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In this project, I suggest a Deleuzian ontological perspective to address the interconnected and relational constitution of Muslim women‘s experiences and practices to illuminate the multiple-layers of their lives. Namely, I call into question the category ―Islamist,‖ used for contemporary headscarf-wearing women in Turkey, and examine how this categorization erases contingency, specificity, and relationality of women‘s experiences. For this purpose, I articulate the conception of body as a relational and affective multiplicity based on a Deleuzian ontology. According to this ontology, bodies are composed of an infinite number of smaller bodies through the confluence of relations and the creative capacity of affects, which are produced by this relational flux. Since the body is a relational and affective aggregate and a multiplicity within an assemblage, it is not a stable ontological essence or determined by overarching structures, but it is instead dynamic, continually changing, and always in a process of becoming. Since this Deleuzian approach problematizes the stability and singularity of identities, it offers a radical change for the framing of the question of Muslim women. This approach provides useful means to illuminate the experiences, desires, and practices of women in their contexts and through the particular characters of their relations and affects. Therefore, this project stresses the idea that we need analytical tools which allow us to attend to dynamic configurations of Muslim women without reducing them to existing categories or marginalities. / Religion

After the Second Vatican Council, which took place in 1962-1965, the Catholic Church reached out to both co-religionists and non-Christians. As the second largest religion in the world (after Christianity), the Muslim world began to react to this call for dialogue. Without a worldwide religious authority, Muslim scholars and communities have tried to understand and respond to this call for dialogue in their own way. Turkey, as one of the most influential and modern Muslim majority states, joined the discussion about interreligious dialogue, especially with Christians. Very diverse in culture, religion, and thought, Turkish scholars' discussions and critiques of the dialogue requested by the Christian world have clearly contributed to interreligious dialogue on a global scale in the last decades. This dissertation examines the development of interreligious dialogue in Turkey and the works of prominent and widely recognized Turkish theologians as a response to the Christian call for dialogue. It explores the problems, challenges, and future of the perception of interreligious dialogue in the Turkish context, in particular, the views of three influential Turkish scholars: Abdurrahman Küçük, Mahmut Aydin, and Davut Aydüz. The conclusion proposes the Turkish Model for interreligious dialogue. / Religion

The current debates on abolishing hijabs in the European Union have seen many countries absolish headscarves. Nations including France, Belgium, and Austria are among the countries that have banned hijabs in public spaces. However, in Sweden, various bills have been presented in the parliament. The aimed to investigate wheather Hijab and other Islamic covering should be banned in Sweden. The current study adopted a systematic literature review that included 16 studies on the debates about banning the Hijab. The study's findings confirm that the call for a ban on Hijab in Sweden are unjustified and influenced by the oversimplification of the Islamic cultures. Besides, the assertions of the study indicate that the European nations unlawfully targeted Muslims, subjecting them to islamophobia and hate crimes.

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.

The study examines the extent to which pregnancy is perceived as a means of status enhancement through interviews of a sample of 118 currently married Muslim women. Data for the study were collected from the Northern Mindanao Region of the Philippines. This study is part of a larger study that included both Christians and Muslims. The Christian sample was the subject of an earlier study by Bautista (1986). Socio-demographic variables included in analyzing pregnancy as status-enhancing were: age, educational attainment, socio-economic status, social activity, modern role orientation, and the total number of pregnancies. Multiple regression analysis indicated modern role orientation as the only significant variable to influence pregnancy as status-enhancing. Age and education of the respondents were found to have significant effects on the total number of pregnancies. Direct and indirect effects of independent variables (age, education, and socio-economic status) on pregnancy status and the total number of pregnancies were also tested. Findings reported by Bautista (1986) on Christian respondents were also found similar to the present study on Muslim respondents: Muslim women tend to regard pregnancy as status-enhancing rather than status-degrading. However, the expected effect of pregnancy status upon the total number of pregnancies was not supported. The study hopes to stimulate more interest on the area of pregnancy status and fertility behavior. / M.A.

This research examines changes in the depiction of Muslims in Islamic-themed children's literature over two time strata, one decade before and one decade after the events of September 11, 2001. Random sampling with replacement across the two strata yielded a total sample of 59 books, examined at three coding levels: bibliographic data, story/plot data (genre, rural/urban setting, time epoch, conflict type, conflict context, religious instruction), and primary character data (age, culture/ethnicity, and gender). Content is examined using both quantitative comparisons of manifest characteristics and qualitative comparison of emergent themes. Mann-Whitney U tests revealed no statistically significant changes regarding the quantities of manifest features, while additional qualitative analyses suggest six substantive latent thematic changes identified with respect to genre (3), time epoch/setting (1), conflict type (1), and gender related to conflict type (1). Regarding genre, while the quantity of books with humor, with Arabic glossary additions and those employing non-fiction are consistent, the kinds of humor, the nature of glossaria and the subject focus of non-fictions are believed to have changed. With respect to a story's setting, shifts are identified in the treatment of rural and urban spaces, even while most books continue to be set in rural locales. Finally, with respect to a story's conflict type and the primary characters engaged in that conflict, it is believed that changes are evident with respect to self-versus-self conflict type and that female characters are generally lacking in stories of self-identity discovery. / Master of Science

The legitimation of science is an increasingly important issue in science studies. In this thesis, I examine the legitimation issue in a non-Euroamerican setting within the context of the Islamization of knowledge debate. The Islamization of knowledge debate emerged within the context of the perceived crisis of Islamic civilizational and concomitant crisis the intellectuals. Within the Islamization of knowledge, I describe three distinct approaches which I label traditional, indigenization, and nativization approaches. The legitimation used by the advocates of the Islamization of knowledge changed over time. The change is due to the increasing legitimacy and power the Islamization of knowledge gained in the last two decades. This increasing legitimacy has led to the exclusion the most traditional views on science and to disciplinary infighting between advocates of the different Islamization strategies. Each approach to science uses different legitimation strategies and has different objectives. The advocates of traditional approach are trying to maintain the status quo. The advocates of the indigenization approach are trying to change power relationships in their favor by constructing themselves as the modern ulama who would make policy-decisions based on their possession of knowledge relevant to Islamic civilization. The advocates of the nativization approach are trying to change power relationships in their favor by reconstructing science from its epistemological foundations using Islamic concepts. / Master of Science

Religion has the ability to bring a diversity of people together in a way that crosses political, social, and economic boundaries, but divides them through conflicting worship practices, rituals, and teachings. This is especially true with the three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The unique aspect to the Abrahamic religions is that they all claim Abraham as a common ancestor. Unfortunately, over the two millennia since the founding of these religions, interpretations of each religious text has drastically divided the three religions. Guy Stroumsa, Professor Emeritus of the Study of Abrahamic Religions at the University of Oxford, states that after such a long time the "Jewish Avraham is no more the Christian Abraham than the latter is the Islamic Ibrahim… and there is more than one Jewish (or Christian, or Muslim) Abraham." This project is designed to create a multi-faith building that crosses the religious divides in the Abrahamic faiths and encourages inter-faith dialogue by looking at commonly used ritualistic items. Three basic items - water, a meal, and the scripture – all hold reverence in all three religions, but each religion has its own unique rituals and traditions surrounding them. This building attempts to express the similarities and differences through the built environment in a way that increases communication and understanding between the religions and the surrounding community. / Master of Architecture / Religions divide people. Architecture brings people together. Can architecture help bridge the divide between religions? This project is designed to create a multi-faith building that crosses the religious divides in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and encourages inter-faith dialogue between them by looking at three commonly used sacred items and their rituals and traditions.