Religious Authoritarianism Research Articles

Связь отношения к глобальным рискам с верой в паранормальное и самоэффективностью у студенческой молодежи

Background. There is a growing concern about global risks, including among young people in the modern world. At the same time, there also appears information about the wide spread of superstitions and other variants of belief in the paranormal among young people. The appeal to the paranormal occurs primarily in situations of instability and is aimed at reducing anxiety and achieving a sense of security. However, there is still an unspecified question about the nature of the relationship between the attitude to global risks and a number of personal characteristics, including belief in the paranormal and self-efficacy, which in terms of active actions can be considered as the opposite of superstition. Objective. The goal is to identify the specifics of the relationship between attitudes to global risks and the belief in the paranormal and self-efficacy among students. Methods. The empirical research was conducted in an online format using psychodiagnostic techniques: “The scale of belief in the paranormal” by J. Tobacyk in the adaptation of D.S. Grigoriev, “The scale of general self-efficacy” by R. Schwarzer and M. Yerusalem in the adaptation of V.G. Romek, the questionnaire “Attitude to global risks” by T.A. Nestik. Statistically significant connections between the structural components of the attitude to global risks with the variants of belief in the paranormal and the personal evaluation of self-efficacy among students were established. Results. It is found that the attitude of students to global risks is associated with various manifestations of belief in the paranormal. The strongest positive links were found in such components of the attitude to global risks as religious authoritarianism and apocalypticism. On the contrary, negative connections are recorded between the readiness to participate in risk prevention, on the one hand, and faith in predictions and the traditional religious belief of students, on the other hand. A positive relationship between self-efficacy and the cognitive components of the attitude to global risks — optimism and religious authoritarianism — was also found. Conclusions. The results obtained indicate the substantial proximity of religious authoritarianism and apocalypticism with a belief in the supernatural among students. At the same time, general self-efficacy is a personal characteristic associated with optimism and religious authoritarianism as a strategy for preventing global risks and threats.

ISLAMIC LEADERSHIP CONTESTATION: EXPLORING THE PRACTICES OF CONSERVATIVE ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS IN INDONESIA

This paper describes the political contestation in the election of leaders that has occurred in the last five years in Indonesia. Since the reformation era, conservative Islamic movements have gained wide freedom to spread Islamic political ideology such as the idea of upholding Islamic law. This was clearly seen in the 2017 Jakarta Gubernatorial Election and 2019 Presidential Election, where the conservative Islamic movement voiced practical political aspirations by involving the role of religion. The case that happened to Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) who was suspected of committing blasphemy at the end of 2016, turned into a protest movement that held “Aksi Bela Islam I, II, III” (Action for Defending Islam I, II, III) which was able to mobilize all elements of religious organizations in Indonesia. This movement is also supported by the role of social media which adds to the massive Islamic populism movement to promote the enforcement of Islamic law through the political stage. This is a qualitative research that prioritizes bibliographic sources. The results of this study indicate that the voices of Muslims who are involved in the “Action to Defend Islam” add to the success of the conservatism process which has a dichotomy of political interests to realize religious authoritarianism by using the Qur’anic verses. However, this study also explains the characteristics of the attitudes of leaders in the history of Islamic civilization who uphold egalitarianism that does not conflict with the democratic system because the responsibility of a leader is to create prosperity and justice for all mankind.

Transformation of Religious Institution in Turkey from the Ottoman Sheikh ul-Islam to the Modern Diyanet Institution

This paper offers a critical analysis of the body of offices responsible for the regulation of the public religious affairs in Turkey with a historical perspective from the Ottoman Empire to the current Republican period. The paper has a specific goal to explore how the public bodies regulating the religious life have played their role for the purpose of ensuring political and social control in the country by reviewing the religious institution during the Ottoman era and comparing within the Republican period under three different ruling ages: the Republican People’s Party, the multi-party and the AK Party. A significant volume of research has been conducted on the various aspects of public religious offices; and have been reviewed for this purpose by using historical research design. The findings show that during the Ottoman Empire, the regulation of the spiritual life was marked by a strong influence of the Sheikh ul-Islam . However, this institution experienced a huge decline after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey when the new secular political system started to confiscate the powers of the Sheikh ul-Islam one by one to abolish it altogether eventually in 1924. Diyanet has been established in its place as a new religious institution to provide services for some spiritual practices with much-restricted powers and roles under the authority of a ministry. Diyanet came to this day without much change in its capabilities until the AK Party came into the government which intended to make it a more active and functional department as part of what is called its major political strategy of Islamization through democratization. It can be summed up that after almost two decades of its tenure, findings show that the AK Party has partially achieved its goal to introduce a major change in the character of Turkish secularism from the protection of people from religious authoritarianism to protection of religion from political authoritarianism compared with other previous political parties.
 Keywords: Diyanet in Turkey, Religion in the Ottomans, Islamization via democratization, AK party

Challenging Grand Narrative through Little Narrative: An Analysis of Fatima Mernissi’s Perspectives

In this post-modern world, intellectuals and visionary scholars putting together Little Narratives on a tactical basis for challenging the ‘Grand Narrative. Most recently, religious identification has taken the status of political grand narrative in post-colonial Arab Countries. Social, economic, military, and political failures have galvanized, progressive religious responses to western domination and globalization. Feminism and especially Islamic Feminism, playing its role as a little narrative for challenging the grand narrative of religious authoritarianism. This paper will focus on the work and ideas of Moroccan thinker, Fatima Mernissi in the theoretical framework of Carool Krestan’s Progressive Category. In this paper, the Analytical, critical and comparative research methodology will be adopted with the qualitative research paradigm.
 

Otoritarianisme Pemahaman Keagamaan: Melacak Akar Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan dalam Rumah Tangga

The phenomenon of violence against women in Indonesia is always increasing and leaves a devastating impact on various fronts. Every woman with various backgrounds has the same vulnerability to become a victim. The causes of violence against women are as diverse as patriarchal culture, labeling of women with weak physical conditions, to gender-biased interpretation of religious texts. The practice of religious interpretation which tends to position the text as a rigid and final entity is certainly not relevant to the spirit of Islam in realizing general prosperity, especially between men and wives. The text is also seen as justification for personal interests and even groups. This imbalance then gives birth to what is called authoritarianism. The practice of religious authoritarianism eventually raises the problem of injustice and even violence that often makes women or wives victims. In religious discourse, historically the root of violence in originated from the paradigm of human creation. Women are considered as complementary or subordinate creatures of men. This understanding is based on religious texts such as QS An-Nisa [4]: ​​34 which is commonly understood as a form of giving the mandate of male authority over women. Therefore, insight into authoritative interpretation is needed. Religious texts are not final entities, but always intersect with social and cultural realities.Equality, authority, Religious authoritarianism

Отношение к глобальным рискам студентов православных и светских вузов

The study is devoted to the problem of comparing attitudes towards global risks among students of different mentality (religious and secular). It was assumed that this attitude varies in a number of components and forms links with identity and tolerance for uncertainty. Respondents: students of an Orthodox university (58 people at the age of 17—29 years old, of which 52% are girls, 48% are boys) and students of a secular university (69 people at the age of 16—31 years old, of whom 71% are girls, 29% are young men). The study used a questionnaire method using the techniques: “Attitude to global risks”, “Tolerance to uncertainty”, “Social identity”. Data was processed in the SPSS 20.0 program. The hypothesis was partially confirmed. Religious authoritarianism as a strategy to prevent global risks by returning to traditional values and controlling citizens is higher for Orthodox students. For secular students, it is more typical to see threats from a fatalistic point of view and to believe in the possibility of preventing global disasters by maintaining a balance of power, cooperation and compromises. Significant relationships of risk attitudes with tolerance to uncertainty and identity are found.

Individual differences in political aggression: The role of social integration, perceived grievances and low self-control

Several models have been suggested for studying (self-reported) aggression. Less frequently, these theories are empirically applied to explain individual differences in political aggression. The present study examines the role of distal, intermediate and proximate mechanisms in a net-sample of 6020 young adults. Using log-linear structural equation modelling, the independent effects of cumulative social integration, perceived personal and group injustices and low self-control are assessed. It is assumed that these factors contribute to the ‘crystallization of discontent’ by fostering religious authoritarianism, political powerlessness, support for extremist beliefs and online exposure to extremist content. Support for extremist content and online exposure to extremist content are strong predictors, and function as different routes towards political aggression. The results support an integrated approach towards the study of political aggression. Implications for future studies are discussed.

Pemikiran Abdulkarim Soroush tentang Persoalan Otoritas Kebenaran Agama

<p>This article discusses the thought of Abdulkarim Soroush on the relation between the truth claim of religious understanding and the emergence of religious authoritarianism. Truth claim can raise the tyranny of religion when there is an attempt at the ideologization of a religious understanding to political and power sphere. Some questions to be answered here include: why does religious truth claim emerge, and how does Soroush deconstruct religious truth claim? Why does Soroush reject the paradigm of religious ideologization, and how does he promote the democratization of the relation between religion and politics? This article reveals that religious truth claim emerge due to the absence of consciousness to distinguish between religious understanding which is temporal and profan and the very religion which is eternal and sacred. Attempts at ideologizing religion represent the lack of consciousness to distinguish between religion and politics, as this lack can degrade the divine value of religion to its worldly and human character. The ideologization of religion can result in tyranny in the name of religion, and accordingly give the monopoly of power to a certain religious understanding while rejecting others.</p>

Political Violence and the Mediating Role of Violent Extremist Propensities

Research into violent extremism is lacking integrated theoretical frameworks explaining individual involvement in politically or religiously motivated violence, resulting in a poor understanding of causal mechanisms. Building on situational action theory, the current study moves beyond the dominant risk factor approach and proposes an integrated model for the explanation of political/religious violence, distinguishing between direct mechanisms and “causes of the causes.” The model integrates mechanisms from different but complementary traditions. Following previous work, this study focusses on the causes of the causes influencing direct key mechanisms, violent extremist propensity, and exposure to violent extremist moral settings that explain political/religious violence. The theoretical model is tested using structural equation modelling. The analyses are based on a web survey (N = 6,020) among adolescents and young adults in Belgium. Results show that violent extremist propensity and exposure to violent extremist moral settings have direct effects on the likelihood of political/religious violence. These direct mechanisms are in turn determined by a series of exogenous factors: perceived injustice and poor social integration. The relationship between perceived injustice and poor social integration and political/religious violence is further mediated by perceived alienation, perceived procedural justice, and religious authoritarianism. The implications of these findings are discussed. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol9/iss2/5

On Violence, Joy, and Justice: The Poetry of C.k. Williams

On Violence, Joy, and Justice: The Poetry of C.k. Williams

God and State in Egypt

God and State in Egypt

The Fevered Novel from Balzac to Bernanos: Frenetic Catholicism in Crisis, Delirium and Revolution

This monograph is an important and compelling account of a novelistic tradition that stretches from Georges Bernanos back to Balzac, by way of Léon Bloy, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Barbey d'Aurevilly. Depending on a master plot that evokes Maistrean themes of blood, sacrifice, and redemption, working in a feverish female body, this canon combines Romantic freneticism and anti-Enlightenment religion to create a compound that Francesco Manzini calls ‘frenetic Catholicism’. The theme of fever, Manzini tells us, was commented on by Huysmans in writing about Barbey d'Aurevilly. When André Gide read Bernanos's Sous le soleil de Satan, he dismissed it as a rehash of Bloy and Barbey. In this present work Manzini aims to make us aware once more of the gradually intensifying themacity of fever in writings more usually classed in theologo-literary categories. His analysis encompasses (though is not restricted to) Balzac's Ursule Mirouët, Barbey d'Aurevilly's Un prêtre marié, Huysmans's En rade, Bloy's Le Désespéré and La Femme pauvre, and Bernanos's Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette. Thus, as Manzini argues in his conclusion, between the freneticism of the Romantics and that of the surrealists this corpus represents an intermediary wave of freneticism, foregrounding fever, hyperconsciousness, dreamlike episodes, and female automatism. Manzini's knowledge of, and ease amidst, the sources is constantly impressive. Much like Richard Griffiths before him (The Reactionary Revolution: The Catholic Revival in French Literature, 1870–1914 (London: Constable, 1966)), he has read both the bad novels and the good ones. For that we are in his debt. His commentary thrives on the oddities of his subjects. He points quite rightly to the peculiar hubris of writers whose contempt for the secular excesses of scientism leads them down a cul-de-sac of primitive medical quackery. Likewise, he underlines how Zola's attempt to unwrite Barbey — exorcising the former's anti-Romantic animus, as much as scratching his anticlerical itch — leads him to recapitulate Barbey's religious authoritarianism in the secular vernacular of patriarchy. Les espèces qui se rapprochent se mangent, to paraphrase Bernanos (Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune). In spite of all Manzini's tightly organized analysis, however, this reader wonders whether the fevered novel ‘best allowed contemporaries — and now […] literary critics and historians — to imagine the issues at stake in the amorphous scientistic, religious, and political debates’ of the period (p. 17). Below the ideological clashes of nineteenth-century science and religion, the two contending dynamics of anthropocentrism and theocentrism are attested and, it can be argued, even more perfectly dramatized in other Catholic literature (Charles Péguy's poetry, for example). In these terms, what distinguishes the Catholic frenetics from their Romantic or surrealist counterparts is that their fevered subject represents an attempt to build a road out of what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls ‘buffered’ individuality, and back towards the theocentric porous subject who is open to divine influence. By way of minor corrections, nuns do not take holy orders (p. 94) but make religious profession by taking vows. Also, the last Eucharistic host is not extreme unction (p. 119) but viaticum.

Dialogic Thickness in a Monologic Culture

This essay considers the context of the contemporary church in the United States as an environment of monologue in which one-way communication is prized and practiced as religious authoritarianism, market ideology that has no interest in communication, and imperial politics that proceeds from the top down. In such an environment, a primal task of the church is to advocate and practice a mode of life that honors the thickness of human interaction and engages in faithful interaction with God as a two-way practice. A specific consideration of dialogic practice is a case study of Psalm 35 in which “the many selves of the self are given voice in discourse with God in a way that submits to and yet insists on leverage with the Holy One. This transaction may be a model for human transaction as well in the strange world where truth speaks to power.

The Distinction between Authoritarianism and Fundamentalism in three Cultures: Factor Analysis and Personality Correlates

The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism.

Factors Influencing Hostility towards Controversial Religious Groups

The results of a research project conducted by questionnaire among a representative sample of 1041 Polish people over 15 years of age indicate that hostility towards controversial religious groups (Jehovah's Witnesses, Hare Krishnas and Satanists) is related to certain elements of their image (as intolerant, dishonest, unfriendly or creating a threat to society). Respondents spontaneously used the word “sect” in relation to the group (most frequently in the case of Satanists); they relied on the teaching of the Church for information. Their hostility was also linked to religious authoritarianism. Personal acquaintance with members of these religious groups, and reference to information via the media, reduced this hostility, but only in case of Hare Krishnas.

George Bush, Apocalypse Sometime Soon, and the American Imperium

Under the sign of the Stars and Stripes, the war against terrorism unchains the attack dogs of the New World Order in defense of civilization. In the pro- cess, the United States has crossed the threshold of militant authoritarianism and goose-stepped onto the global balcony of neofascism, befouling the Con- stitution along the way. As long as the nation keeps cheering, and Bush's impish jaw juts ever forward, the stench goes unnoticed. Among the Bush administration, there is a concerted effort to meld political rhetoric and apocalyptic discourse as part of a larger politics of fear and para- noia. Like a priest of the black arts, Bush has successfully disinterred the rem- nants of Ronald Reagan's millennarian rhetoric from the graveyard of chiliastic fantasies, appropriated it for his own interests, and played it in public like a charm. Self-fashioning one's image through the use of messianic and millenar- ian tropes works best on the intended audience (in this case, the American pub- lic) when the performance is disabused of shrillness, appears uncompromising, and remains unrestrained, confident, anagogic, and sometimes allegorical. Fas- cist plain speak is a discursive rendering that is straightforward and unapolo- getic and, like an iceberg, does most of the damage beneath the surface. Bush's handlers are masters of the fascist spin, and Bush is a perfect candidate because he hardly needs any ideological persuasion to get on board the fascist band- wagon. He is the perfect host for collapsing the distinction between religious authoritarianism and politics. Bush's defense of the war on terrorism works largely through archetypal association and operates in the crucible of the struc- tural unconscious. Bush may believe that Providence has assigned him the arduous yet glorious task of rescuing America from the satanic forces of evil, as if he, himself, were the embodiment of the generalized will and the unalloyed spirit of the American people. Evoking the role of the divine prophet who iden- tifies with the sword arm of divine retribution, Bush reveals the eschatological undertow to the war on terrorism, perhaps most evident in his totalizing and Manichean pronouncements where he likens bin Laden and his al Quaeda chthonic warriors to absolute evil and the United States to the apogee of free- dom and goodness.

Teaching the Enlightenment in American Literature: Shedding Light on Faith and Reason

Describes a solicitous yet forthright approach to a potentially controversial American literature unit on the tremendous impact of the Enlightenment on American society and its political system. Outlines the peculiar blending of Puritan morality and Enlightenment ideals that shaped American character. Discusses the vital role of rejecting religious authoritarianism in the Enlightenment; and discusses rationalism and God.

Religious authoritarianism and psychopathology in college students.

This study tested the hypothesis that religious authoritarianism is associated with indices of psychopathology in late adolescent college students (ages 18–20). The Mayo Religious Authoritarianism Scale was administered to 161 lower division college students who also completed the MMPI, the clinical scales of which were used to provide measures of emotional disturbance. Religious authoritarianism was not associated with any of the MMPI clinical scale scores; however, religious authoritarian subjects scored higher on the Ego Strength Scale of the MMPI than did high authoritarian subjects.