Faith Development And Perception Of Diversity Among Muslims In Turkey: Construction And Initial Test Of A Measure For Religious Diversity In Islam

Abstract

The study is an attempt to investigate how a sample of Muslims in Turkey perceives diversity of faith and faith members. Employing the scheme of the theory of faith development, the author, by observing and analyzing the qualitative data which have been gathered from 25 participants via in-depth-interview, constructed a scale to measure three types of perception of religious diversity, corresponding to Stage Three, Stage Four and Stage Five in Fowler’s model. In addition, the study sought correlation, if any, between these three perceptions of diversity, Muslim Conventionality and Quest religious orientation. Working in accordance with the expectancy, the results revealed three distinctive types of perception of diversity, with satisfying alpha values, and their correlates. However, there is no findings to support whether these three stages are developmental and sequential as Fowler proposed. In addition, it was revealed that Muslim conventionality has a high level of positive correlation with Style Three perception of diversity. Furthermore, Quest religious orientation tends to be more common among hypothesized higher forms of faith stages.

Keywords

• Islam, faith development, perception of diversity, Quest, Muslim conventionality, Fowler, faith style