islamic religion research papers

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• v.15; 2021 Sep

Muslim religiosity and health outcomes: A cross-sectional study among muslims in Norway

Bushra ishaq.

a University of Oslo and MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Norway

Lars Østby

b Statistics Norway, Norway

Asbjørn Johannessen

c Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

The aim of this study is to address the association between Muslim religiosity and health outcomes, and investigate if religious Muslims are more likely to be of disadvantage of health than non-religious Muslims.

A cross-sectional study-design is used with a representative sample of Muslims in Norway including 2661 respondents in age 16 years–74 years from the “The Survey On Living Conditions Among Persons With An Immigrant Background 2016”, conducted by Statistics Norway. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between Muslim religiosity and health outcomes. The health outcomes in focus are self-reported health, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, neck and back illnesses, mental health problems, sleeping disorders, consumption of alcohol, and smoking.

Association between Muslim religiosity and positive health outcomes were found. Smoking and alcohol consumption were negatively associated with Muslim religiosity.

The findings suggest no evidence that religious Muslims are more likely than non-religious Muslims to be of disadvantage of health, and the study do not support the premise that Islam as a barrier to health. In addition, our findings suggest that Muslim religiosity might serve as a resource either predicting better health outcomes or that Muslim religiosity may be a factor that exists if good health is evident. As our findings cannot define any cause-effect relation between Muslim religiosity and health outcomes, given the cross-sectional design of the study, we emphasize the need of further research that investigates how Muslim religiosity is associated to health.

1. Introduction

Individuals originating from Muslim countries and living in western countries seem to be of disadvantage with regard to health as they are among the immigrants that report of worse health ( Inhorn & Serour, 2011 ; Johnston & Lordan, 2012 ; Vrålstad & Wiggen, 2017 ). Latif and colleagues ( 2015 ) found poor prognosis for breast cancer among women originating from Muslim countries. Although, also women originating from Sri Lanka had poor prognosis compared to the control group, it was women originating from Somalia that had the worse prognosis with a 50 percent mortality rate compared to ethnic Norwegian women who had a mortality rate of 7,9 percent. Less participation in the national screening program and time of diagnosis have been suggested as the main explanatory variables for the higher mortality rate. Based on a systematic literature review, Samari et al. (2018) concluded that discrimination of Muslims due to their faith, impair their mental and physical health. The “healthy migrant effect”, an empirically observed mortality advantage of migrants relative to the majority population in the host countries, is shown to disappear among second generation male immigrants originating from Muslim countries ( Guillot et al., 2019 ).

Although there is a significant difference in attitudes towards Muslims, Islamophobia is growing globally ( Bangstad, 2014 ; Considine, 2017 ). The field of medicine and health care seems not to be an exception in this regard ( Helsetilsynet, 2019 ; Martin, 2015 ; McIntosh, 2015 ). Articles registered in Medline predominantly portray Muslims in negative ways; claiming that Muslim religiosity has a negative effect on health and that Muslims need modernization and assimilation ( Laird et al., 2007 ). Anti-Muslim views have become even more prevalent during the Covid-19-pandemic ( Chib, 2020 ). Although there are data indicating that minorities, including Muslims living in Western countries, are of higher risk of Covid-19, there is no evidence that this is due to specific Islamic beliefs, but rather due to low socioeconomic status, possible genetic predispositions and comorbidity ( Abuelgasim et al., 2020 ; Ishaq et al., 2021 ; Rose et al., 2020 ). Despite this, Muslims have been blamed for the epidemic spread of the covid-19 virus in several countries, also in Norway ( Brandvold, 2021 , pp. 10–11; Ishaq et al., 2021 ). In some cases, as in India health officials and health care professionals have participated in blaming the Muslim population ( Brandvold, 2021 , pp. 10–11; Pandey, 2020 ). Hence, there seems to be a change with regard to Anti-Muslim views. While Anti-Muslim views usually are linked to conspiracy theories and to the spread as fake news (such as videos of Muslims spitting on non-Muslims to spread the virus) through social media ( Leidig, 2020 ); it may also involve a more collective blame on Muslims as a minority group deliberatively spreading COVID-19 in communities. And anti-Muslim attitudes are also evident among health care professionals. ( Helsetilsynet, 2019 ; Pandey, 2020 ). Although attitudes regarding religiosity as a causal factor of disadvantage of health among Muslims are evident in several societies, scientific evidence of that is lacking. In order to define Islam as a predictor of health disparities among Muslims, knowledge about how Islam is related to health and determinants of health is needed.

1.1. Religion and health

Impact of religion may be difficult to fully differentiate from race and ethnicity, something which is indicated by the tendency to label individuals originating from Muslim majority countries as practicing Muslims. However, religion may contribute to specific values, and practices that may not only influence understanding of illness, but also health seeking behavior and medical compliance ( Padela & Curlin, 2013 ). In this study we intend to address the question whether Muslims that are adherent to Islamic practice and faith are different in regard to health and health behavior than non-religious Muslims. For this reason, it is important to differentiate between individuals who define themselves as Muslims and individuals who might be conceptually affiliated to Islam through the country of origin, as e.g being born in or having parents born in a Muslim majority country. In Norway, where this study has been conducted, only 75 percent of individuals with origin from a Muslim country defined themselves as practicing Muslims according to an another study among Muslims in Norway. Individuals orginating from Muslim countries. but whom do not define themselves as Muslims anymore, are also reported to be quite critical to Islamic practice and faith ( Ishaq, 2017 ).

Religion has been defined as a social determinant of health ( Kawachi, 2019 ). Several studies show a positive association between Muslim religiosity and higher subjective wellbeing, satisfaction, preventive health behavior, and mental health ( Abdel-Khalek, 2014 ; Hassan, 2015 ; Saleem & Saleem, 2020 ). A systematic review of 31 studies concluded with a positive association between Islamic faith and happiness ( Rizvi & Hossain, 2017 ). Islamic-based psychotherapy has shown to speed up the recovery among Muslims who are ill ( Townsend et al., 2002 ). A positive association between Islamic practice and better physical health has also been found ( Saquib et al., 2017 ). Another study found religiosity to protect against dysfunctional consequences of work-related stress among Muslim immigrants in North America ( Jamal & Badawi, 1993 ). Muslim religiosity has also been hypothesized as being protective against suicide because of the low suicide rate among Muslims, and a negative association between Muslim religiosity and suicide attempts has also been found ( Gearing & Alonzo, 2018 ). A question yet to be addressed is how Muslim religiosity and health is associated among Muslims in a Western context, and notably, in a representative sample of Muslims. Based on previous research we suggest that Islam could be related to health in two opposing ways: 1) Muslim religiosity may be a predictor of poor health, given the negative way non-Muslim majority populations perceive the religion, making Muslims more vulnerable for discrimination and hate crime. This may not only create a barrier in access to health care services, but also affect determinants of health such as access to employment. There may also be several other negative downsides of religious affiliation, such as negative coping mechanism or content of what is preached in a religious community ( Kawachi, 2019 ). 2) Muslim religiosity may contribute to positive health outcomes through its health promoting teaching, thus impacting not only behavioral factors such as alcohol consumption, but also psychosocial factors through positive coping mechanisms such as putting trust in God, and by religious attendance through social networks.

1.2. Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to study associations between Muslim religiosity and health by investigating if the non-religious Muslims are more likely to have better health than religious Muslims. No study, to our knowledge, has investigated the association between the multiple dimensions of Muslim religiosity and health indicators in a representative sample. Our study aims to fill this gap. Our null hypothesis is that there is an association between Muslim religiosity and negative health outcomes. We believe that understanding how Muslim religiosity is associated with health is necessary for a more evidence-based approach to Muslim religiosity within the field of health care and medicine, especially in a minority context. Norway is an interesting case in that respect: 1) Muslims constitute a religious minority in Norway as in many other Western countries.

2) Anti-Muslim attitudes, including attitudes regarding Muslim religiosity as a threat to health, are increasing in countries with Muslim minorities. 3) Health disparities between Muslims and the majority population in these countries are significant. 4) Since Norway has better national statistics (better coverage of health register data) than many other western countries, this study may be informative also beyond Norway.

2.1. Study design and sample

A cross-sectional study design is used on a representative sample of Muslims.

The dataset used is from the “The Survey On Living Conditions Among Persons wWith An Immigrant Background 2016”conducted by Statistics Norway ( Holmøy & Wiggen, 2017 ; Vrålstad & Wiggen, 2017 ). On a regular basis, Statistics Norway conducts a national survey on living conditions among immigrants in Norway and their descendants. The survey illuminates a wide range of topics, and the questions in the survey are largely similar to the national survey on living conditions among the general population which has been conducted regularly since first time in 1973 ( Statistics Norway, 1999 ). Questions are developed in close cooperation with statisticians from a wide range of countries, and they are now in line with the EU-SILC. Some of the elements used in this paper, are based on the European Value Survey. The results are included also in data bases in OECD and Eurostat ( European Social Survey, 2018 ). Results from the survey have been published by Statistics Norway and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health ( Kjøllesdal et al., 2019 ; Vrålstad & Wiggen, 2017 ). However, these studies have neither distinguished Muslim immigrants from other immigrants, nor have associations between health and religious affiliation been investigated. This dataset has been anonymized after Statistics Norway had collected the data. A notification to the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) has been made for the use of the sample, and the study is conducted according to NSD's regulations.

The sample was drawn from the Norwegian Central Population Register (CPR). This register has a very high quality (complete coverage of the resident population of Norway, with high quality of the variables). The high quality is due to the fact that every person with a legal right to stay in Norway needs to be registered there, with their unique Personal identification number (PIN-code). This code is needed for having a driving license, access to health care, schools and education, a bank account, access to work etc. The PIN-code can be used for linking a wide range of official registers for statistical and scientific purposes. The CPR contains demographic information, for this article country of birth and parental country of birth is particularly relevant. The gross sample is drawn with a known probability to obtain the desired number of persons to be approached for interview. In that way, the gross sample will be representative for the population. The net sample consists of those who successfully completed the interview. Selective non-response might cause non-representativity of the net sample. To reconstruct representativity, the net sample was weighted according to known differences between the net sample and the population. To counteract the non-representativity “The Survey On Living Conditions Among Persons With An Immigrant Background 2016”oversampled groups with known high non-response, to obtain enough observations for each group.

2.2. Participants

The participants in our analysis is recruited from two samples, who was presented with two questionnaires, but with identical questions as far as those used in our analyses are concerned. The first sample consists of immigrants with background from twelve different countries of origin, defined as born abroad with two foreign-born parents and four foreign-born grandparents, of age between 16 and 74 years, and having lived in Norway for at least 2 years. The group of countries included were among the largest and growing immigrant groups in Norway; Poland, Turkey, Bosnia- Hercegovina, Kosovo, Eritrea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Vietnam. The second sample included persons born in Norway with two immigrant parents. The respondents were in age 16–39 years, and their parents were born either in Turkey, Sri Lanka, Pakistan or Vietnam, the only countries with large enough number of descendants to be included in a survey like this.

10142 individuals were randomly selected to be invited to participate in the survey. Data was collected by face-to-face or telephone interviews between October 2015 and July 2016. The questionnaires were translated to all main languages in the countries of origin, and the immigrants were offered an interviewer with full knowledge of their mother tongue. They were also offered to conduct the interview in English or Norwegian. Slightly less than 50 per cent preferred Norwegian. The descendants were only offered Norwegian. The total number of participants was 5484, yielding a response rate of 54,1 percent. More details about the sample and data-collection are elaborated in two reports from Statistics Norway ( Holmøy & Wiggen, 2017 ; Vrålstad & Wiggen, 2017 ). Muslims accounted for 2661 respondents after a data selection from the two samples. The data selection had to meet two criteria; 1) individuals that reported to have been raised in Islamic faith, and 2) who reported to belong to Islam when the interviews were conducted. Individuals originating from Muslim countries, but who did not define themselves as Muslims anymore were excluded from the analysis given the aim of this study; to investigate the association between Muslim religiosity and health indicators. Hence, respondents with conceptual affiliation were necessary to exclude.

2.3. Variables

The independent variables measured Muslim religiosity and consisted of the following variables representing intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity: 1) Respondents were asked of importance of religion and the answer was given in a scale (0-10), higher scores indicated greater importance of Islam. 2) Frequency of religious attendance during the last 12 months was measured through a scale (1–6), which was recoded so that higher scores gave most frequent attendees.

The health indicators in this study were selected with regard to prevalence and risk of certain illnesses among minorities in Norway ( Kjøllesdal et al., 2019 ). The dependent variables were the following health indicators:

1) Self-reported health was measured by asking the respondents to consider their health to be very good, good, neither good nor poor, poor or very poor. The two first options were categorized as having good health, while the others were grouped as not having good health.

Although self-reported health is a subjective measurement, it has been shown to be strongly associated with objective parameters of health such as mortality ( Idler & Benyaminini, 1997 ; Doiron et al., 2015 ).

2) Respondents were asked whether they during the past 12 months had had diabetes. Answers were given as yes or no. 3) Respondents were asked whether they during the past 12 months had had hypertension, angina pectoris, myocardial infarction or cerebrovascular diseases. Answers were given as yes or no. There were separate questions for each of the diseases, but the diseases were further grouped into one variable in this study. Respondents who answered yes on at least one of the diseases were defined to have cardiovascular disease including hypertension. 4) Prolapsed disc sciatica, congenital spine and neck abnormalities and -diseases during the past 12 months were reported as yes or no. These diseases were also grouped into one variable, and respondents reporting of at least one of the diseases were defined to have neck or back illness. 5) Mental health problems were measured using 5 item Hopkins Symptoms Checklist Scale (HSCL) ( Strand et al., 2003 ) including symptoms of nervousness or shakiness inside, feeling fearful, feeling hopeless about the future, feeling blue, worrying too much about things. Each symptom was reported on a four-point scale, and must have occurred during the last 14 days. Mean value over two was coded as mental health problems. 6) Sleeping disorders during the last 14 days were also assessed by questions from HSCL, and had a scale (1–4). The two highest scores (some or very much of sleeping problems) were coded as sleeping disorder. 7) Alcohol consumption was assessed by a question asking respondents if they consumed alcohol or not (yes or no) during the past 12 months. 8) Smoking was also assessed by questioning respondents if they smoke or not (yes or no). Confounders were identified through literature review and by DAGitty: age, gender, nativity, education, employment status and self-reported financial situation is also included. The three latter variables represent socioeconomic status (SES).

2.4. Statistical analysis

The SPSS program version 26 was used to conduct the analyses. Descriptive statistical analysis was used. Respondents who chose not to answer, and missing data patterns were studied for each variable before being excluded in the analysis. Given that there were low numbers of missing items, imputation was not considered as necessary. As this is the first study to investigate associations between Muslim religiosity and health in representative samples of Muslims in Norway, our aim was to study this association broadly by including several health indicators. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between Muslim religiosity and health outcomes controlling for covariates. Various logistic regression with interaction effect between gender and variables for Muslim religiosity was also conducted. Result of the Hosmer and Lemeshow test, which was used to estimate the goodness of fit of the model, were not significant indicating that the predicted values are a good fit compared to the observed data.

In this paper we use structural theory which concerns how the knowledge and beliefs that exist within a social community impact the actions of the members through collective learning. The communities may not only inform their members about the values, practices and traditions the community is adherent to, but may also create their own consciousness in such a way that the members of the community become susceptible to the knowledge, values and understanding the community perceives. This is also in the nature of religion, as the aim of religion is basically to provide guidance to their adherents through specific teaching about practices, often offering teaching on how to prioritize one particular practice instead of other practices ( Mpofu, 2018 ). Islam is often regarded to be a religion of practices, given several mandatory religious duties such as five daily prayers, fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, and giving charity. Muslims often explain it by defining their religion as a lifestyle with teaching on every aspects of life ( Ishaq, 2017 ).

Religion may impact health of its adherents through a social mediation of health values that aligns with the particular teaching of the religion. The levels at which a religious community may impact their followers are defined thus within the framework of structural theory are latent, interpretative and elective. Religious identity is a latent tool for the obligation to follow practices in compliance with the religious teaching so as to upheld the social reputation within the community. This specific behavior may also have an implication on health choices and may function on a normative, coercive and mimetic level. Normative rules may be adapted by participating in the community, and may consist of unwritten norms within the community. Mandatory religious teaching and practices consist of the coercive rules. Mimetic rules are acquired by the actions or behavior of other participants of the community, and may serve as examples to be followed or that the adherent seek a behavior that aligns with other adherents of the community ( Mpofu, 2018 ). In this study we take into account all the three levels that a religious community may impact their adherent, by addressing different dimensions of Muslim religiosity. Islamic teaching specifically promotes health behavior and is encouraging healthy practices as personal hygiene and cleanliness of food. ( Inhorn & Serour, 2011 ). To preserve health and well-being is regarded as a religious duty and as a way of praising God in Islam ( Tey et al., 2018 ).

After excluding respondents who did not regard themselves as adherent to Islam, Muslims accounted for 2661 respondents of a total sample population of 5484 immigrants and descendants (see Table 1 ).

Descriptive statistics are presented in percent, except age. Percent are given in parenthesis.

In Table 2 we provide the odds ratio from logistic regressions predicting health outcomes with importance of Islam as an independent variable. Associations between importance of Islam and smoking, and between importance of Islam and alcohol were statistically significant in all the four models. Odds for not smoking was 12 percent less (for each unit-change) among respondents who regarded Islam as important in the unadjusted model (Model 1). In the unadjusted model we could not find any statistically significant association between importance of Islam and other health outcomes. In the models adjusted for age and gender (Model 2) and age, gender and nativity (Model 3) the odds for diabetes was 1 percent higher(for each unit-change) among respondents who regarded Islam as important versus those who did not. The association between importance of Islam and odds of having diabetes became, however, non-significant when we also adjusted for the socioeconomical variables (Model 4).

Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval for health outcomes with importance of Islam as independent variable. Model 1: unadjusted for other variables. Model 2: each variable is adjusted for age and gender. Model 3: each variable is adjusted for age, gender, nativity. Model 4: each variable is adjusted for age, gender, nativity, education, employment and financial situation *P value is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **P value s significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

In model 4 associations between importance of Islam and reported general health as good, mental health problems, and sleeping disorders became statistically significant. Odds ratio for good health was significantly higher than 1, showing that respondents who regarded Islam as important had 4 percent higher odds (for each unit-change) for reporting good health. Odds for reporting sleeping disorders and mental health problems was respectively 8 percent and 6 percent less (for each unit-change) among respondents that regarded Islam as important in their lives.

Odds ratio between religious attendance and all the health outcomes, except diabetes and good health, were statistically significant in all the models (See Table 3 ). Adjusted OR for age, gender, nativity for diabetes was significant with 10 percent higher odds (for each unit-change) for reporting of diabetes among respondents who reported of higher religious attendance, but the association between diabetes and religious attendance became statistically insignificant when adjusted for all the covariates including SES. Religious attendance is, when controlled for all the covariates (for each unit-change), associated with 10 percent greater probability of reporting good health, 9 percent less odds of reporting of neck and back illness, 11 percent less odds for reporting of cardiovascular diseases, 13 percent less odds of sleeping disorders and 11 percent less odds of reporting of mental health problems. Odds of smoking and consuming alcohol was also less among respondents who reported of religious attendance in the unadjusted model as well is in the adjusted models. However, odds was lowest in the model adjusted for all covariates giving 18 percent less probability of smoking and 34 percent less probability of consuming alcohol (for each unit-change). No interactions between gender and religiosity were found.

Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval for health outcomes with religious attendance as independent variable. Model 1: unadjusted for other variables. Model 2: each variable is adjusted for age and gender. Model 3: each variable is adjusted for age, gender, nativity. Model 4: each variable is adjusted for age, gender, nativity, education, employment and financial situation *P value is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **P value s significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

5. Discussion

To produce knowledge and identify factors that may improve, maintain or impair health is essential in the field of medicine as the fundamental aim of health professionals is to improve the lives of people. This is especially true when a factor without scientific evidence is suspected to impair the health of some individuals, and when the knowledge gap itself may contribute to impairment of the health of the targeted group through racism.

Our results show weak, but increased, probability of better health outcomes as importance of Islam and religious attendance increase. Hence, we reject our null hypothesis that there is an association between Muslim religiosity and negative health outcomes. As we did not find any significant association between Muslim religiosity and negative health outcomes, there is no support of the increasing perception that regards Muslim religiosity as a hinder to good health in several western countries. On the contrary, this study indicates that Muslim religiosity may play a role in improving or maintaining health, rather than impairing health of the followers of the faith.

Two key health-related behaviors were significantly associated with Muslim religiosity in this study. Alcohol is prohibited in Islamic teaching, but as Muslims in Norway live in a secular liberal democracy, compliance with Islamic teaching is an individual choice. Alcohol use is an integrated part of the society and not consuming alcohol can be regarded as a behavior that contradicts the behavior of the majority in society. Hence, a negative association between Muslim religiosity and alcohol consumption implies an active approach to Islamic teaching rather than a passive choice based on strict official regulations of alcohol which is the case in several Muslim majority countries. Muslims in Norway who uphold the Islamic teaching of not drinking alcohol through this active approach to Islamic identity, might also integrate good health behavior with regard to other health risk factors as association between Muslim religiosity and several health outcomes is found.

Although several Islamic jurists consider smoking as disliked, there is no clear prohibition of smoking in Islam. Use of tobacco, either in the form of a waterpipe or smoking cigarettes, seems to be frequent in many Muslim majority countries and among Muslim minorities in Western countries ( Ghouri et al., 2006 ; Kjøllesdal et al., 2019 ). Hence the negative association between Muslim religiosity and smoking in our study, may indicate Muslim religiosity as a potential common factor behind several health behaviors. It can be explained by social mechanisms. Less attendance in venues with extensive consumption of alcohol (such as pubs and nightclubs) due to Islamic prohibition of alcohol, accounts for the coercive rules a religion may impact their adherents through according Structural theory. This may imply less exposure to smoking as smoking is common in such venues. But Muslim religiosity may also account as a causal factor of less smoking through a psychological pattern of health promoting lifestyle which Islamic teaching is embedded in. One of the arguments of Islamic prohibitions of alcohol consumption are with reference to its negative effects on health ( Michalak et al., 2009 ). Both pathways comply with the biopsychosocial model. As the biopsychosocial model is used to understand illness as multidimensional ( Engel, 1997 ; Wade & Halligan, 2017 ), the multidimensional framework of the model could also be used in understanding health behavior with not only a biological, but also with a psychological and a social dimension. Also, researchers in preventive medicine have often defined lifestyle, rather than single elements, as a latent factor underlying health behavior ( Havigerová et al., 2018 ) and health ( Mæland & Krokstad, 2016 ). Among Muslims, Islam is often viewed as a lifestyle with specific practices and implications on diverse aspects of life, contradicting the secular European view on religion as a private matter. Because of these different views of religious life, Islam is often criticized in Western countries due to visible practices such as the use of headscarf ( Ishaq, 2017 ). Considering that smoking is the single risk factor causing most deaths in the richest part of the world ( World Health Organization, 2009 ), and that smoking is more common in low-income groups and among immigrants in Norway ( Kjøllesdal et al., 2019 ), both groups in which Muslims in Norway belong to, Muslim religiosity has the potential to play a significant role in improving health behavior among Muslims. This is important, as our study also found an association between Muslim religiosity and several other positive health outcomes.

Although functional disability may increase due to health problems and may, therefore create physical barriers to religious attendance, explaining a possible opposite causal–effect association, a positive association between Muslim religiosity and health may be contributed through social networks within the Muslim community that attendance in religious service do represent. As previous research has shown, social networks do have a positive impact on health outcomes ( Mæland & Krokstad, 2016 ), and given that the associations between religious attendance and positive health outcomes were stronger in our study than the association between importance of Islam and positive health outcomes, social networks in the Muslim community may serve as an explanatory factor for an association between Muslim religiosity and better health outcome. However, social networks may not be the only explanatory factor as our findings do show a negative association between importance of Islam and health behavior and some of the diseases – questioning fundamental aspects of Islam as possibly health promoting. Also, previous research does define religion as a social determinant of health. Mueller et al. (2001) reviewed meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and published studies, and found that the majority of the studies showed that religiosity was associated with better health outcomes such as health related quality of life, mental and physical illness, and mortality. Although there has been a significant growth in studies on the association between Islamic faith and health, most studies on religion and health have been conducted within the context of Western Judeo-Christian cultures ( Abdel-Khalek, 2014 ). To our knowledge, our study is the first on a representative sample illuminating a positive association between Islam and health, and concluding with an association between Muslim religiosity and certain positive health outcomes among Muslims in Norway. In addition, our study gives no support to the perception of Islam as barrier to good health. These findings have potentially both clinical and public health implications. First, this study has identified Muslim religiosity as a factor that can maintain and potentially help to improve health and health behaviour among Muslims. To identify factors that may improve health in a minority that seems to be at a disadvantage of health, is essential. Knowledge from this study may also increase cultural competence among physicians and other health professionals, something which has been lacking in Norway. The lack of cultural competency has itself been suspected to contribute to health disparities among minorities and immigrants ( Hjörleifsson et al., 2017 ).

Second, findings from this study may also have an implication for how health care professionals approach patients with a Muslim religiosity as Anti-Muslim hatred is increasing in many counties. Our findings suggest that health professionals should at least avoid involvement in the spread of Anti-Muslim attitudes that defines Islam as threat to health, if not also condemn all kinds of anti-Muslim attitudes defining Muslim religiosity as threat to health. On the other hand, findings from this study does not make Islam a less relevant cultural framework for tailored health care services and intervention as no negative associations between Muslim religiosity and health outcomes were found.

Yet, further research is needed given the weaknesses of this study. The cross-sectional nature of the study makes the ability to define causality difficult. Another weakness is that this study does not include objective health outcomes. It would also be interesting to study possible associations between Muslim religiosity and objective health outcome data such as systolic and diastolic blood pressure and cholesterol-levels, together with other health outcomes such as mortality. Discrimination of Muslims is also interesting to include as a co-variate when investigating the association between health and Islam, as discrimination has shown to have a negative impact on health. A qualitative study has linked some barriers in mammography-related behavior to religious belief, although the study did conclude that Islamic tailored messages aimed to enhance Muslim women's intentions to obtain mammography was helpful ( Padela et al., 2018 ). It would be interesting to study Muslim religiosity and health care seeking behavior using a national sample of Muslims.

6. Conclusion

We could not find any statistically significant association between Muslim religiosity and negative health outcomes, and only associations between Muslim religiosity and positive health outcomes were statistically significant. Results from this study give no evidence of the assumption that Islamic faith is a hinder to good health among Muslims. Our hope is that these findings will pave the way for the development of culturally sensitive health policies and patient-centered health care services to Muslim patients, viewing Muslim religiosity and identity as a resource, and not as an obstacle. Because anti-Muslim attitudes are growing globally, it is of paramount importance that health care professionals have a correct and informed understanding of the association between Islamic faith and health, so that they do not participate in the spread of anti-Muslim attitudes. The approach represented in this article should therefore be implemented in the training of health-care professionals. Also, further research on this issue should be encouraged.

Author statement

Bushra Ishaq, Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal Analysis, Visualization, Writing Original draft, review and editing, Lars Østby, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Writing – review and editing, Asbjørn Johannessen, Methodology, Formal Analysis – review and editing.

Role of the funding source

There were no funding sources for this study. The corresponding author had full access to all the data in the study and was responsible for the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Declaration of competing interest

Acknowledgements.

Grateful thanks to Professor Jan Helge Solbakk, Senior Researcher Ole Klungsøyr, Associate Professor Hege Cathrine Finholt and Professor Professor Lars Johan Danbolt for great support for this article and feedback on this article.

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Middle East & Islamic Studies Databases for Research: Home

• Top Reference Databases (Getting Started)
• Islamic Studies Databases
• Middle East Studies Databases
• Primary Source Databases & Collections
• Dissertations & Theses

Spotlight * NEW

Databases (general * multidisciplinary).

Archives of Arabic cultural and literary journals موقع أرشيف المجلات الأدبية والثقافية العربية

Full-Text Online Arabic Sources: A Preliminary List List of online databases that contain full-text Arabic materials, i.e., which allow for searching within the texts.

• Islamkundliche Untersuchungen Digital   The  series  Islamkundliche Untersuchungen ,  published by  Klaus Schwarz  Publishers since  1970, is one of the most important series related to Islamic Studies in Germany. Following an agreement with the publishers in 2009, the ULB Halle started digitizing out of print titles belonging to the series and made them available as Open Access titles in its repository  MENAdoc . 

Digital Library of the Middle East "The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries today announced the release of a public, open platform for the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one of the world’s largest online archives of Middle Eastern and North African artifacts. The DLME aggregates, through an ongoing program, digital records of published materials, documents, maps, artifacts, audiovisual recordings, and more from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. An international collaborative effort under development for four years, the DLME currently brings together 127,443 digital records of materials held in museums, libraries, and archives worldwide. It also provides an array of applications, tools, and descriptions that enrich the content and facilitate browsing, search, and interpretation. The DLME is intended to serve as a resource for teachers, students, and researchers, as well as for the general public."

Shamaa provides specialists and stakeholders free internet access to the educational studies produced in the Arab countries, as well as those available through international organizations with whom Shamaa has concluded cooperation agreements. Shamaa also welcomes submissions by researchers on education in the Arab countries produced worldwide. It indexes peer-refereed articles, Master theses and PhD dissertations, books, reports and conference proceedings dated 2007 onward in Arabic, English and French. The database includes bibliographic information, abstracts and, when available, the full text of educational studies

BRILL Collections:   Middle East and Islamic Studies E-Books Online, Collection

Women of Islamic Studies    Women of Islamic Studies  is a crowdsourced database of women scholars who work on Muslims and Islam. This ongoing project is in its beta version. Once sufficient data has been collected I will partner with a university for a more stable home.

" Middle East Women’s Activism   digital archive is a collection of interviews with 96 women of different generations in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, which form the basis of a monograph, entitled,  Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon . All interviews were conducted by Nicola Pratt, University of Warwick, in 2013-2014 as part of a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship exploring the relationship between gender and geopolitics in the context of the Middle East. The research received approval from the University of Warwick Humanities and Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee and consent was given at the time of interview to make this material publicly available. The archive will be of interest to researchers in the fields of gender studies and post-independence social history in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. The interviews consist of women’s personal narratives of their family background and education, how they became involved in public work (al-‘amal al-‘am), information about their activism and how it has changed over time and the impact of/their involvement in major national events, amongst other details."  Middle East Women's Activism

Contemporary Archive of the Islamic World The book series Contemporary Archive of the Islamic World offers political and economic reports about the countries of the Islamic world from the mid-1970s until the present-day. The series is an invaluable resource for researchers and is also suitable for classroom use.

Index Islamicus. 1906- ."Produced by an editorial team based at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, this database covers European-language books, articles, conference proceedings, and reviews of works dealing with all facets of Islam and the Islamic world. Coverage begins with 1906; the database is updated quarterly." [ Guide to Reference ]. Indexing before 1906: Wolfgang Behn's Index Islamicus 1665-1905: A Bibliography of Articles on Islamic Subjects in Periodicals and Other Collective Publications (Olin Reference Z 7835 .M6 P35) "provides retrospective coverage back to 1665 that is not available through the online Index Islamicus. Behn lists over 21,000 articles from journals, conference proceedings, and collected works in a variety of European languages." [ Guide to Reference ].

Encyclopedia of Arabic language and linguistics  Leiden : Brill / General Editors: Lutz Edzard and Rudolf de Jong  The Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics represents a unique collaboration of a few hundred scholars from around the world and covers all relevant aspects of the study of Arabic and deals with all levels of the language (pre-Classical Arabic, Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, Arabic vernaculars, mixed varieties of Arabic). No other reference work offers this scale of contributions or depth and breadth of coverage.

The Arabic Papyrology Database "The Arabic Papyrology Database is a tool enabling you to access the editions of Arabic documents written on different material such as papyrus, parchment or paper. Those productive editions are an often unraised treasure for almost every aspect of Islamic history up to the 16th c. A.D. "

“ Knowledge Production Project ” by Jadaliyya, “a dynamic, open-access archive, search tool, and data visualization platform. This project, almost a decade in the making, endeavors to collect, catalogue, and and make available for analysis knowledge produced on the Middle East since 1979 in the English language, in eight databases.”

Qatar Digital Library : A partnerships between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library and The British Library. A wide range of content, including archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, and photographs. Items are accompanied with notes and links, in both English and Arabic.

Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR) : A guide for open-access journal and digitized collection put together by librarians Charles Jones and Peter Magierski. Users can sign up for updates.

A Chronology of 19th Century Periodicals in Arabic (1800-1900): Includes indexes for persons, organizations, locations, and holding institutions. The Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), a German research institute devoted to an interdisciplinary and comparative study of the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia from a historical perspective.

Ensani : Portal jami' ulum insani پرتال جامع علوم انسانی This portal [in Persian only]  offers free search and access to journal articles in social sciences and humanities fields ( literature, economics, history, education, geography, law, psychology, linguistics, social sciences, Islamic science, political science, library science, philosophy and logic, management, women studies, art studies ). Most articles are available as full-text and can be freely downloaded.

Islam and Islamic Studies Resources : A Guide for primary sources (sacred texts, official documents), scholarly materials, tools for students learning Arabic, information about Islamic communities and current issues. Prof. Alan Godlas (Department of Religion, University of Georgia).

Transcultural Islam Research Network : Aims to deepen understanding of Islamic cultures and issues. A project of the Duke Islamic Studies Center, in partnership with the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Includes a lot of informative resources, including new publications, research groups, and web resources.

Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926 : This collection includes pre-1926 treatises and similar monographs, sourced from the collections of the Yale, George Washington University, and Columbia law libraries, in the following areas: International Law; Comparative Law; Foreign Law; Roman Law; Islamic Law; Jewish Law; and Ancient Law.

Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Relations in the Middle East : "This forum aims to promote the humanistic study of urban religious cultures in the Middle East and North Africa during the Islamic era, i.e., in the period following the rise of Islam in the seventh century. It seeks to draw the attention of researchers to useful resources, and particularly to printed books, manuscripts, and images in the library collections of the University of Pennsylvania."

IRCICA Farabi Digital Library is a project aiming at facilitating and supporting libraries make their digital collections available to worldwide scholars. To do so, IRCICA developed a  stand alone software allowing libraries to easily display their digital materials, and hosts the digital library.

The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question , which it has been developing as part of a joint project with the Palestinian Museum.

The fully bilingual (English–Arabic) platform is entirely devoted to the history of modern Palestine, from the end of the Ottoman era to the present. The Encyclopedia, the first of its kind, was developed for use by academics, students, journalists, and the general public. It currently consists of the following sections:

An Overall Chronology that presents the main events and developments that shaped Palestinian modern history in the realms of war, diplomacy, politics, culture, and economy;

Thematic Chronologies , or subsets of the Overall Chronology, that facilitate access to entries relevant to specific topics;

Highlights , written by leading academics and experts in the field, that cover important events and institutions, political, military and legal-constitutional developments, as well as crucial aspects of Palestinian cultural, social, or economic life or experience;

Biographies of Palestinian intellectuals, artists, leaders, combatants, and politicians who have influenced the history of Palestine since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries;

Places , the digitized version of the seminal book All That Remains, dedicated to the 418 Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948;

Documents, consisting of hundreds of primary texts, photographs, maps, and charts.   The Encyclopedia has come to fruition following years of preparation and several stages of implementation. Throughout this process, utmost attention has been given to introduce a description of the Palestine Question that is simultaneously committed and objective and to present Palestinians as they are—purposeful actors, and not just victims, who build with both successes and setbacks their political, social, and cultural institutions inside and outside Palestine.

Digital Sources for the Study of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey  *  [ Click here to download the overview of Digital Sources for the Study of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey . ]

Database for Ottoman Inscriptions -Osmanli Kitableri Projesi The Database of Ottoman Inscriptions (DOI) is searchable digital database comprising information about, as well as transliterations and pictures of, all the Turkish, Arabic and Persian architectural inscriptions created in the Ottoman lands during Ottoman times. For more information, click here .

Historians of the Ottoman Empire  " intends to comprise all the historians who have lived and produced within the geographical limits of the Ottoman Empire -- regardless of the language." The  Historians of the Ottoman Empire  is intended to be a major reference work for scholars and students of the Middle East, North Africa, South-East Europe, and the Caucasus, as well as for non-specialists interested in the histories and cultures of these regions.

11 Essential Digitized Collections for Middle East Historians - HAZINE

ارشيف المطبوعات السورية | Syrian Prints Archive

Documenting and archiving new Syrian prints (newspapers, magazines, and periodicals) issued after the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution. Making all Syrian prints available on one website, obviating the need to search and surf through tabs of websites and social media webpages. Providing basic information about Syrian prints, including contact info.   Classifying and categorizing the Syrian prints according to place of issuance, periodicity of issuance and affiliations. Correcting misprints related to dates of issuance, in addition to converting Hijri calendar to western calendar to enhance the search. Providing surfing, sharing, rating, downloading, and printing features. Providing search within a specified time frame and within texts in PDF files.'

 Diarna : The Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life   "Diarna ( דיארנא ديارنا “ Our homes ” in Judeo-Arabic): The Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life is working to digitally preserve the physical remnants of Jewish history throughout the region. We are in a race against time to capture site data and record place-based oral histories before even the memories of these communities are lost.   Diarna pioneers the synthesis of digital mapping technology, traditional scholarship, and field research, as well as a trove of multimedia documentation. All of these combine to lend a virtual presence and guarantee untrammeled access to Jewish historical sites lest they be forgotten or erased."

Database of Arabic Literature in Western Research : Scholarly books and articles about Arabic literature in western languages (18th century-present). Oxford Literary Publication and Documentation

The Golha Project : A searchable encyclopedia of Persian poetry and music with audio recordings of all of the Golha radio programs (1956-1979), as well as biographies of hundreds of poets and performers. It comprises a database of more than 1000 hours of audio material, searchable by 18 different search criteria such as musical modes, instruments, poetic verse, poetic genre, singer, and songwriter names. Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF).

Brockelmann in English : the history of the Arabic written tradition online 2017-    [Leiden, The Netherlands] : Brill, 2017- Online [Translation of : Brockelmann, Carl, 1868-1956. Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur .]

Arab Acquis Corpus   Arab-Acquis is a large dataset for evaluating machine translation between 22 European languages and Arabic. Arab-Acquis consists of over 12,000 sentences from the JRCAcquis (Acquis Communautaire) corpus translated twice by professional translators, once from English and once from French, and totaling over 600,000 words. This resource was developed at the Computational Approaches to Modeling Language ( CAMeL ) Lab in  New York University Abu Dhabi .

Archnet : Islamic Architecture Community of scholars, students, and professionals working in architecture, planning, landscape design, and the related fields. The project was developed at the University of Texas at Austin and the MIT School of Architecture and Planning in co-operation with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

ARTstor Digital Library : Islamic Art and Architecture Collection (Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Walter Denny); Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

The Quranic Arabic Corpus is an annotated linguistic resource for the Quran, including the Arabic grammar, syntax and morphology for each word. The corpus provides three levels of analysis: morphological annotation, a syntactic treebank and a semantic ontology. Also includes the full text of the Quran, translation into English, and audio recitations (require iTunes). A free resource under the GNU public license; maintained by the School of Computing, University of Leed.

“ Qur’an Details search page allows scholars to search among 4,700 detailed entries for historically interesting Qur’an pages, spanning 110 collections from all over the world, and representing all eras and all places of production. Using this facility, scholars can make specialist searches for terms including:  • Qur’an page description (type of illumination, decoration or binding) • Qur’an type (fragment, Juz etc.) • Qur’an Sura reference • Script (kufic, naskh, etc.) • Number of lines per page • Page size (height and width) • Qur’an name (e.g. Oljaytu's Baghdad Qur’an), and •  Calligrapher name.

BiblioIslam   : provides access to more than 250,000 academic theses, books, journal articles, research essays and conference papers - in English and Arabic.

Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (Georgetown University): "'Of special interest is the Islamic resources link, which pulls together Web sites of major Muslim publications, organizations, and academic programs around the world." (CHOICE Review Online)

Islamicity.com : This website is maanged by Human Assistance and Development International (HADI), a non-profit organization "working for the socoi-economic, seducationalm, and scientific development of people worldwide".

The Omar Ibn Said Collection The Library of Congress has acquired and made available online the Omar Ibn Said Collection, which includes the only known surviving slave narrative written in Arabic in the United States. In 1831, Omar Ibn Said, a wealthy and highly educated man who was captured in West Africa and brought to the United States as a slave, wrote a 15-page autobiography describing his experiences. This manuscript is important not only because it tells the personal story of a slave written by himself, but also because it documents an aspect of the early history of Islam and Muslims in the United States. The Omar Ibn Said Collection consists of 42 original documents in both English and Arabic, including the manuscript in Arabic of “The Life of Omar Ibn Said” – the centerpiece of this unique collection of texts. Other manuscripts include texts in Arabic by another West African slave in Panama and from individuals located in West Africa.

Arabic Ontology الأنطولوجيا العربية

A new cross-search dictionary tool from Mustafa Jarrar of Birzeit University. "Linguistic Search Engine: The largest Arabic lexical database:Arabic Ontology + 150 Arabic dictionaries."

Kurdish Digital Library  - Kurdish Institute of Paris,  The Institute has digitized a thousand books related to Kurds and the Middle East general. Some books can be downloaded as pdf.

The Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic  “The Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic​ aims to oversee the compilation of a historical lexicon of the Arabic language as it has developed over the last two millennia. Once completed, the final work will detail the origins of every word in its corpus and record the transformations in each word’s meaning, in addition to the location of its first appearance. To achieve this, the Doha Historical Dictionary of Arabic will rely on an extensive body of primary materials in the Arabic language, drawn from centuries of the Arabic canon.."

Muslims of the Midwest   digital archive features numerous interviews and resources that will  be of interest to scholars and students alike. The archive is housed at Michigan State University and was largely funded by a University of Illinois Humanities Without Walls grant.

General Databases with International Content (Multidisciplinary)

Proquest research library it contains bibliographic descriptions, abstracts, and lots of full-text articles covering over 150 subjects and topics such as business, economics, education, health, industrial relations, management, public policy, religion and statistics.  proquest research library provides one-stop access to thousands of full-text periodicals from one of the broadest, most inclusive general reference databases. search from a highly-respected, diversified mix of scholarly journals, professional and trade publications, and magazines. [ how to use the database ]..

Access World News Access World News from NewsBank provides full-text information and perspectives from over 700 international sources. Each newspaper or wire service provides unique coverage of local and regional news, including specific information about local companies, politics, sports, industries, cultural activities, and the people in the community. Paid advertisements are excluded.

U.S. Declassified Documents Online  Searchable database of previously classified federal records spanning the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The types of materials include intelligence studies, policy papers, diplomatic correspondence, cabinet meeting minutes, briefing materials, and domestic surveillance and military reports. Database allows users to to locate the full text of documents and filter their search results by document type, issue date, source institution, classification level, and date declassified as well as other document characteristics.

Historical abstracts (Online) Published since 1954, Historical Abstracts currently covers over 1,700 journals published worldwide in over forty languages. The database comprises over 720,000 entries from periodicals, with full-text links to over 135,000 articles and dissertations and masters' theses. Each year, the editors of Historical Abstracts add over 16,000 abstracts and citations, over 3,000 book citations, and over 1,200 citations of dissertations and masters' theses to the database from the current literature and publications. Additional bibliographical entries are also added to the database by editorial projects such as retrospective coverage of journal issues published prior to 1954.

International political science abstracts (Online)  Current indexing and abstracting of the world's leading journals in political science

Directories & Guides

General directories (for research).

International directory of Middle East scholars (1995-) , (also known as: IDMES) Searchable, detailed information about Middle East Studies scholars throughout the world. New York: Columbia University

Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies | EBSCO

International research centers directory International research centers directory (Online) Farmington Hills, MI : Gale/Cengage. English. International Research Centers Directory (IRCD) is the most current, comprehensive resource on government, university, and independent nonprofit research organizations in over 150 countries. Research has been broadly defined to include fundamental, applied, and developmental studies, as well as data gathering, analysis, and synthesis activities, outside the United States.

Muslims of the Midwest digital archive features numerous interviews and resources that will be of interest to scholars and students alike. The archive is housed at Michigan State University and was largely funded by a University of Illinois Humanities Without Walls grant.

Digital Sources for the Study of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey  *  [ Click here to download the overview of Digital Sources for the Study of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey . ]

Thesaurus d'Epigraphie Islamique, Edition 2020  /  Conceived and directed by L. KALUS, co-directed by F. BAUDEN, developed by F. SOUDAN. "This project aims to bring together all the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish (or even in other languages) inscriptions of the Muslim world until the year 1000 AH, that is to say, the period usually identified as the Middle Ages.

Open Access

The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB.

Islamic Studies and the Alphabetical List of Open Access Journals in Middle Eastern Studies

Alphabetical List of Open Access Historical Newspapers and Other Periodicals in Middle East

Arabic Newspapers of Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine  A digitization project from the National Library of Israel which has digitized 27 newspapers from 1908-1948. Project URL: http://web.nli.org.il/sites/nlis/en/jrayed# .

Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ)  : DFAJ  collects journals issued in Arabic, English, and French languages in all branches of human knowledge.

T he Directory of Open Access Repositories – Open DOAR – lists several digital repositories in Egypt such as American University in Cairo’s DAR.

Medieval and Early Modern Orients  (MEMOs) is an AHRC-funded project that seeks to further knowledge and understanding of the early interactions between England and the Islamic worlds. Through our pages and our blog we hope to create an accessible space to reveal the exciting discoveries of researchers as they navigate the seas of history and literature, and investigate the intersecting webs of our pasts.

Islamkundliche Untersuchungen Digital   The series Islamkundliche Untersuchungen , published by Klaus Schwarz Publishers since 1970, is one of the most important series related to Islamic Studies in Germany. Following an agreement with the publishers in 2009, the ULB Halle started digitizing out of print titles belonging to the series and made them available as Open Access titles in its repository MENAdoc . 

Kurdish Digital Library  - Kurdish Institute of Paris, The Institute has digitized a thousand books related to Kurds and the Middle East general. Some books can be downloaded as pdf.

Bibliothèque diplomatique numérique [FRANCE] Ministère français de l'Europe et des affaires étrangères (MEAE).  Histoire diplomatique * Documents diplomatiques * Ministères des Affaires étrangères * Des diplomates : formation, récits et portraits * Droit international * Traités, accords et conventions * Protectorats et mandat français * Publications officielles étrangères ou intergouvernementales.

Digital Mu ṣḥ af "The Digital Muṣḥaf Project aims to create a database of images of early Qurʾānic fragments from dispersed muṣḥafs or codices of the Qurʾanic text and, as far as possible, virtually re-create the original codices so that they are available for scholars and the public in one place together with descriptions and metadata.

" The Memory of Modern Egypt " provides access to open sound recordings.

" The Gamal Abdel Nasser Digital Archives "   Speeches  

"The Sadat Digital Archives":   أنور السادات  

Mansucripts Databases

AUC Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library   The Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library at the American University in Cairo supports research and teaching in the arts, culture, and society of Egypt and the Middle East by providing online access to unique cultural heritage resources.

  The Maydan is proud to introduce a new initiative highlighting digital resources and projects in the field of Islamic Studies. Included in this roundup are manuscripts collections, digitized manuscripts, and manuscripts catalogues from universities and libraries around the world. *This is an ongoing project*

Persian Manuscript Materials :  This website is dedicated to the study of the material technology of Persian manuscripts. Our goal is to investigate the intricate materials utilized in historical Persian manuscripts, shedding light on the methods and techniques derived from historical recipes mainly between the Taimurid to Qajar dynasties of Persia (15th-19th centuries).  Accompanied by images captured during the reconstruction process following the historical recipes, we aim to provide an immersive exploration into the material heritage of Persian manuscripts.

Collections

• Annotated Turki Manuscripts from the Jarring Collection Online Chaghatay 2.0 Web site hosts information about late Chaghatay (a variety of Middle Turkic spoken in Central Asia) and its descendants, especially those varieties spoken east of the Pamirs: early modern Uyghur (Turki) and modern Uyghur. The information here stems largely from projects directed by Prof. Arienne M. Dwyer of the University of Kansas and C.M. Sperberg-McQueen of Black Mesa Technologies.
• Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI )
• The Zaydi Manuscript Tradition, Institute for Advanced Study
• The Sinai Palimpsests Project
• Mingana Collection, University of Birmingham
• The Minassian Collection of Qur’anic Manuscripts, Brown University
• Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts
• Islamic Medical Manuscripts, US National Library of Medicine
• Beinecke Digital Collections, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
• Reading Room, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library
• Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Saint Petersburg
• Orientalische Handschriften, Universität Tübingen
• Digital Bodleian, University of Oxford
• Chester Beatty Library
• Suleymaniye Library
• Islamic Heritage Project, Harvard Library
• The Orient and Eastern Collections, the Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Middle Eastern Special Collections, Leiden University
• Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan
• Digitized Arabic Manuscripts at the AUB Libraries
• Minasian Collection, UCLA
• Digital Vatican Library
• Qatar Digital Library
• Digitalisierte Sammlungen, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
• Islamic Manuscripts at the Leipzig University Library
• Marmara University Library and Documentation Department
• Noor Digital Library
• The Oriental Collection, Royal Danish Library
• Arabic Manuscripts Collection, Wellcome Library
• Persian Manuscripts, the British Library
• Islamic Manuscripts, Cambridge Digital Library
• MyManuskrip, University of Malaya Library
• Manuscripts Collections, National Library of Indonesia
• Union Catalogue of Manuscripts from the Islamicate World
• West African Arabic Manuscript Database
• Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative

Digitized Collections Databases

• AUB Libraries Digital Collections is a gateway to our digitized and preserved collections featuring manuscripts, maps, photos, posters, books, multimedia and other resources. This online growing repository aims to continuously disseminate knowledge about AUB, the region, our history and cultural heritage for the purpose of research, teaching and education. It is also a hub for collaboration with other departments, faculties, scholars in addition to external partners libraries and institutions to support digital scholarship initiatives.
• Arabic Collections Online - Digital Library  Arabic Collections Online (ACO) is a publicly available digital library of public domain Arabic language content.
• An Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library
• The Arabic Papyrology Database : Features primary documents reflecting everyday life, legal and administrative practice in the first centuries of Islam.
• Arab American newspapers * Arab American Newspapers Project / Khayrallah Center at NC State University 
• Cultural Imaginings: the Creation of the Arab World in the Western Mind : A collaboration between The George Washington University's Gelman Library and Georgetown University's Lauinger Library to digitize about  2,500 monographs and a number of bound manuscripts from the Middle East and North Africa.
• Digital Library of the Middle East "The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries today announced the release of a public, open platform for the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which aims to become one of the world’s largest online archives of Middle Eastern and North African artifacts. The DLME aggregates, through an ongoing program, digital records of published materials, documents, maps, artifacts, audiovisual recordings, and more from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  The DLME is intended to serve as a resource for teachers, students, and researchers, as well as for the general public."
• Islamic Medical and Scientific (IMSE) Database : Georgetown University's Bioethics Library.

The MANUMED Project : Aims to preserve the written and immaterial heritage of the euro-mediterranean area. Partner libraries in the near east: Khalidi Library, Budeiri Library, Al Aqsa Library, Al Ansari Library, The Waqf Restoration Center.

• Middle Eastern and Islamic Resources a the Center for Research Libraries (Arabic manuscripts in the British Library; Arabic manuscripts in the library of SOAS, University of London): ASU Libraries is affiliated member, therefore all CRL materials are available for inter-library loan.
• Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus dedicated to the edition and study of the Arabic and Latin versions of Ptolemy’s astronomical and astrological texts and related material.
• Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library, the American University in Cairo : Several digital collections, including journal articles, book chapters, and images.
• Sustainable Development of Drylands in Asia & the Middle East Project : The International Arid Lands Consortium offers information about drylands in Asia and the Middle East by country.
• Orient-Digital is the database of Oriental manuscripts at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.  The collection comprises 43,000 volumes (manuscripts and block-prints) in more than 140 languages and 70 different scripts from Asia, Africa, and Europe. 
• The Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher  An online database of over 13000 letters in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Databases of Digitized Collections by COUNTRY

• 444 Days: Selected Records Concerning the Iran Hostage Crisis 1979-1981  / US National Archive – January 2017.

Ghani Collection at Yale . The Ghani Collection is the first phase of the Yale Iranian History Internet Archive ( YIHA ) project which intends to digitize and make publicly available valuable Persian-language resources at Yale University Libraries and elsewhere, including less-accessible and unknown private collections, related to nineteenth and twentieth-century Iranian and Persianate history. This is an ongoing project that aims to digitize, transcribe, annotate, and make searchable all its holdings.

• Afghanistan Digital Library : A project of New York University Libraries with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Reed Foundation, and the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.

Afghanistan Digital Collections Unique collection of documents related to Afghanistan history, culture, and its development during the Jihad period and more. ACKU’s permanent collection is the most extensive in the region covering a time of war and social upheaval in the country, with most of the documents in English or the principal languages of Pashto and Dari.

• Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection : A large collection of materials on Afghanistan in the US. Most of the documents are in English, Persian, and Pashto.
• Memory of Modern Egypt :
• Egypt 's 21st Century Revolution: Oral Histories, Photographs, Video Recordings, and Visual Art.
• The Ramses Wissa Wassef Architectural Drawings
• The Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Digital Archives (2006+) : A searchable online database that contains more than 600,000 news clippings and documents on the issues of human rights and democratic development in Pakistan

Virtual Museum of Censorship : An online database of censorship cases in Lebanon since the 1940s. MARCH, is a civil movement actively seeking to  safekeep the tenets of a peaceful and prosperous Lebanon.

Palestine Poster Project Archives : Created by Dan Walsh as part of his masters' thesis project at Georgetown University.

Crafts of Syria / Dr Marcus Milwright , Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology, Department of Art History and Visual Studies University of Victoria

Historiography of Early Modern Ottoman Europe (HOE) Database HOE is a collection of meta-data focusing on historiographical writing of Early Modern Ottoman Europe (1500-1800). It brings together published and unpublished primary sources (chronicles, histories, hagiographies, inscriptions, maps…), as well as secondary material (“Main Section”). It also offers information on specific collections, as well as a wide variety of references to tools and resources useful to those navigating the research questions of Early Modern historiography (“Tools Section”).  HOE provides information on the author(s), title(s), contents, manuscript(s) and edition(s) of the main sources related to the topic.

 "Uyghurkitap, an online digital collection of Uyghur documents , is now open to public. The library contains 6,400 documents, including 500 manuscripts,  1,500 newspapers and magazines, and ~ 4,000 Uyghur language books."

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• Last Updated: Mar 21, 2024 11:00 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/MideastIslamDatabases