SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies – serie

Bringing together leading scholars in the fields of Religion and Sport, this book examines the prophetic dimension of sport, to arrive at a better understanding of the nature of sports in the United States.

This book explores the deeper meaning of sports. Taking this a step farther, she considers how gene editing, robotics, and other biomedical technological enhancements affect not only sports performances but experiences of sport as sacred.

This open access book presents religious literacy as the main explanatory factor when dealing with certain ethnic groups that attract stereotypes which gloss over other personal factors such as age, class, gender and cultural differences.

This book explores the potential relevance of the Upanishads, a corpus of ancient Eastern apophatic texts, to contemporary Western theories of consciousness and psychopathology, particularly in relation to psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders.

This book investigates the complex and evolving relationship between Islam and the West, tracing its origins from the Prophet Muhammad’s time to the present day. It argues that while this relationship has often been marked by conflict, through wars, colonization, and political rivalries, it has also been a conduit for significant intellectual, cultural, and economic exchange. The book offers a historical overview of key encounters such as al-Andalus, the Crusades, European imperialism, and post-9/11 debates, highlighting both confrontation and cooperation. It also examines Muslim intellectual responses to Western modernity, focusing on figures such as Jamal al-Din Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Ali Shariati, Allama Iqbal, and Ottoman/Turkish thinkers like Said Halim Pasha, Namık Kemal, and Ziya Gökalp. The book further places special emphasis on the thought of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1876–1960), one of the most influential yet underexplored Muslim intellectuals of the twentieth century. Living through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, two world wars, and the rise of the Turkish Republic, Nursi developed an original approach to the challenges of secularism, atheism, and declining religious education. His writings and activism aimed to preserve Islamic faith in the modern age while resisting uncritical Westernization.By weaving together historical analysis and intellectual history, the book shows how Islam–West relations have been shaped not only by political events but also by competing narratives, worldviews, and theological concerns. It contributes to scholarship by bridging history, religious studies, and political thought, while offering new perspectives on how Muslim intellectuals have grappled with the enduring challenge of engaging the West.

This book examines the complex entanglement of religion, nationalism, and identity in modern Iran, tracing the historical and sociopolitical forces that have shaped the country’s tumultuous modernity. Beginning with the introduction of nationalist thought in the nineteenth century, it explores how the fusion of nationalism with a fragmented social fabric gave rise to a potent form of Shiite political Islam, one that would come to define Iran’s political structure and its ideological boundaries. Through an incisive analysis of Iran’s political evolution, this book argues that the rigidity of a state grounded in Shiite political jurisprudence has simultaneously marginalized ethnic and religious minorities and eroded the unifying power of religion itself. As the country becomes increasingly secularized, identity politics have intensified, giving rise to centrifugal ethnic movements and deepening social fragmentation.Drawing on political theory, sociology of religion, and contemporary Iranian studies, Fragmented Faith, Fractured Nation offers a compelling account of how the interplay of nationalism and political Shiism continues to shape Iran’s domestic tensions and regional dynamics. It presents a bold hypothesis: that the sustained integration of political Shiism and nationalism has not only weakened Iran’s collective religious identity but has also fueled ethnic radicalism, reshaping both the nation’s internal cohesion and its place in the wider Middle East.

The Role of Psychedelics in the Development of Human Religious Practices explores how mind-altering substances have shaped humanity’s search for the sacred. Drawing on neuroscience, archaeology, ethnopharmacology, and art history, Denis Pavăl offers an accessible, balanced synthesis of a rapidly evolving field. This Brief examines the phenomenology and neuropharmacology of psychedelic experiences, evaluates claims about their historical use in ritual and religion, and addresses the current psychedelic renaissance. Challenging both uncritical enthusiasm and outright skepticism, it provides a concise, evidence-based guide for researchers, clinicians, students, and readers interested in consciousness, spirituality, and the origins of religious practice across cultures worldwide.

This book explores the development of the influential worldwide Hizmet movement inspired by the Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen, known for his moderate Islamic emphasis on peaceful relations among diverse people. It provides a detailed study of Gülen’s account of the virtues and argues that they provide the key to understanding this thinker and the movement he inspired, from its initial establishment of hospitality houses through the growth of worldwide schools, hospitals, media outlets, charitable associations and dialogue centers.The book analyzes the distinctive virtues that shaped the Hizmet movement’s ethos as well as continue to sustain its expansive energy, from the core virtues of tolerance, hospitality, compassion and charity to a host of related virtues, including wisdom, humility, mildness, patience, mercy, integrity and hope. It also examines the Islamic and Sufi roots of Gülen’s understanding of the virtues as well as presents a comparative study of Gülen’s account of the virtues in dialogue with prominent thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition and the religious traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism.The Hizmet movement provides living witness to the power and efficacy of tolerance, dialogue and peaceful relations among diverse people. This book offers an insightful portrait of the core virtues of this movement and the scholar who fully explored them within his writing. It will appeal to readers interested in virtue ethics, character education, cross-cultural studies, interfaith dialogue and the role of moderate Islam today.

?This book takes a theoretical enterprise in Christian philosophy of religion and applies it to Buddhism, thus defending Buddhism and presenting it favorably in comparison. The book examines mysticism and ways to understand what goes on in religious experiences, helping us to understand whether it is good grounds for religious belief.

At the present time, when so-called Islamic radicalism, terrorism and Jihadism occupy major media space, with Islam often depicted as the main culprit, the book attempts a tour de force. It proposes that Islam is as much victim as culprit in the history that has led to the current hostility. This is because the common claims of both mainstream and radical Islam that Islam represents the high point of the Abrahamic tradition, and therefore a purification of Judaism and Christianity, have been largely ignored, misunderstood or blatantly rejected by these faiths and therefore by ‘the West’ in general. This rejection has effectively rendered Islam as the poor cousin, if not the illegitimate sibling, of the tradition. In turn, this has created long-term resentment and hostility within Islam as well as robbed the ‘Judaeo-Christian West’ of a rich, inter-faith understanding of the wider Abrahamic tradition. The book explores these claims through textual, historical and theological analyses, proposing that many of them stand up better to critical scrutiny than has been commonly acknowledged. It further proposes that seeing Islam in this way has potential to re-awaken its self-understanding as a leader of accord among the Abrahamic faiths, of the kind that characterized the era of Convivencia when, in medieval Spain, Islam constructed and contributed to advanced civilizations characterized by relatively harmonious co-existence between Muslims, Christians and Jews. The book focuses on the role that a more respected and self-confident Islam could play in forging enhanced inter-faith relations in a world that desperately needs them as it struggles to understand and deal with modern and particularly vicious forms of radical Islamism.

Extending into popular culture, it then makes the case that sport—particularly American football—is a cultural phenomenon in the South with close ties with religion and violence, and that American football has come to play a central role in the civil religion of the South, fueled in part by its violent nature.

This book applies philosophical and critical textual scholarship to the traditional Islamic narrative in an attempt to distinguish between its historical and interpretive elements. It allows the narrative to be preserved with due respect for its significance and distinctiveness, but in a way that frees it from the ease with which it can slip into the hands of literalists and fundamentalists in order to serve a purpose which is at odds with its original spirit and intention.  When radical Islamists use social media to try and convert young followers to a Jihadist cause, they refer often to the narrative about the Prophet, the original Islamic community (Ummah), and the holy book (Qur’an). The references usually imply that these are under threat by infidels, either non-Muslim Westerners or Muslims themselves who follow allegedly errant forms of Islam. The narrative itself is, however, never questioned; it is taken as merely factual with every word to be taken literally, including words that appear intolerant of difference and given to violence. As such, it can serve well the forms of fundamentalism that lie at the heart of radical Islamism and Jihadism. Because of a shortage of critical scholarship about Islam’s central narrative, the radical Islamist understanding of it differs too little from that of mainstream Muslims. Neither tends to take sufficient account of the context of the writing, its original purpose or the many interpretive elements that have been overlain.  This makes it difficult for mainstream Islamic authorities to counter effectively the radical Islamist discourse or to distinguish moderate and liberal forms of religious practice from radical breakaway forms.  In turn, this causes confusion among Muslims, who know the radical Islamists are in error but find it hard to say just why, and even greater confusion and angst among non-Muslims, for whom the allegation that all of Islam is inherently violent and to be feared is clearly being heard by an increasing number.  This book sets out to address this problem by applying forms of scholarship that can preserve the best of the Islamic narrative while, at the same time, illustrating just how errant is the radical Islamist understanding of it.

This book, as an exploratory sociological analysis, broadly examines the major structural factors which contribute to the social disorganization of the Catholic hierarchy as a clerical community, facilitating the persistence of clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

This book in religious studies uses a Malaysian apostasy case study as a platform to investigate and discuss the broader radicalisation of apostates on social networking sites.

This book provides a comprehensive account on the doctrines of the Andhakas, an early Buddhist sect. Divided into four chapters, the book offers broad coverage of the Andhakas, making it of interest to researchers focusing on early Buddhism, as well as general readers who want to learn more about Buddhist philosophy and studies on Andhra.