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According to the ideological surround model of research, a more “objective” psychology of religion requires efforts to bring etic social scientific and emic religious perspectives into formal dialog. This study of 245 Iranian university students illustrated how the dialogical validity of widely used etic measures of religion can be assessed by examining an emic religious perspective on psychology. Integrative Self-Knowledge and Self-Control Scales recorded two aspects of the “Perfect Man” as described by the Iranian Muslim philosopher Mortazā Motahharī. Use of (...) these instruments in correlation and multiple regression procedures identified Intrinsic, Extrinsic Personal, Religious Interpretation, Extrovertive Mysticism, Prayer Fulfillment, Universality, Connectedness, and Religiosity Scales as adaptive in their implications for a Muslim psychology of religion. Religious Crisis had maladaptive and Extrinsic Social, Introvertive Mysticism, and Quest Scales had ambiguous implications. These data illustrated how etic forms of understanding can clarify and can be clarified by emic insights. (shrink) | |
This investigation examined Pakistani Muslim understandings of the animal sacrifice that occurs during Eid-ul-Adha at the end of the Hajj. Pakistani university students responded to a number of items expressing possible interpretations of this ritual. A Faithful Sacrifice factor operationalized sincere religious reasons for the sacrifice and correlated positively with an Intrinsic Religious Orientation and with Muslim Experiential Religiousness. Extrinsic and Troublesome Sacrifice factors recorded nonreligious implications of the practice and displayed direct associations with the Extrinsic Social Religious Orientation and (...) inverse linkages with Muslim Experiential Religiousness. Extrinsic Sacrifice also correlated negatively with the Intrinsic Orientation. These results further documented the complexity of Muslim beliefs and practices and once again illustrated how a dialectic between tradition-specific and more general social scientific perspectives can promote progress in the psychology of religion. (shrink) |