The current investigation explored prevalence, predictors, and psychological implications of religious and spiritual (r/s) struggles among an Israeli-Palestinian, Muslim sample. R/s struggle was assessed by the Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (Exline et al. 2014), a newly developed scale that assesses a wide array of r/s struggles. Factor analysis of the scale in this study revealed five factors of struggle: Divine and Doubt, Punitive Entities, Interpersonal, Moral, and Ultimate Meaning. Of the 139 Muslim participants, between 1.4 percent and 40.2 percent experienced various r/s struggles. Positive God image and fundamentalism predicted lower levels of struggle, whereas negative God image and universality predicted higher levels of struggle. After controlling for religious variables, we found that both depressive symptoms and generalized anxiety were predicted by Punitive Entities and Ultimate Meaning struggles, while satisfaction with life was predicted by Interpersonal struggle. Possible explanations and implications of the findings are offered, and the limitations of the study are discussed.

Title

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Publisher

Qutaiba Agbaria

Publisher Country

United States of America

Indexing

Thomson Reuters

Impact Factor

1.09

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

54

Year

2015

Pages

631-648