Prophet Muhammad declared that only two women had reached ‘perfection’, yet many men had done so. What did he mean by this? How could there be just two perfect women? Analysis of the statement in Qur’an commentaries demonstrates that even though Prophet Muhammad used ‘perfection’ in a technical sense to denote prophethood—meaning that there were many male prophets but only two female ones—most Qur’anic exegetes used far less reliable versions of this saying to argue that ‘perfection’ entailed general moral excellence, thus women were ontologically inferior to men. In this interpretation, they followed the lead of analysts of Prophet Muhammad’s sayings (ahadith) who had come to the same conclusion even though it contradicted more reliable versions of the hadith. It is this interpretation, based on shaky evidence, that is prevalent in both exoteric and mystical Qur’an commentaries. The commentaries of the mystic Ibn ‘Arabi, nevertheless, buck this trend. Ibn ‘Arabi argues that Prophet Muhammad referred to prophethood by the term ‘perfection’. Yet true perfection is the ontological perfection of manifesting the divine Names in which both men and women participate equally.
Religious harm is a rapidly emerging area of inquiry that challenges the assumption that religious involvement is universally beneficial. This study presents findings from a large-scale qualitative analysis of 333 individuals who completed a survey asking about experiences of religious or spiritual harm. The research identified nine overarching themes: a profound sense of emotional distress; experiences of delayed development and destabilised sense of self; mental and physical health damage; relational damage; pervasive impacts on faith/spirituality; material and financial costs; the chronic and pervasive nature of impacts; having the impacts compounded by misunderstandings; and personal growth and resilience. The study highlights the need for more research within therapeutic and religious settings, and calls for greater recognition of religious harm in clinical practice and community discourse. This research contributes to a growing body of literature seeking to address religious harm as a serious and complex phenomenon.
Emma Quilty, Witch Power: Hexing the Patriarchy with Feminist Magic. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2025, pp. 208, AUD$41.95, ISBN 9781509564460 (hbk).
Milad Milani, The Nature of Sufism: An Ontological Reading of the Mystical in Islam. London and New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 152, $66.74, ISBN 9781032079059 (pbk).
Sarah Huxtable-Mohr, Islamic Liberation Psychology: The Transformational Force of Self-Development, Community Empowerment, and Revolutionary Change, London: Routledge, 2025, pp. 176, $71.19, ISBN 9781032625003 (pbk).
Teacher education has an essential role in facilitating dialogue between diverse socio-politico-religious perspectives. This study used a mixed methods survey (N = 1179) to examine intragroup differences among pre-service teachers (PSTs) across the Left–Right Spectrum (LRS), the Theist–Atheist Spectrum (TAS), and identifications with Ultimate Concepts. Findings showed that PSTs tended to identify as centre left and theistic-agnostic; that gender significantly predicted TAS identification, with female PSTs more likely to be theistic; that TAS and LRS were significantly related, with theism associated with more right-leaning positions; and that PST demographics were significantly interrelated. We interpret these findings to support (a) inclusive approaches in Initial Teacher Education that represent and reconcile socio-politico-religious differences, and (b) further research on disciplinary affiliation and identity. We situate these insights within contemporary debates about the teaching profession’s role amid growing disruption and polarisation in Western democracies.
Since the early twentieth century, historical accounts of belief in the devil have tended to see the period from the Enlightenment onwards as the nadir of belief in a personified devil, particularly in secularising Europe. While this is demonstrably the case in some regards, more recent scholarship has complicated this picture, and this is particularly salient with reference to sectors of the Roman Catholic Church. This article examines the specific case of the survival of Roman Catholic demonology in the period from the late nineteenth century through to the eve of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). By surveying a series of discursive fields usually treated separately, this article highlights that far from being abandoned, demonological discourse remained a feature of various sectors of the Church during the period between around 1850 through to 1960 and can be evidenced in a variety of intellectual domains ranging from the developing discipline of Biblical Studies to the historiography of witchcraft and touching on areas extending from the Roman Catholic response to Spiritualism through to the modernist controversy and popular literature.
Matthew Elia, The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024, pp. 296, US$45.00, ISBN 9780300266597 (hbk).
Making sense of death and providing a postmortem narrative are two major functions of religious traditions across the world. Among the major theories dealing with the captivating questions of the afterlife, Dharmic religious traditions (particularly Hinduism and Buddhism) deem metempsychosis or reincarnation to be the crucial explanation. Variegated versions of the idea have been present at different levels in other religious traditions (Chinese, indigenous American, Australian and African traditional religions). Furthermore, in Abrahamic religions as well as Zoroastrianism, reincarnation is commonly received as complementary and peripheral theory or a minority report on death and what is supposed to come afterwards. The adoption of metempsychosis often mirrors intellectual exchanges between religious traditions and philosophical schools, as in the case of the prominent School of Illuminationism, which exemplifies such philosophical interactions between Neoplatonist Muslims, Jews, and the practitioners of Indian religions. The present special issue deals with a pivotal question: How has the idea of metempsychosis been received in various religious traditions?
Since the early twentieth century, historical accounts of belief in the devil have tended to see the period from the Enlightenment onwards as the nadir of belief in a personified devil, particularly in secularising Europe. While this is demonstrably the case in some regards, more recent scholarship has complicated this picture, and this is particularly salient with reference to sectors of the Roman Catholic Church. This article examines the specific case of the survival of Roman Catholic demonology in the period from the late nineteenth century through to the eve of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). By surveying a series of discursive fields usually treated separately, this article highlights that far from being abandoned, demonological discourse remained a feature of various sectors of the Church during the period between around 1850 through to 1960 and can be evidenced in a variety of intellectual domains ranging from the developing discipline of Biblical Studies to the historiography of witchcraft and touching on areas extending from the Roman Catholic response to Spiritualism through to the modernist controversy and popular literature.
This article explores contemporary empirical evidence of the extent of the uptake of misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 with regards to religion in the New South Wales population in Australia. The data were collected through an online survey conducted in 2022 (N=5,276). Religious respondents tend to follow conspiracy theories, distrusting the recommendations of scientists and for some, resourcing information from religious leaders. While religion is associated with beliefs in conspiracy theories, this article discovers that it is not an independent factor, but is part of a complex relation with other variables. Comparisons with similar research in the US uncovers a potential equivalent of US Christian Nationalism but in the Australian context.
Teacher education has an essential role in facilitating dialogue between diverse socio-politico-religious perspectives. This study used a mixed methods survey (N = 1179) to examine intragroup differences among pre-service teachers (PSTs) across the Left-Right Spectrum (LRS), the Theist-Atheist Spectrum (TAS), and identifications with Ultimate Concepts. Findings showed that PSTs tended to identify as centre left and theistic-agnostic; that gender significantly predicted TAS identification, with female PSTs more likely to be theistic; that TAS and LRS were significantly related, with theism associated with more right-leaning positions; and that PST demographics were significantly interrelated. We interpret these findings to support (a) inclusive approaches in Initial Teacher Education that represent and reconcile socio-politico-religious differences, and (b) further research on disciplinary affiliation and identity. We situate these insights within contemporary debates about the teaching profession's role amid growing disruption and polarisation in Western democracies.
This article explores the nature of the afterlife in African Traditional Religion. According to this belief, when a person dies, their spirit transitions to become a member of the living dead for about five generations after which they become a nameless ghost and their personal identity is lost. After explaining these ideas in more detail, I turn to a philosophical examination of the afterlife by focusing on two concepts in punishment and immortality. With respect to the former, African Traditional Religion says that justice is doled out in an individual's earthly life, not in the afterlife. With respect to the latter, African Traditional Religion's account of the afterlife provides life extension but ultimately still ends in non-existence. I assess some of the philosophical upshots and downsides of these positions before concluding that much philosophical work remains to be done in exploring these concepts in their own right, in addition to examining where cross-cultural investigations might lead.
Christianity has traditionally distanced itself from speaking about reincarnation. Yet claims are sometimes made, especially in esoteric circles, that such ideas were present in various heretical groups in its history, such as the Gnostics in the early Church and the Cathars in the medieval period. This article argues that Platonic and Christian ideas about the journey of the soul have always been in evolution. Metempsychosis as expounded in Pythagorean and Platonic tradition as involving the transfer of an individual's soul into another living being, is subtly different from reincarnation, a term that was invented only in the mid-nineteenth century. It adapts the Christian notion of 'incarnation' as formulated in John's Gospel. This article argues that while ancient or medieval groups never spoke about reincarnation as such, Christians developed other ways of thinking about how the soul might be purged after death, namely through purgatory. Reincarnation as such was formulated in the nineteenth century to reflect ideas of spiritual progress, rather different from those conventionally associated with metempsychosis.
This article re-examines Buddhist accounts of death and rebirth through the lens of continuity without essence. Focusing on the Nik & amacr;yas while noting trajectories in Mah & amacr;y & amacr;na and Vajray & amacr;na, it analyses how dependent origination, the five aggregates, and karmic causality articulate continuity as a conditioned stream rather than a persisting self. Death is read as dissolution, not annihilation; what carries forward are causal dispositions (sankh & amacr;r & amacr;), not identity. The discussion clarifies the roles of bhava (becoming), duhkha, and the unconditioned, and reviews classical images that convey presence without reification. Methodologically, it distinguishes heuristic comparisons with science from Buddhist soteriology, and notes the rarity and ethical opportunity of human life as enabling discernment and practice. The upshot is a synthetic account that links ontology, psychology, and ethics: continuity is causal and relational, moral agency is constitutive of future experience, and liberation consists in ending the grasping that sustains the cycle of becoming.
Making sense of death and providing a postmortem narrative are two major functions of religious traditions across the world. Among the major theories dealing with the captivating questions of the afterlife, Dharmic religious traditions (particularly Hinduism and Buddhism) deem metempsychosis or reincarnation to be the crucial explanation. Variegated versions of the idea have been present at different levels in other religious traditions (Chinese, indigenous American, Australian and African traditional religions). Furthermore, in Abrahamic religions as well as Zoroastrianism, reincarnation is commonly received as complementary and peripheral theory or a minority report on death and what is supposed to come afterwards. The adoption of metempsychosis often mirrors intellectual exchanges between religious traditions and philosophical schools, as in the case of the prominent School of Illuminationism, which exemplifies such philosophical interactions between Neoplatonist Muslims, Jews, and the practitioners of Indian religions. The present special issue deals with a pivotal question: How has the idea of metempsychosis been received in various religious traditions?
This article re-examines Buddhist accounts of death and rebirth through the lens of continuity without essence. Focusing on the Nikāyas while noting trajectories in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, it analyses how dependent origination, the five aggregates, and karmic causality articulate continuity as a conditioned stream rather than a persisting self. Death is read as dissolution, not annihilation; what carries forward are causal dispositions (saṅkhārā), not identity. The discussion clarifies the roles of bhava (becoming), duḥkha, and the unconditioned, and reviews classical images that convey presence without reification. Methodologically, it distinguishes heuristic comparisons with science from Buddhist soteriology, and notes the rarity and ethical opportunity of human life as enabling discernment and practice. The upshot is a synthetic account that links ontology, psychology, and ethics: continuity is causal and relational, moral agency is constitutive of future experience, and liberation consists in ending the grasping that sustains the cycle of becoming.
This article explores the nature of the afterlife in African Traditional Religion. According to this belief, when a person dies, their spirit transitions to become a member of the living dead for about five generations after which they become a nameless ghost and their personal identity is lost. After explaining these ideas in more detail, I turn to a philosophical examination of the afterlife by focusing on two concepts in punishment and immortality. With respect to the former, African Traditional Religion says that justice is doled out in an individual’s earthly life, not in the afterlife. With respect to the latter, African Traditional Religion’s account of the afterlife provides life extension but ultimately still ends in non-existence. I assess some of the philosophical upshots and downsides of these positions before concluding that much philosophical work remains to be done in exploring these concepts in their own right, in addition to examining where cross-cultural investigations might lead.
Christianity has traditionally distanced itself from speaking about reincarnation. Yet claims are sometimes made, especially in esoteric circles, that such ideas were present in various heretical groups in its history, such as the Gnostics in the early Church and the Cathars in the medieval period. This article argues that Platonic and Christian ideas about the journey of the soul have always been in evolution. Metempsychosis as expounded in Pythagorean and Platonic tradition as involving the transfer of an individual’s soul into another living being, is subtly different from reincarnation, a term that was invented only in the mid-nineteenth century. It adapts the Christian notion of ‘incarnation’ as formulated in John’s Gospel. This article argues that while ancient or medieval groups never spoke about reincarnation as such, Christians developed other ways of thinking about how the soul might be purged after death, namely through purgatory. Reincarnation as such was formulated in the nineteenth century to reflect ideas of spiritual progress, rather different from those conventionally associated with metempsychosis.
Milad Milani, Heidegger, Ontology, and the Destiny of Islam: Thoughts and Reflections on the Nature of Islam in the World, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2024, pp. 192, $180.00 (publisher) $152.60 (Amazon), ISBN 9781666965346 (hbk).
