The Variety of Religiosities in Contemporary Turkey

This study investigates the experiences and the related social change attitudes of pious Muslim women in Turkey. Twenty self-identified pious women living in Istanbul were interviewed about their experiences of disadvantage based on gender and religious identity, the position of women in religious teachings and practices, and attitudes towards the women's movement. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Participants expressed facing distinct forms of marginalization in secular and religious settings, leading to a state of “in-betweenness” characterized by a psychological distance from both communities. Participants' attitudes regarding social change, and how they voiced their critiques about women's issues, were also informed by the tensions between the two contexts. Findings suggest that this state of “in-betweenness” may decrease pious women's intentions to act and limit their potential for activism.

Comprising some 900 pages in the Furughi edition, the works of Sa'di include a variety of genres. The Kulliyyat (Complete Works) opens with six “Risalahs” (Homilies), containing orthodox religious and moral teachings. The homilies precede the worldly and anecdotal “Gulistan” (Rose Garden) and the more profound and spiritual “Bustan” (Orchard)--Sa'di's best known works. Next are the “Qasa'id” (Elegies, or Odes) in Persian and Arabic, the “Marasi” (Thronodies), and the “Mulamma'at” (Bilingual poems in Persian and Arabic). The “Tarji'at” (Strophe Poems), the “Tayyibat” (Sweet Poems), the “Badayi’” (Cunning Odes), the “Khavatim” (Gems), and “Ghazaliyyat-i qadim” (Old Sonnets)--altogether 300 pages in the Kulliyyat--consist mostly of love poems, covering the whole gamut of this emotion from the secular love of women and boys to the mystical love whose object is union with the divine. Miscellaneous shorter pieces appear at the end of the Kulliyyat under the headings “Sahibiyyah,” “Masnaviyyat” (Couplets), “Qata'at” (Short Poems), “Ruba'iyyat” (Quatrains), and “Mufradat” (One-liners).

This chapter investigates democratic politics and religious pluralism in contemporary Turkey through the lens of the concept of “postsecular society.” The author first reconstructs Habermas’s notion of postsecular society as an ideal type and proposes three criteria by which one can identify postsecular formations: secular differentiation, committed pluralism, and complementary learning processes. He then utilizes this framework to investigate relations between religion, state, and civil society in contemporary Turkey, focusing in particular on compulsory religious instruction in primary and secondary schools, the standing of atheism and unbelief in the public realm, and the rise and political suppression of a postsecular ethics of citizenship in the course of the Gezi protests of 2013. This analysis demonstrates that the concept of postsecular society, when applied critically, provides a powerful tool for identifying the forces for and against religious pluralism in contemporary societies, including those outside Europe.

The Brazilian educational system has never been alien to the many movements of society, so it could not be distanced from the religious phenomenon either, since the school is a part of the community and all the expressions of a society are found in it, even if in smaller proportion. The present article in question seeks to carry out a discussion about the importance of respecting the various religious beliefs existing in the country. In the development of this research, which was built through the analysis of bibliographies and analyzes of legislation that legitimize religious teaching, the following question is discussed: can the professor of the religious teaching discipline, participant of an integral formation, be able to teach classes of this discipline without be biased, considering the context of religious diversity and existing legislation in the country? Finally, it is understood that, although criticized for the risk of being able to become a violator of human rights, religious education, obeying the criteria established in legislation, including creating legislation that favors the training of educators for this purpose, can become in an important mechanism for improving peaceful coexistence and respect for the pluralities that form the identities of the subjects that make up Brazilian society.

A well-functioning labour market is indispensable to promote job creation, increase living standards, and develop a cohesive society. In Italy, the various deficiencies of the labour market have resulted in high unemployment, low labour force participation and job-skill mismatch. These deficiencies have contributed to the problem of allocation of resources, income distribution, and low productivity, reducing people’s well-being. The current government, following on past governments’ reforms, is introducing a package of labour market reforms – the Jobs Act – to improve the labour market in a consistent way. The reform will make the labour market more flexible and inclusive, and reduce duality. The long-lasting problem of effective enforcement will need to be overcome, with an increased focus on rapid implementation by the current government. A set of well-designed institutions, not only labour market policies but also the education system and product market regulation, would encourage higher labour force participation, especially among women, and produce more and better quality jobs in a more skill-intensive economy. This Working Paper relates to the 2015 OECD Economic Survey of Italy (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-italy.htm).

ObjectiveThe negative association between religiosity (religious beliefs and church attendance) and the likelihood of substance use disorders is well established, but the mechanism(s) remain poorly understood. We investigated whether this association was mediated by social support or mental health status.MethodWe utilized cross-sectional data from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (n = 36,370). We first used logistic regression to regress any alcohol use in the past year on sociodemographic and religiosity variables. Then, among individuals who drank in the past year, we regressed past year alcohol abuse/dependence on sociodemographic and religiosity variables. To investigate whether social support mediated the association between religiosity and alcohol use and alcohol abuse/dependence we repeated the above models, adding the social support variables. To the extent that these added predictors modified the magnitude of the effect of the religiosity variables, we interpreted social support as a possible mediator. We also formally tested for mediation using path analysis. We investigated the possible mediating role of mental health status analogously. Parallel sets of analyses were conducted for any drug use, and drug abuse/dependence among those using any drugs as the dependent variables.ResultsThe addition of social support and mental health status variables to logistic regression models had little effect on the magnitude of the religiosity coefficients in any of the models. While some of the tests of mediation were significant in the path analyses, the results were not always in the expected direction, and the magnitude of the effects was small.ConclusionsThe association between religiosity and decreased likelihood of a substance use disorder does not appear to be substantively mediated by either social support or mental health status.

Association of Mood, Anxiety, and Substance Use Disorders With Occupational Status and Disability in a Community Sample

Previous research established that people who are or feel more privileged tend to be less religiously fundamentalist. However, in the present research we predicted this association to be reversed when political leaders such as governments are promoting and incentivizing (religious) fundamentalism. Using Turkey as an example, we found support for our hypothesis in a Muslim sample (N = 736) representative for age, gender, education-level ethnicities, and urbanicity: Individuals, who feel more privileged – i.e., less deprived – were more fundamentalist, even after controlling for a range of other variables that were previously associated with fundamentalism including conspiracy beliefs, personality, and sociodemographic variables. This negative association between deprivation and religious fundamentalism was not mediated by conspiracy beliefs. Interestingly, the associations of the control variables such as authoritarianism and conspiracy beliefs with religious fundamentalism mostly replicated previous research. Implications are discussed.

Natural and technological disasters have a significant impact on unemployment in Pakistan and are an important factor in economic instability. Pakistan's economy is now going through a critical phase of instability. The current government has to deal with a number of economic and social challenges, such the high unemployment rate. The study hypothesizes that the number of deaths and the number of people affected by disasters have a significant impact on the unemployment rate, and this impact has a lag. The study examines Pakistan's economic statistics, focusing on its instability over the past 30 years. It uses Stata software for regression equations to examine unemployment rate, inflation, price index changes, technological disaster deaths, and natural disaster impact. The study reveals that the number of deaths from natural and technological disasters has an important positive impact on unemployment rates, suggesting that economic repercussions of such disasters may emerge after initial response phases. The authors failed to examine the impact of recent events on the labor market due to inaccessible data, a gap that could have been significant. This study pioneers an investigation into the effect of the influence of natural and technological disasters on unemployment. It fills a gap in research of the impact of disasters on unemployment rates in disaster economics and labor economics and emphasizes the lag of disaster impacts. It provides a scientific basis for the government and relevant agencies in formulating post-disaster reconstruction and employment policies and recommends strengthening disaster prevention and infrastructure construction to reduce the long-term negative impact of disasters on the economy.

Effects of Sociodemographic and Health Variables on Mini-Mental State Exam Scores in Older Australians

BackgroundThe impact of looking after children who live with complex chronic conditions is a growing public health issue. However, it is unclear whether sociodemographic and psychosocial variables can be used to predict the burden on the caregiver and how the profiles of families of children with chronic diseases are defined and structured. The objective of this study was to identify multivariate sociodemographic and psychosocial variables as well as sociocultural and familial factors to analyze the caregiver burden of family caregivers of children with chronic diseases.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted involving 416 family caregivers of children with chronic diseases at the National Institute of Health in Mexico City. The participants responded to a questionnaire on sociodemographic variables and a battery of 7 instruments that examined caregiver burden, family support, parental stress, anxiety, support networks, family functioning, historic-psycho-socio-cultural premises and the World Health Organization Well-Being Index.ResultsA multivariate analysis using hierarchical multiple regression models showed that the variables included in the psychosocial and sociodemographic profile as a whole explained 40% of the variance in caregiver burden, taking sociocultural historical premises, stressors and anxiety into account as positive individual predictors. Negative individual predictors for caregiver burden included upper secondary education, social support networks, family support, family functioning and well-being. The sociodemographic profiles of family caregivers were as follows: female (81.7%); mean age, 31.7 years (standard deviation [SD], 8 years); married (79.3%); nuclear family (60%); basic education (62.7%); unpaid work (66.3%); and a daily household income of approximately 4 USD (61.1%).ConclusionsThe caregiver burden of family caregivers of children with chronic diseases is defined and structured based on personal, family, and sociocultural factors. These features provide evidence to conduct research and implement intervention strategies with regard to families facing adversity, risk and vulnerability during a child’s disease.

The fast globalization of the second half of the 20th century and the advent of new demographic and migratory trends have awakened the social sciences to the growing complexity of regional cultural dynamics. Social scientists have begun to associate cultural diversity with modernity, predicting it as an inescapable and perennial condition of modern societies that affects, and is affected by, religious phenomena. However, few systematic, in-depth empirical researches have been made to assess these assertions. Thus, our paper puts forward the formulation of a diversity index (independent variable) based on four dimensions - linguistic, ethnic, religious, and place of birth - that is correlated with a (dependent) variable of individual religiosity. We conclude that, for the set of European countries and for the time period under analysis (1999-2014), theories of cultural diversity that link diversity to the displacement and recomposition of religiosity have no empirical validity.

ABSTRACTThis study presents a new theoretical and pedagogical framework based on the theories of Critical Religious Education (CRE), Variation Theory (VT) and the Learning Study model with the purpose of improving teaching and learning in Islamic Religious Education (IRE). It reports a Learning Study conducted in a secondary girls Muslim school in London on the topic of ‘Islam and being Muslim’. The aim of this research study is to examine if and how the proposed framework can be applied to IRE lessons, and how it affects the students’ learning. Thirty students of two seventh grade classes and their religious education teacher participated in the study. The data was collected through interviews and written tasks with the students before and after their participation in the study, video-recordings of the research lessons, and meetings with the teacher. Phenomenography and VT were utilised in the analysis of the data. The results suggest that the use of CRE, VT and Learning Study in teaching Islam contributes to students’ learning outcomes by means of helping teacher consider students’ diverse perspectives on religious phenomena when planning and implementing the curricular content, increasing students’ awareness of the ontological and epistemological dimensions of their faith as well as allowing them to make informed judgments about religious phenomena.

We applied latent class analysis (LCA) to derive a statistically reliable typology of religious and paranormal beliefs in a large, diverse sample of New Zealanders (N=4422). We identified five patterns of belief, which we call faith signatures, reflecting distinct combinations of high or low belief in different religious teachings and paranormal phenomena. Although conventional wisdom pits agnostics against religious believers, we found that undifferentiated skeptics (41%) and religious exclusives (12%) expressed similarly high levels of disbelief for most types of paranormal phenomena, with religious exclusives showing traditional religious beliefs only. Also, we found striking similarities between undifferentiated believers (9%), New Age spiritualists (13%), and moderate agnostics (25%), all of whom accorded belief to supernatural realities across a number of religious and paranormal phenomena. However, only undifferentiated believers committed to the truth of superstitions. Importantly, we also found that faith signatures are reliably associated with demographic variables and core psychological traits (anomie, trust, and happiness). Thus, LCA reveals that the classifications “religious” and “secular” obscure subtleties in distinct categories of supernatural orientations. Furthermore, by scratching the surface of what appears to be a highly secular society, our results challenge conventional distinctions between religious and secular orientations. The key distinction is not between belief and disbelief but rather between levels of discrimination in different types of belief.

The term 'pandemic paranoia' has been coined to refer to heightened levels of mistrust and suspicion towards other people specifically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examine the international prevalence of pandemic paranoia in the general population and its associated sociodemographic profile. A representative international sample of general population adults (N = 2510) from five sites (USA N = 535, Germany N = 516, UK N = 512, Australia N = 502 and Hong Kong N = 445) were recruited using stratified quota sampling (for age, sex, educational attainment) and completed the Pandemic Paranoia Scale (PPS). The overall prevalence rate of pandemic paranoia was 19%, and was highest in Australia and lowest in Germany. On the subscales of the PPS, prevalence was 11% for persecutory threat, 29% for paranoid conspiracy and 37% for interpersonal mistrust. Site and general paranoia significantly predicted pandemic paranoia. Sociodemographic variables (lower age, higher population size and income, being male, employed and no migrant status) explained additional variance and significantly improved prediction of pandemic paranoia. Pandemic paranoia was relatively common in a representative sample of the general population across five international sites. Sociodemographic variables explained a small but significant amount of the variance in pandemic paranoia.