religious identity

This paper focuses on the impact of cyberspace on religiosity in Iran through reviewing previous studies. The situation of religion in the age of the internet has always been a major matter of concern for Iranian scholars and policy makers. Accordingly, there have been many researchers who have addressed and approached this problem but there has been no comprehensive understanding of the impact of the internet on religiosity, as no comparative study has been conducted to date. This paper applies meta-analysis as the method for reviewing previous attempts while trying to gather all the data by classifying problems, methods, theoretical approaches and more importantly their results. The outcome of this study is to indicate the impact of cyberspace on religiosity and religious identity, apart from classifying and clarifying the status of religiosity in Iran. Having a stronger religious identity causes less online misbehaviors like searching and engaging in pornography. It also indicates using cyberspace for recreational purposes compared to using it for communication or gathering information etc. makes the users more likely to have a weaker religious identity.

Teacher identity has turned out to be of great importance in teacher pedagogical practice. A number of factors are implicated in shaping and reshaping teachers' identity. Despite numerous studies on teacher identity, language teacher religious identity has remained under-researched. Therefore, the current study examined how Iranian religious English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers are identified. To do so, 30 religious teachers were selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected through employing semi-structured interviews, developed based on Simon’s (2004) six components of identity, namely personal features, physical characters, special abilities, behavioral qualities, ideological attributes, and group membership. The results demonstrated that religious teachers tend to manifest certain Islamic-based personal attributes like fairness and kindness and also adhere to some Islamic rules of physical features like head covering for females and dignified clothes for males. In addition, religious teachers' behaviors and performances were profoundly affected by their religious background, realized in their attempts to control their anger, to avoid insulting and backbiting, and to disregard or replacing the materials which seem to be against the Islamic thought. The findings can have practical implications for teachers, institute administrators, and other stakeholders whose cognizance of religious teachers' identity could help prevent possible identity tensions.

Recognition of major keywords in Imam Khomeini's thoughts is an important path to completely know the intellectual-political collection of the structure which he legally and institutionally built after the revolution of 1979 and left for us. "Ommah" is one of those keywords with religious essence and Islamic feature that came to the political thinking of Islamic thinkers specifically the great leader of our Islamic revolution. The investigation of theoretical and practical works of Imam Khomeini indicates that the word "Ommah" has been able to compete with conceptual changes of the day such as nation and nationalism in addition to maintaining its validity and Quranic origin. In fact, it has reproduced itself employing the instrument of Ejtehad, adjusting itself to the conditions of time and place in Imam Khomeini's thoughts. The present research tried to study Imam Khomeini's attitude employing descriptive-analytical technique and library method. By studying the terminology used by Imam Khomeini, it is concluded that the concept of "nation" is a marginal one, in relation with the concept of "Ommah" In fact, Imam Khomeini has not negated nationalism with the meaning of national authority in his comments, but he has negated ethnicity and clanship and their undesirable impact as the factors of separation among Islamic Ommah.