Mustafa Tekke

Muslim Religious Openness and Ilm

Religious Reflection Scales yield cross-cultural data suggesting that religious traditions have potentials to integrate intellect with faith. This investigation extended analysis of that possibility to Sunni Muslim university students in Malaysia (N = 211) and also examined the hypothesis that Islamic commitments to knowledge (Ilm) promote religious openness. Faith and Intellect Oriented Religious Reflection correlated positively and predicted openness. The Truth of Texts and Teachings factor from the Religious Schema Scales essentially assesses a form of fundamentalism and displayed direct linkages with religious openness as well. Ilm factors from the Ummatic Personality Inventory correlated positively with religious openness and mediated associations of Islamic Religious Reflection with other constructs. Quest as a presumed index of religious openness proved to be incompatible with sincere Muslim commitments. These findings supplemented previous Muslim, Christian, and Hindu data in confirming the potential openness of religious traditions.

Supplication and the Muslim personality: Psychological nature and functions of prayer as interpreted by Said Nursi

ABSTRACT Efforts to describe an Islamic psychology of religion must include the relationship that Muslims maintain with God through supplication. The Turkish theologian and scholar Said Nursi (1877–1960) offered useful theoretical guidance for understanding this issue. His perspective rested on the assumption that supplication finds its motivation in humanity’s innate shortcomings. Such imperfections encourage a person to communicate with God through supplication, and supplication then provides a source of felt closeness to God that defines how the Muslim personality should function. In broad terms, Nursi subdivided supplication into verbal (petitionary) and doing (behavioural) types. Verbal supplication helps persons respond to innate weaknesses by trusting in their own strengths, and this trust then manifests itself in the behavioural supplications that the individual uses to meet the demands of life. Nursi’s views suggest opportunities for empirically understanding supplication within an Islamic psychology of religion.