India is home to every sixth person in the world, some 30 million dogs and a quarter of the total world cattle population. A vast majority of Indians are Hindus, and even though the Hindu religion proclaims love, nurturing and worshipping of animals, sometimes the same religion constitutes an obstacle for animal welfare in practice. This paper investigates the significance of historic and religious symbols to the way animals are perceived in modern Indian society, as well as the different social factors which underlie attitudes to animals. The concept of karma, as well as that of good versus bad deaths, is probably the foundation of the general Hindu reluctance to euthanasia in any form. Although in theory all species are generally regarded as equal in Hinduism, in practice there seems to be a differentiation; for cultural, religious, medical and financial reasons.

Faith is a phenomenon that engages the individual into emotional, social and daily manners.Religion tends to engage the individual in different levels in the daily life. In the church communion, there is a belief to the traditional and the repeteated behaviour. This shared group is strength by ceremonies and rituals and people in this collective somehow experience another type of reality. This study has a social - psychological perspective and the purpose is to study people?s know-how of faith and why they seek religion in today´s secularized society.

The contents of the school subject religion in Sweden, has gone through a radical change during the past century. With an origin of only treating Christianity and being a major cultural and social actor, it has developed into more of a multicultural and philosophical subject. The fact that the subject no longer has cultural recognition makes it more abstract and harder for students to relate to. Additionally, religion is experienced as a rather dull subject in school. My essay is therefore written to provide teachers encouragement of interest for religious education, by using humor. The well-known psychologist Jean Piaget claims play to be a prime state of learning.

This report is an attempt to clarify how religious and non-religious views-of-life [livsåskådningar] are created through the collaboration and opposition of religious and scientific elements/ideas. This with the hope of reaching a fruitful result related to the solution of world-view related conflicts, such as the ones existing between science and religion, on an individual and societal level.This is accomplished with the help of two assertions: (1) Mankind has a need to explain its existence and surroundings. (2) Religion and science has their origins in the same seed and aim to serve the same purpose, or function. Together these two assertions lay the theoretical foundations of this report which implies that all humans have an innate need of sustaining a stable world-view.The result of this report is that a final solution to world-view related conflicts are beyond reach as our mental and physical nature limits us. However there are strategies for minimizing world-view related conflicts effect on society..

The relationship between fandoms and religion has become an increasingly popular topic to study within the field of the sociology of religion. In previous studies, there have been different views concerning whether or not fandoms should be regarded as religious from a functional perspective. This issue is especially interesting considering the decreasing popularity of traditional religion in some aspects. The aim of this essay is to study how Harry Potter fandoms are described in previous studies. The study aims at discerning both the empirical data and how the data is interpreted. The material in this study consists of three previous studies about the communities centered around Harry Potter fandoms.

Jag har undersökt Hollywoodfilmernas bild av Voodoon kontra den egentliga religionen. Jag har tittat på religionens grunder, myterna kring till exempel zombies och Voodoodockor samt vilken utbredning Voodoon har idag. Med hjälp av litteraturstudier och Internet har jag fått fram mycket intressant material.Voodoo är en komplicerad religion som är omgiven av mycket mystik och där anhängarna har en personlig kontakt med sina gudar. Idag har Voodoon omkring 50-60 miljoner anhängare världen över..

The overall purpose of the essay is to analyse what Dietrich Bonhoeffer meant by Religionless Christianity. For this I have chosen to use the substantial idea analysis.I first came across the concept of freedom of religion to Christianity and Religionless Christians, in the book Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Tankar om en 1900-talsmartyr by Martin Lind in which he discusses what Bonhoeffer might discuss with Religionless Christians. This book is therefore the origin of the selection of literature I have chosen to use in the essay. Bonhoeffer writes several letters from prison about the movement he sees towards a new phase in human history, in which man can no longer be religious. However, Bonhoeffer uses the word religion in such a way that its content cannot be clearly determined.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how Irish people on a rural location practice their faith in everyday life. The intention is also to find out what strategies my interviewees use to negotiate the abuse scandal and what their thoughts on the Catholic Church are. The material mainly consists of interviews with seven people part of a rural parish in Ireland. My research also entails smaller observations and conversations in the homes of the participants.The results indicate that they all consider themselves religious, however not all Catholic. All of the participants integrate their religion in everyday life.

Många undersökningar har behandlat hur islamundervisning går till i gymnasieskolan, bland annat Kjell Härenstams bok Skolboksislam. Ingen jag har kommit i kontakt med hittills har tagit upp frågan om hur lärare i religion tar upp religions- och kulturmöten, då i synnerhet krigen i Afghanistan och Irak. Mina frågeställningar är således följande:Hur har lärare i religion på gymnasiet tagit upp krigen i Afghanistan och Irak?Var har de hämtat sin information och hur har de bedömt den källkritiskt?.

Sharia or western equality?womenin Egyptian legislationThe Islamic law (Sharia) in most of the countries in Middle East and North Africa has been the basis for modern laws which regulate issues such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. These laws (personal status law or family law) have been debated frequently in the last decades.There are those who consider personal status law (PSL) as unjust, male-biased and discriminating against women especially in the issue of divorce. On the other hand there are voices who call to go back to the Sharia, because muslims has to follow the islamic law and its values, they are universal as they claim. In this essay I try to enlighten these two points of view which can be found in the debate in Egypt.

Vi tycker det här ämnet är viktigt och passar bra in i vår verksamhetsförlagda tid och i vår utbildning som en framtida lärare. Det är viktigt att vi redan i tidig ålder försöker informera våra elever att vi alla som lever i detta samhälle har fler likheter än olikheter och genom att tala kring detta så kan man få bort begreppen vi och de. Rasism är byggd på fördomar, därför tycker vi det är viktigt att man börjar tala kring religion redan tidigt i åldrarna. Vi anser att genom att vi diskuterar olika religioner i klassrummen så skapar eleverna förståelse till dessa religioner, denna förståelse kan vara väldig väsentlig för dem i deras vuxenliv. I detta arbete försöker vi få fram vad elever anser om religion, vad som intresserar dem.

The aim of this paper is to study how school yoga in Östermalmsskolan is expressed in the texts consist of a notification to the Schools Inspectorate, an opinion to the Schools Inspectorate and a statement of the Schools Inspectorate. The method used for the investigation is a critical discourse analysis which study social and political processes in the society as created through language. The perspective of the critical discourse analysis is a social construction that considers that language is a social production created in a discursive way. It produces and reflects social process in the language. By using theories of different concepts such as yoga, religion, spirituality, non-denominational and freedom of religion, my aim is to investigate how yoga is expressed in the school inspectorate text.

Historically Sweden had a confessional teaching of religion in school, that is the starting point ofthis essay. In the Swedish school system the students have the right to believe whatever they wantbut they will be introduced to different beliefs in the subject religion. Even the church focuses onthe individuals own beliefs during confirmation. This essay explores if there is something in aconfessional teaching that contributes to the students' knowledge in religion as a school subject.Therefore a quantitative study have been performed. The study aimed to investigate the grades ofthe students that participated in confirmation and how the grades changed after the confirmation.

Islam är en av världsreligionerna och har miljoner anhängare världen över. Det finns en allmän uppfattning om islams problematik, så till vida att islam sällan får rätt presentation, då exempelvis inom massmedia och skola. Frågan är hur skolan, som är vårt största lärosäte presenterar en religion rättvist och utan fördomar, hur en religion blir presenterat på ett icke nyanserat sätt.Uppsatsens syfte är att söka svar på hur islam framställs i svensk gymnasieskola, med metoder som dokumentstudier, fokusgrupp och djupintervjuer, där muslimska elever berättar om erfarenheter och upplevelser.Generella slutsatser som framkommit är att muslimska elever anser att svensk gymnasieskola ger en delvis positiv bild av islam, som religion, men med vissa brister, såsom etnocentriskt tänkande, i muntlig presentation och text. Elever har även pekat på en viss marginalisering och distansering gällande islams presentation i undervisningen..

Music and religion are concepts, which have been continually associated with spirituality throughout the history of Western religion. Since the dawn of mankind, it has been considered that music has had a clear function about how individuals grasp their inner emotions to reach the transcendent and comprehend "Self". The aim of this thesis is to gain greater understanding as to how a group of young catechists in the Swedish Lutheran Church feel, interpret and construct their identities through popular music. An exploration as to how this specific group perceives concepts such as the Bible, church, spirituality, and religion was undertaken. The theory forming the basis of this essay is derived from a sociological perspective of postmodernism.