Rarely have the geographical boundaries of religious communities coincided with the borders of states. As a result believers have often found themselves having to cross state frontiers in order to fulfill spiritual needs, while states have worked to manage the complications, and to exploit the opportunities, presented by the international dimensions of different religious traditions. In light o...

Introduction: The Kalash are the only non-Muslim ethnic group living in three small and beautiful valleys of district Chitral. They are the last tribe of the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush. The Kalash exhibit, perhaps, one of the ancient and unique primitive traditions and cultures. They are living with the Muslims in this region for a long period of time, and had been under Muslim rule most of this ...

BACKGROUND Patient autonomy has been promoted as the most important principle to guide difficult clinical decisions. To examine whether practising physicians indeed value patient autonomy above other considerations, physicians were asked to weight patient autonomy against three other criteria that often influence doctors' decisions. Associations between physicians' religious characteristics and...

Although in some sense narrative approaches in practical theology have been developed only recently, one could claim that there is a long and intrinsic history of their relationship. Religious practices that form the core material for theological reflection in practical theology are often directly related to narratives. In one way or another human stories are connected with stories of and about...

I began my study of religion as a hobby years before I formally entered the academic world. During my informal studies I never gave much thought to just what religion is. I gleaned the bookstore shelves in sections marked " Religion, " never considering why some books appeared on these shelves and others appeared on the " New Age and Occult " section. My study of religion was simple — my concep...

In this paper we examine public attitudes on the role of religion in the American political process, as well as some public policy implications of those attitudes. Although the current American legal regime may lean toward strict separationism, the political system has seen renewed religious activism over the past three decades. Historically, religious involvement in American politics has been ...

Any assessment of the status of women has to start from the social framework, social structures, cultural norms and value systems that influence social expectations regarding the behaviour of both men and women and determine women‟s roles and their position in society. A society is composed of many institutions and most important of them are the system of decent, family and kinship, marriage an...