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This article aims to develop and explore diagnostic frameworks to enhance one's understanding of the religiously‐inspired terrorist. It seeks to examine the relationship between the culture and conditions from which terrorists are recruited, as well as the psychological impact of fundamentalist religious teachings upon the minds of susceptible people.

This paper synthesises the theories of memetics with structuration to create a diagnostic framework facilitating greater understanding of terrorism and its appeal to those being recruited to its cause. This diagnostic framework assesses the influence and power of selective religious teachings when combined with a culture and history of violence, and their impact on susceptible minds in a fractured society.

By combining the theory of memetics with structuration theory it is possible to develop a diagnostic framework that examines psychological, cultural, and religiously‐inspired factors driving the phenomenon that has been labelled as terrorism. Memetic theory assesses culture and communication of beliefs, ideas, and thoughts. Structuration theory identifies motives and drives.

The authors conclude that the current terrorism problem bears little relationship to US foreign policy. The concept of a free society will never be fully enacted until the religious and cultural scaffoldings that support terrorism have been dismantled.

The paper focuses on two main issues. First, 19 Southern Baptists were asked, how they believe living in the Southeastern USA influences their religious faith. Second, the interviewees were asked about their experiences traveling to Israel.

Through depth interviews, 13 corollaries were derived that help explain the Southern fundamentalist perspective on religion. The paper borrows principles from grounded theory, an inductive method that allows one to observe first and then begin building a general theory.

Southern Baptists do not believe that living in the South changes their beliefs. However, they do believe that the South is a supportive environment for the Christian fundamentalist. The Baptists experienced Israel in highly idiosyncratic ways. Some said that the experience dramatically changed their lives; others felt that the trip had only a minimal impact.

The paper is among the first to ask Southern fundamentalists how they believe the South influences their beliefs. It helps shine a light on the nature of Southern religion and how Southern fundamentalism fits in the larger Christian world.

Post 9/11 events not only exposed the visible and invisible aspects of the often intertwined self‐interest of political, economic and especially religious elites, but also presented a practical and ideological vacuum susceptible to “once and for all” opportunistic fantasies of ultra and Neo‐conservative, cum religious, fanatics. The purpose of this paper is to counter balance the constant flow of Neo‐liberal and religious‐fundamentalist propaganda that is having a destructive effect on hard‐won civil ideals and democratic freedoms.

This paper presents a study of the relationship between visible and invisible power in the context of a historical study of the great age of tolerance and co‐existence between Jews, Muslims and Christians. The paper uses Benvenisti's “double history” methodology to recover what is visible on the surface and the “buried history” of what is invisible to discern the implications the Spanish Convivencia has for contemporary debates over political and religious “purity”.

This paper discovers dangerous signs of a continuing ahistorical hubris amongst elites and others that denies the historical evidence for the possibility of mutual accommodations between political and religious communities. This paper locates the need to recover lost, or discounted, multiple histories and (in)visible portents of a future other than the triumphalism of Western, especially “exceptionalist” US interests.

This paper demonstrates the need for more research into the use/misuse of historical evidence within (in)visible power mechanisms designed to serve ideological and hegemonic interests.

In our uncertain age, this paper is notable for developing a historically grounded vision of a real‐politic new world order based on mutual accommodation and respect.

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the impact of conservatism on political liberty and liberal democracy in contemporary society. It applies Weber's description of capitalism as the “most fateful” social force in modern society to analyzing conservatism in relation to political liberty and liberal democracy. The paper posits and finds that conservatism primarily (with secondary variations) negatively impacts political liberty and so modern liberal democracy. Alternatively, it argues and shows that conservatism almost invariably generates political repression and elimination or subversion of liberal democracy and society. It concludes that conservatism, especially in America, becomes from the “most fateful” to the “most fatal” social force on the account of its adverse impact on political liberty and democracy.

The paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of conservatism and its essentially destructive effects on political liberties and liberal democracy in contemporary society.

The paper finds that conservatism, especially in America, becomes from the “most fateful” to the “most fatal” social force on the account of its adverse impact on political liberty and democracy.

The paper posits and finds that conservatism primarily (with secondary variations) negatively impacts political liberty and so modern liberal democracy. Alternatively, it argues and shows that conservatism almost invariably generates political repression and elimination or subversion of liberal democracy and society.

Religious institutions can affect organizational practices when employees bring their religious commitments and practices into the workplace. But those religious commitments function in the midst of other organizational factors that influence the working out of employees’ religious commitments. This process can generate varying outcomes in organizational contexts, ranging from a heightened effect of religious commitment on employee behavior to a negligible or nonexistent influence of religion on employee behavior. Relying on social identity theory and schematic social cognition as unifying frameworks for the study of religious behavior, we develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding how and why the religious beliefs, commitments and practices employees bring to work have varying behavioral impacts.

This study investigates the observed resurgence in religious beliefs seen across many societies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the economic theory of religious clubs, the author models religious participation during the pandemic as a mechanism for alleviating the financial distress associated with the health distress from the pandemic.

Using data from the COVID-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) in Nigeria, the author investigates the economic motivation for religious intensity during the COVID-19 pandemic. To address endogeneity concerns, the author exploits geographic variables of temperature and longitudes as sources of COVID-19 risk.

Overall, health distress stimulates religious intensity. Consistent with the economic theory of religious clubs, adverse health shocks stimulate financial distress, and the effect is stronger among religious participants. Similarly, people see God and not the government as a source of protection against COVID-19.

The study’s model sees religious organizations as public goods providers, especially when governments and markets are inefficient.

The study’s recommendations support an expanded role for religious networks in healthcare delivery and more public funding to attenuate the post-pandemic resurgence of social violence in economically distressed regions.

Despite the research interest in the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term implications, many of which relate to social behavior adjustments that cause individuals to identify more closely with their social group, need greater understanding. Suppose religious intensity is linked to economic distress. In that case, this is a major source of worry for countries whose economies are subject to higher fluctuations and where the governments and markets are inefficiently organized. These regions may be more susceptible to a resurgence in religious fundamentalism associated with the economic shocks from the pandemic. Consequently, these regions would require more public funding to attenuate the potential for costly activities like organized violence, suicide attacks and terrorist activities in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Prompted by the observation of the increase in religious identity through religious intensity during the pandemic, the author contributes by developing theoretically-based hypotheses that are incentive-compatible to provide a rational justification for the observation. The author empirically validates the hypothesis by taking advantage of the COVID-19 National Survey in Nigeria by specifically using survey rounds 4 and 7 which have more comprehensive religious items included.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0719

Purpose – This study aimed to explore what the Islamic boarding school does to protect their students from radicalism, violence, and fundamentalism.

Approach – For this research, both a qualitative approach and a phenomenological method were used to get the accurate results.

Findings – The study was conducted from April 2016 to December 2016. The Islamic Boarding School of Jabal Nur was taken up as a case for this study. The school has a lot of strategies to protect its students from radicalism, violence, and fundamentalism ideology. Those ideologies might damage their health mental and behavior. This research found that the strategies are: (1) applying the curriculum of the study according to the Ministry of Religious Affairs (Kementerian Agama); (2) religious education based on the salafi method (al kitab alasfar) which contains the deradicalization concept, and by this method, the students were trained to be a obedient; (3) foster care system or parenting done for 24 hours. The tutor was responsible for paying attention to their development, listening to their complaints, taking care of their mental and physical health, and guiding them at all times; and (4) the student (santri) was occupied by various extracurricular activities, such as Arabic caligraphy learning, language department center, sport activities, etc. Prevention efforts should also be based on the agreement between the students and their teacher. With these efforts, this study concludes that the radical ideology potential for santri (student) will not occur.

Originality/Value – The study of radicalism becomes an important discussion today, given the rise of terrorist threats in almost all countries.

This chapter explores religion and spirituality as a form and source of demographic differences relevant to the study of occupational stress and well-being. The purpose of the chapter is to provide a resource and starting point to occupational health and stress researchers who may be interested in religion/spirituality. A review of critical religion/spirituality concepts is provided, along with a discussion of how religion/spirituality can be integrated into common occupational stress theories and reconciled with commonly studied variables within this domain. A series of future research directions involving religion/spirituality and occupational health and stress are ultimately presented.

Busch focuses on what he regards as the three broad causes of immorality in the modern world: scientism, statism, and marketism. He views these three “isms” pejoratively and originating respectively with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and Adam Smith. Each is treated as a “leviathan” spewing immorality from its multiple heads in the form of undue faith in the three different kinds of social order they generate.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the major players operating on Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia online community, which is by far the most widely spread political online community in Saudi Arabia receiving 20 million page views per month.

In addition to using “focused” silent observation to observe Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia over a period of three months (May‐July 2007) and thematic content analysis to examine 2,000 topics (and their replies) posted to Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia during the period of May‐June 2007, semi‐structured interviews were conducted (in Arabic) with 15 key informants to report their perceptions regarding Islamic fundamentalists, extremists and liberals, etc. on their forum.

The results of this study indicate that there are three main players operating in Al‐Saha Al‐Siyasia: Islamic fundamentalists, extremists, and liberals. Islamic fundamentalists who are the vast majority on this community use the forum as a medium to promote their image and defend their way of practising the religion. Extremists on the other hand, although their numbers in the forum are very small, use the forum as a medium to establish their credibility and the grounds for their actions. Finally, the liberals use the forum to communicate with the public, and advocate their plans for social reform, invite people to adopt a less strict version of Islam and adopt secularism as a way of life.

This paper continues the first comprehensive descriptive study of the size and influence of the Islamic fundamentalists, extremists, and liberals in their activities as online communities.