"Progressiver Islam" im ausgehenden Zarenreich: Das Plädoyer des St. Petersburger Imams und Regierungsbeamten Ataulla Bajazitov (1846-1911) für die Partizipation der Muslime an der modernen Zivilisation

Ataulla Bajazitov (1846-1911) fulfilled a social double role by serving his Tatar community in St. Petersburg as imam and the Russian state as military Muslim ‘cleric’, translator and teacher. By founding Russia’s first monolingual Tatar newspaper, initiating St. Petersburg’s first Friday mosque and presenting scriptural and rational arguments for the compatibility of Islam and the modern Civilization to a Russian-speaking public as early as 1883, he has been a pioneer among the Muslims in Russia in several respects. In contrast though to similar activities of his Russian contemporary, the Krim Tatar Ismail Gasprinskii (1851-1914), Bajazitov’s endeavours have remained almost unnoticed in Western scholarship. Also in Tatarstan, his books have been only recently reprinted. The present study analyzes Bajazitov’s three monographs written in Russian, namely A Response to Ernest Renan’s lecture “Islam and Science” (1883), The Relationship of Islam towards Science and People of Different Faith (1887) and Islam and Progress (1898). There, he exposes many positions that around that time started to become key arguments of Muslim reformers in the Near East for the progressivness of Islam. The study takes also into account reactions to Bajazitov’s monographs by Russian officers in Tashkent who tried to demonstrate the backwardness of Islam, especially Nikolai Petrovič Ostroumov’s (1846-1930) response in his book entitled Quran and Progress – On the intellectual awakening of today’s Russian Muslims (1901/1903).

Understanding the Sharing Economy: The Role of Response to Negative Reviews in the Peer-To-Peer Accommodation Sharing Network?

Recognizing the potentially ruinous effect of negative reviews on the reputation of the hosts as well as a subjective nature of the travel experience judgements, peer-to-peer accommodation sharing plat-forms, like Airbnb, have readily embraced the “response” option, empowering hosts with the voice to challenge, deny or at least apologize for the subject of critique. However, the effects of different re-sponse strategies on trusting beliefs towards the host remain unclear. To fill this gap, this study focus-es on understanding the impact of different response strategies and review negativity on trusting be-liefs towards the host in peer-to-peer accommodation sharing setting utilizing experimental methods. Examination of two different contexts, varying in the controllability of the subject of complaint, re-veals that when the subject of complaint is controllable by a host, such strategies as confession / apol-ogy and denial can improve trusting beliefs towards the host. However, when the subject of criticism is beyond the control of the host, denial of the issue does not yield guest’s confidence in the host, where-as confession and excuse have positive influence on trusting beliefs.

The Psychological Outcome of Religious Coping with Stressful Life Events in a Swiss Sample of Church Attendees

Background: Recent research suggested thatreligious coping, based on dispositional religiousness and spirituality (R/S), is an important modulating factor in the process of dealing with adversity. In contrast to the United States, the effect of R/S on psychological adjustment to stress is a widely unexplored area in Europe. Methods: We examined a Swiss sample of 328 church attendees in the aftermath of stressful life events to explore associations of positive or negative religious coping with the psychological outcome. Applying a cross-sectional design, we used Huber’s Centrality Scale to specify religiousness and Pargament’s measure of religious coping (RCOPE) for the assessment of positive and negative religious coping. Depressive symptoms and anxiety as outcome variables were examined by the Brief Symptom Inventory. The Stress-Related Growth Scale and the Marburg questionnaire for the assessment of well-being were used to assess positive outcome aspects. We conducted Mann-Whitney tests for group comparisons and cumulative logit analysis for the assessmentof associations of religious coping with our outcome variables. Results: Both forms of religious coping were positively associated with stress-related growth (p < 0.01). However, negative religious coping additionally reduced well-being (p = 0.05, β = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.27–0.99) and increased anxiety (p = 0.02, β = 1.94, 95% CI = 1.10–3.39) and depressive symptoms (p = 0.01, β = 2.27, 95% CI = 1.27–4.06). Conclusions: The effects of religious coping on the psychological adjustment to stressful life events seem relevant. These findings should be confirmed in prospective studies.