This thesis examines how Muslims in Canada negotiate perceptions in their interactions with non-Muslims and other Muslims. What strategies do Muslims in Canada use to combat these perceptions? How do perceptions of Islam and Muslims impact Muslims’ constructions of identities? In order to answer these questions a case study was conducted in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Interviews with Muslims living in St. John’s explored how they respond to perceptions of Islam and how they negotiate their identities in everyday life. This study found that perceptions of Islam and Muslims played an important role in the construction of Muslims’ identities despite the low incidence of Islamophobia. Perceptions of Islam and Muslims often led to an increase in knowledge of Islam, an increase in affiliation with their Muslim identities and increase in religiosity. However, an alternative impact was a distancing from Islam. Participants used numerous strategies to combat negative perceptions of Islam and Muslims including taking up an educator role and becoming representative. Further, many participants separated culture and religion, creating a ‘true’ Islam and contributing to islamophilia. However, other participants challenged philic and phobic accounts of Islam by voicing their lived practices and presenting multiple and dynamic Islams.

This thesis aims at locating the position of the Jainas within the Indian religious landscape. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, novel concepts of collective religious identities and the formation of exclusive communities among religious lines have led to the establishment of the popular image of India's religious landscape as consisting of a Hindu majority and several religious minorities. This model is based on exclusive, often antagonistic religious categories. However, by discussing the position of the Jainas within the framework of India's religious pluralism, the present thesis attempts to question this popular concept. As will be argued, similar to members of other religious traditions, among Jainas too the identity discourse of the intellectual elite has introduced broader supra-locally, supra-caste-based concepts of community. However, this process of collective identity and community formation has not been based on, in Harjot Oberoi's terms, the 'construction of religious boundaries' (1994) between Jainas and Hindus. These `blurred boundaries´ between Hindus and Jainas in the modern Jaina identity discourse defy a concrete positioning of the Jainas within the framework of India's religious landscape.This thesis will begin with the analysis of the late 19th and early 20th century Jaina discourse of Western orientalists and intellectual Jainas, and its impact on the `definition´ of `Jaina values´ and the Jainas as a `community´. Mainly focusing on the regional sub-group of the Digambara Jainas of South Maharashtra and North Karnataka, the research will also discuss the impact of non-middle-class `agents´ in the process of community building among Jainas. In this respect it will be argued that lay-ascetic interaction and the performance of distinct rituals and festivals largely contribute to the establishment of community among Digambara Jainas. The strict practice of Digambara ascetics also adds the element of asceticism to the `Jaina values´, which have been propagated by intellectual lay Jaina individuals and organisations from the early 20th century onwards. These propagated `Jaina values´, most prominently among them ahiṃsā and tolerance, make Jainism the most suitable religion for modern times, and symbolise ancient Indian `values´ in their `purest form´.However, regarding the Jainas as a `community´, this Jaina discourse has remained rather vague and abstract. This vagueness finds its most concrete expression in the still undecided legal status of the Jainas regarding their inclusion among the nationwide religious minorities. In comparison to other Indian religious minority traditions, the Sikhs and Buddhists in particular, the `Jaina case´ suggests a complexity of collective religious identifications in the Indian religious landscape, which defies any fixed model.

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This dissertation explores multiple episodes of interaction between Ethiopians and Europeans throughout the early modern era. After overviewing the Ethiopian exploration of Europe in the 15th century and the first Catholic attempts to reconnect to the Ethiopian Church at the turn of the 16th century, it focuses on the Ethio-Lusophone encounter by considering the emergence of Ethiopian studies in early modern Lisbon, the Portuguese military intervention in the Ethiopian-Adal War (1529-1543) and the Jesuit mission to Ethiopia (1555-1632). This dissertation argues that in the context of the early-modern Ethio-European encounter, faith trumped skin color in the discourse on sameness and otherness: throughout the 15th and 16th centuries Europeans and Ethiopians perceived each other as belonging to the same Christian world and collaborated to defy the perceived Muslim threat. Starting in the late 16th century however, Counter-Reformation Catholicism and Jesuit proselytism transformed Ethiopians into others, and--in Ethiopian eyes--Europeans became a threat. The Jesuit mission engendered an era of turmoil that crippled both the Ethio-European encounter and the Ethiopian monarchy: in its aftermath, the Ethiopian elites maintained a policy of isolation from Europe, barred Europeans from entering their country and redirected their attention to the Muslim societies of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean basins. / History

The relationship between the Epistle to the Hebrews and Second Temple Judaism has long been a subject of debate within biblical scholarship. For most of the history of New Testament interpretation, Hebrews has been understood to be a Christian text written for the purpose of deterring Christians from relapsing back into their former religion, Judaism. Recently, however, scholars have argued for a variety of alternative proposals, and some have attempted to situate Hebrews as a text within Judaism. Consensus regarding Hebrews’s relationship to Judaism remains elusive, however, suggesting that a different way of approaching this issue is necessary. This dissertation argues that Hebrews is best understood as addressing the pastoral needs of a Jewish-Christian community facing a crisis related to issues of Jewish socioreligious identity. Using frameworks of social-historical description, theories of Jewish identity, and thematic analysis assisted by semantic domain theory, this research assesses Hebrews’s relationship to Judaism by examining the author’s treatment of themes related to the Law, the Temple, and the Promised Land, cultural frameworks which were significant for Jewish social and religious identity in the first century CE. This research finds that the writer of Hebrews textually constructs for himself and his audience an unmistakably Jewish identity. However, it will also be demonstrated that Hebrews evinces patterns of, as Steve Moyise says, ‘"both tradition and innovation” in how the writer appropriates vital identity-forming traditions from Judaism for his own pastoral purposes. This study, therefore, further contends that Hebrews evinces a community with an emerging Jewish-Christian identity as theirs is an expression of Judaism which has become largely defined by their devotion to Jesus. The context of looming crisis which permeates Hebrews and the writer’s treatment of traditions from common Judaism further suggests this community also has likely become estranged from Jerusalem and its temple system. This research thus contends that the traditional ‘‘relapse theory” interpretation which historically has interpreted Hebrews as taking a polemical stance against Judaism is without adequate support. Conversely, this research also suggests that some of the various “within Judaism” approaches which have become more popular in recent New Testament scholarship, while promising, require further nuancing when applied to Hebrews. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this dissertation, I analyze the challenges of speaking about religion, ethics, and politics as a Muslim in America beyond the language of minority identity. I investigated the different ways Muslims negotiate the demands of Islamic dietary laws in their everyday lives by collecting primary data gathered through interviews with Muslims from different localities. The answers given by the participants in this study speak to more than the particular issue of how Muslims understand and carry out the demands of Islamic dietary laws given the reality of living in a country where Muslims are a minority group. They reflect a discourse on Islamic dietary laws that is framed primarily within the language of exclusive privatized religious identity and individual consumerism. In this dissertation, I seek to propose a different discourse on Islamic dietary laws, one that is characterized by greater inclusivity and challenges the language of exclusive privatized religious identity and individual consumerism. / Ph. D.

This qualitative study is an exploration of the ways individuals experience and reconcile seemingly incompatible sexual and religious identities. The experience of espousing a religious identity which prohibits homosexuality while simultaneously being attracted to others of the same gender is not uncommon. This phenomenon and how individuals navigate it is poorly understood. Though it is often mentioned in existing literature, few if any studies highlight conflicting identities as the core conflict for this population. No existing studies apply identity theories to the phenomenon. For this study data were taken from two points in time, over nearly four years, from four participants. Results from survey 1 and survey 2 were compared for insights into the process of reconciliation. Results were also compared to two strains of identity theory (Stryker and Burke, 2000) to identify applicability of said theory to this phenomenon. Participants all report a conflict between sexual and religious identities. Relatively minor shifts in how they conceptualize and make meaning of their experiences are observed. All experienced a deepening of their understanding and relationship with self and God. Some report aspects of therapy that were helpful/unhelpful to them in this process. Also included are strengths and limitations of this study, implications for future research, and application of findings to a clinical setting. / Master of Science

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The aim of the study has been to analyse IS-sympathizers and their commitment to the Islamic State; however, this study will not be able to establish a representative result. The study has instead made an attempt to provide knowledge about four young Swedes who chose to leave Sweden in purpose to sympathize with, and to participate in the Islamic State. By announcing the aim of the study and the complexity of the subject area, the study has a hypothesis appropriated from earlier research which has been investigating young western Muslims. Hence, three question formulations derived; the first question intends to identify the previous research within two subject areas: religious identity and radicalization. The second question intends to analyse which common aim the four IS-sympathizers had for participating with the IS. In conclusion, the third question will analyse the possibility of a correlation between previous research and the collected empirical data. The study used a qualitative content analysis which also applied a deductive approach based on theories of deprivation and radicalization. The result of this study underlines that young Muslims acquire a stronger conflict between their individual and social concept of the world in relation to youths with the major ethnic background. The Western culture is being held up as a factor for a strengthened religious identity among the young Muslims when they are constantly forced to defend their religion. It appears that with a strengthened religious identity and a weakened national identity, the four Swedish IS-sympathizers chose to participate in the fighting in Syria after observing how the Western world had a passive standpoint regarding the prevailed situation in Syria. In this way, the four IS-sympathizers fought in favour of a religious identity in a country that they previously did not acquire a national belonging to.

The Development of Tibetan Cultural and Religious Identity among Tibetans Living outside of Historical Tibet The topic of my thesis was to find out changes in Tibetan society inside Tibet and in Tibetan exile in last 50. years and how do changes help to progress social capital. Inside Tibet is problem with high percent of nonliterary and high percent of incoming Han people, which cause that Tibetan people are getting on the edge of society, because they didn't have developed their human potential. The main problem is that Tibetan people don't know Chinese language well and this language is becoming more useful for daily life in Tibetan autonomous region. Tibetans, who are very religious, don't have opportunity to practice Tibetan Buddhism under communistic rule of Chine. Tibetans have to renounce His Holiness dalajlama and deny part of their Tibetan identity. Those reasons influence them to escape into exile. The second part of my thesis is concerned to describe push and pull factors of migration. As I found in materials, the main reasons to escape into exile were political, religion, education, economical problems and renounce dalajlama. In my research, Tibetan didn't divide those reasons to those categories, because they think of those problems in holistic way. The last part of thesis in...