadan period had a limited role on speeding, horn honking, and using seat belts.     

Triple Roles,Worship, and “Period Shaming”: How Muslim Women Maintain Belonging and Connection in Ramadan

Ramadan is a time when Muslims experience an increased connection to God and an increased sense of belonging through communal acts of worship, but Muslim women are often excluded from many acts of worship due to religious restrictions while they are menstruating. This study innovatively applies concepts of “religious citizenship” and women's “triple roles” drawn from lived religion and feminist literature to a new context of Muslim women and their everyday practices. Based on research with more than 60 culturally diverse Melbourne Muslims who kept anonymous diaries before, during, and after Ramadan 2021, this analysis shows how Muslim women's understandings of religious belonging and connection in Ramadan are shaped by their own reconfigured approaches to worship and socialization alongside their everyday workload. It provides a unique opportunity to investigate the invisible challenges faced by Muslim women in worship and devotion during Ramadan.     

Book Review

Previous efforts to demonstrate the coping benefits of Muslim beliefs have yielded ambiguous outcomes. With a sample of 200 Pakistani adults, this project used the Islamic Positive Religious Coping and Identification (IPRCI) subscale within the Psychological Measure of Islamic Religiousness (PMIR) to examine relationships with the experience and behaviour of Ramadan. Preliminary confirmatory factor analyses revealed a need to focus on a Positive Islamic Coping factor within the IPRCI. Positive Islamic Coping correlated directly with Positive Ramadan Experience and Ramadan Behaviour and inversely with Negative Ramadan Experience. Along with other PMIR variables assessing Muslim commitments more generally, Positive Islamic Coping helped mediate relationships between Ramadan Experience and Ramadan Behaviour. Punishing Allah Reappraisal from the PMIR displayed only minimal evidence that it recorded a maladaptive form of religious coping. These data confirmed Positive Islamic Coping as an operationalisation of adaptive Muslim coping and illustrated the importance of examining measures that are relevant within a religious tradition.     

The big friendly counter-space? Interreligious encounter within social media

ABSTRACT

Research on interreligious dialogue mostly focuses on face-to-face meetings, however, it also takes place in other contexts. Among them is the huge space of interactive media, where adherents of different religious traditions meet, e.g., in interreligious groups on Facebook, boards or commentary sections – but so far little has been researched on this field. The article is an explorative attempt to sort the field of interreligious dialogue and encounter in social media, drawing on a comparative perspective on the field of offline interreligious dialogue. For this purpose, it first gives a systematizing overview of the existing research on interreligious encounter in social media as well as on (offline) interreligious dialogue, identifying key questions and issues on interreligious encounter. Examples from different social media platforms then allow conclusions about commonalities and differences between online and offline interreligious encounter and suggest crucial aspects to follow up on in future research on this field.