Sociology
M.R. Pouyafar
Abstract
The largest religious community of Muslims is formed every year on the occasion of the 40th Day of Ashura by walking to Karbala and during the Arbaeen procession. This pilgrimage walk, while being a wonderful manifestation of religious experience, is a diverse field of Charity services to pilgrims, as ...
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The largest religious community of Muslims is formed every year on the occasion of the 40th Day of Ashura by walking to Karbala and during the Arbaeen procession. This pilgrimage walk, while being a wonderful manifestation of religious experience, is a diverse field of Charity services to pilgrims, as well as a clear example of "religious charity". Religious experience is usually formed during religious practices and rituals, including during pilgrimage. But this study begins specifically with the important question of whether the experience of participation and involvement in religious charity can have the characteristics of a religious experience? To answer this question, the qualitative research method has been used using interview and participatory observation techniques by recording data such as photos, videos and field notes. Iranian pilgrims as well as processions, procession holders and members of Iranian and Iraqi processions were the observation unit and the population studied in this study. The findings showed that the experience of participating in religious charitable services, as well as the use of these services in the Arbaeen walk, can be a ground for the emergence and characteristics of religious experience. By extending the results to other situations of religious practice in which religious Charity deeds are possible, it has been argued that the possibility of defining religious charity as one of the contexts of religious experience in the Arbaeen walk can be a positive answer to the possibility of this kind of definition of Religious experience should be in all situations of religious experience - in addition to pilgrimage and Arbaeen.
Alireza Shojaeezand
Abstract
As a fascinating issue for the scholars in Religion Studies, religious experience has a long-lasting theological and social background in Christianity and Occidental history which has caused to the present increasing attention to the matter. However, as other concepts ad categories, its development in ...
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As a fascinating issue for the scholars in Religion Studies, religious experience has a long-lasting theological and social background in Christianity and Occidental history which has caused to the present increasing attention to the matter. However, as other concepts ad categories, its development in Iran has experienced a distorted process of just Academic and theoretical debates and not to experience it practically. Avoiding evaluating the term from Islamic theological point of view, while introducing some of its theological or historical and social backgrounds in the west, I attempt to make theologists and philosophers of religion, in addition to the religious psychologists and sociologists pay more attention to the necessity of caution and focus on the nature and status of religious Experience in Religion Studies, and its relation with religiosity.
