This dissertation analyzes how government agencies influenced the religious expression of Mormons of the Territory of Utah in the 1870s and 1880s, Quakers of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and Muslims of Brooklyn, New York, from 2002 to 2013. I argue that nineteenth-century federal marshals and judges in the Territory of Utah, mid-twentieth century FBI agents throughout the United States, and New York Police Department officers in post-September 11 New York were prompted to monitor each religious community by their concerns about polygamy, communism, and terrorism, respectively. The government agencies did not just observe the communities, but they probed precisely what constituted religion itself.

This ethnographic study explores the ways in which religious teachers use intensive Islamic learning environments as sites to reshape understandings of Islam amongst American Muslims of Sunni orientation. The absence of longstanding traditional Islamic educational institutions in the United States poses challenges for Muslims looking to learn about Islam beyond parental teachings and Sunday schools. However, a range of innovative transmedial learning environments, bridging offline and online spaces, have emerged in recent decades. This is the first ethnographically informed study of such spaces which attends to the role of knowledge and the multidimensional nature of authority in the education of American Muslims. Using 10 months of fieldwork in Canada, the United States, and Turkey, I draw on and explore narratives of students and teachers, revealing the bodies of knowledge that teachers deem relevant for the development of an American Muslim self and how these teachers situate their authority within a tradition of knowledge transmission. These narratives demonstrate how students seek out certain types of knowledge to develop their religious identities, and the ways teachers respond by selecting and deploying these and other bodies of knowledge in their teaching. Teachers and their associated educational programmes use various pedagogical techniques and accessories to link students to the imagined international Muslim community. This leads to an understanding of how teachers situate their authority within a tradition of knowledge transmission. These teachers ground narratives of self and place within religious and regional histories to define religious practice that is ethical and culturally relevant, and justify their own authority. This research contributes to debates on the challenges of intra-Muslim dialogue in relation to the umma. It is a ground-breaking empirical study illustrating how, despite the tense geopolitics surrounding Islam and Muslims, American Muslim communities in the 21^st century sustain Islamic tradition by developing an Islamic pedagogy relevant to its historical roots and contemporary possibilities in a digital age.

Morality has long been thought of as individual, stable and resistant to change. However, recent developments within Cultural Psychology suggest otherwise, by showing that contextual influences may shape people’s judgments. I suggest that culture is one of the most powerful contextual influences because of its long term nature in shaping people’s cognitions, behaviors, perceptions and feelings. Therefore, by combining the theoretical frameworks of the Social Categorization Theory and the Dynamic Constructivist Approach, I conducted three studies to investigate if biculturalism can result in the adherence to two (different) moral frameworks. In study one, I tested this idea by investigating if Dutch Muslims’ identification with the mainstream Dutch culture and their identification with the Muslim culture are differentially related to the moral foundations – Individualizing foundations which are moral norms that protect individuals from harm and unfairness, and binding foundations which protect the integrity of the ingroup. Expected was that the Muslim identity, which is strongly rooted in moral norms, would be positively related to all moral foundations. On the other hand, the Dutch identity was expected to be unrelated to the individualizing foundations and negatively related to the binding foundations, because the Dutch culture is strongly rooted in personal freedom instead of moral norms. In study two, I implemented a frame-switching paradigm by confronting Dutch Muslims with either mainstream Dutch or Muslim cultural icons to see if cultural salience influences their adherence of the moral foundations. Lastly, in study three, I randomly assigned Dutch Muslims to two groups. Both groups were presented with similar stories portraying three moral transgressions of the individualizing foundations and three moral transgressions of the binding foundations. However, in one group the transgressors had typical Dutch names, while in the other group the transgressors had typical Muslim names. Expected was that a stereotypical name from the Dutch culture or the Muslim culture would manipulate cultural salience, and hence bicultural’s moral judgment. Expected was that in study 2 and study 3, biculturals would exhibit a stronger or weaker adherence to the moral foundations and moral judgments in line with the salient identity, respectively. The results of study 1 were as expected: the Muslim identity was positively related to both moral foundations, while the Dutch identity was unrelated to the individualizing foundations and negatively related to the binding foundations. However, study 2 and study 3 showed surprising results. Instead of a stronger or weaker adherence to the moral foundations in line with the salient identity, cultural salience had an unexpected effect. Biculturals that identified strongly with the Muslim culture endorsed the binding foundations less strongly when the Dutch culture was salient (study 2) and judged moral transgressions falling within the binding foundations less severely when the transgressor was Dutch as opposed to Muslim (study 3). However, Muslim biculturals judged moral transgressions falling within the individualizing foundations less severely when the transgressor was Muslim as opposed to Dutch (study 3). I discuss the implications of these results. / 長期以來，道德都被認為是個人的、穩定的和難以改變的。但是，最近的文化心理學研究表明環境能夠影響人們的決策。由於文化能夠對人們的認知、行為和情感帶來長期的影響，我認為文化是環境影響中最為有力的一種。因此，本研究以社會分類理論和動態建構主義理論為基礎，通過三個實驗探討雙文化背景是否會使個體遵循兩類（不同的）道德準則。 / 實驗1以在荷蘭的穆斯林人為研究對象，考察認同不同文化（荷蘭文化和對穆斯林文化）的個體是否會遵循不同類的道德準則（個體主義道德準則旨在保護個體免受傷害和不平等對待；集體主義道德準則旨在保護集體的整體性）。由於穆斯林文化以道德規範為基礎，所以實驗預期對穆斯林文化的認同會與對兩種道德準則的遵循都呈現正相關；而荷蘭文化以個人自由為基礎，所以對荷蘭文化的認同與是否遵循個體主義道德準則不相關，並與是否遵循集體主義道德負相關。實驗2採用了框架轉換範式，通過向在荷蘭的穆斯林人呈現代表荷蘭（或穆斯林）文化的標誌研究文化是否會影響他們遵循不同類的道德準則。實驗3 以在荷蘭的穆斯林人為研究對象，向每個人呈現3個違反個體主義道德的故事和3個違反集體主義道德的故事。被試被隨機分成兩組，其中一組違反道德規範的人擁有典型的荷蘭名字，而另一組則是典型的穆斯林名字。實驗假定不同文化下的典型名字會使某種文化更加突出從而影響個體的道德評價。實驗2和實驗3預期，雙文化者會更傾向於遵循與其文化身份更加一致的對道德準則，並做出一致的道德評價。實驗1的結果與預期一致，但實驗2和實驗3的結果卻出乎預料。當荷蘭文化變得更加突出時，那些強烈認同穆斯林文化的雙文化者變得較少關心集體主義道德準則約束下的相關事件（實驗2），人們對違反集體主義道德準則的荷蘭人（相對穆斯林人）做出較不嚴厲的道德評價。相反，當違反個體主義道德準則的是穆斯林人而非荷蘭人時， 雙文化背景的穆斯林人會做出較不嚴厲的道德評價。研究隨後討論了這些發現的意義。 / Bettache, Karim. / Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2015. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 82-90). / Abstracts also in Chinese. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on 05, October, 2016). / Bettache, Karim. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only.

This thesis is concerned with the ideas of two of the most prominent thinkers within the 'fundamentalist' religious movements that have become so prominent over the last few decades in Pakistan and India; Maulana Maududi of the Muslim Jamaat-I-Islami and M.S. Golwalkar, of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Though both are now dead, their ideas live on in the thinking and deeds of others. This thesis explores a comparison of the ideas of these men and their radical/fundamentalist ideologies with a focus on the way they viewed the relationship between religon and the state. Others have established that such a comparison between significant individuals, who lived in the same historical timeframe, and in this case the same geographical and political contexts, offers valuable insight into the situations/nations in which they were directly involved. / Thesis (MArts(ReligionStudies))--University of South Australia, 2001.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed September 19, 2006). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 366-373).

These (doctoral)--Université Marc Bloch, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [272]-280).

These (doctoral)--Université Marc Bloch, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [272]-280).

Thesis (Ph. D)--University of London, 1972. / Includes texts in Arabic. "September 1972." Includes bibliographical references (p. 326-333).

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Miss., 1997. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-269).

This dissertation documents a pattern of policy-making in Muslim majority (predominantly authoritarian) countries, whereby incumbents demonstrate higher responsiveness to citizens' economic concerns and expand their distributive policies during the Islamic season of Ramadan. Why do autocratic governments (weakly constrained by formal political institutions) address economic inequalities and expand their distributive policies in religious seasons? I argue that the religious environment imposes normative constraints on governments in Muslim societies, acting as an additional accountability mechanism to formal political institutions. The case of Ramadan exemplifies this claim. Ramadan's religious norms increase the salience of distributive issues and raise the political costs of governments' non-responsiveness to their constituents' economic insecurities. Specifically, governments underperforming on distributive issues could suffer reputational costs and face mobilization threats in Ramadan. Hence, incumbents expand their distributive policies in Ramadan to contain these short-term political threats (i.e., reputational and mobilization threats) arising during the season by delivering to threatening constituencies to co-opt them and buy their political acquiescence. The project integrates multiple methodological approaches to test this argument both cross-nationally and sub-nationally. I first document a systematic increase in the religious salience of distributive matters in Ramadan, by applying text analysis tools to an original cross-national dataset of 32,000 Islamic sermons. I then show that Ramadan imposes two main costs on incumbents that underperform on economic and distributive issues in Muslim societies. First, leveraging quasi-random variation in the timing of existing cross-national surveys using a difference-in-differences design, I find that Ramadan exacerbates Muslims' evaluations of the incumbent's economic performance and their perceived morality/religiosity, proportionally to the incumbent’s performance on distributive policy areas. Second, using machine learning to classify the types of protest activities reported in the ACLED dataset, I report that Ramadan facilitates economic and religious mobilization in economically insecure Muslim societies. A qualitative analysis of five cases reveals that incumbents respond to these pressures by distributing in Ramadan, particularly when facing rising political threats. I then complement these results with a sub-national analysis of Ramadan's distributive policies. Focusing on Egypt (2014-2020), I employ web-scraping to construct a municipality-level dataset of daily reports of the regime's distributive efforts. I find that the regime reports more distributive interventions in Ramadan, particularly in places where political threats to its rule are higher. As a follow-up, I also show that government expenditure on welfare increases in Ramadan after periods of political contention, creating fiscal policy cycles similar to electoral budgetary cycles. This dissertation underlines the role of informal institutions in explaining regularities in policy-making in more traditional and less democratic societies, hence approaching the question of how political accountability and government responsiveness can be attained without democracy. It also specifies conditions under which religion becomes a source of public pressure for government distribution, challenging the Marxist notion of religion as opium.