Explaining an Influential Model of the Significant Relationship Between Religion, Spirituality, and Environmental Peace in Mosque Interior Architecture

J Relig Health. 2020 Aug;59(4):2149-2162. doi: 10.1007/s10943-020-00983-z.

Abstract

Investigating the components of environmental peace in an architectural work, especially Islamic mosques, requires a detailed understanding of this concept and its influential factors. In the architecture of the mosques of the past, certain patterns have always followed a continuous trend that made a logical relationship with the time before and after, but this continuity and trend are not seen today. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of environmental peace from two aspects of religion and spirituality. Religion means comprehensive instructions and complete guidelines that, on the one hand, show the goal and teaches the human being how to achieve it, and on the other hand, help the human being on problems that are difficult to understand by universal means of understanding (reason, experience, and intuition). Therefore, the identification of the true ultimate goal in human life as well as the determination of the intermediate goals that indicate the path to the ultimate goal is possible only through the recognition and adherence to the right religion, and this fact shows the close relationship between religion and spirituality. The research method investigates the relationship between variables through a correlation method and then through structural equations. The statistical population was selected based on the Cochran formula including 120 professors and postgraduate students in architecture and Islamic architecture of Tehran Universities. The research tool was a web-based questionnaire and its link was made available to the statistical community online. The structural equation method was used in SPSS and Amos software to test the regression and fitting test model. Pearson correlation test was also used to determine the relationship between research variables. The results show that the model of the influence of "religion" factors in enhancing "environmental peace" through the mediating variable of "spirituality" explains these relationships; in other words, in this indirect causal relation, enhancement of semantic factors mediated by "spirituality" factors enhances environmental peace in architecture.

Keywords: Meaning; Model presentation; Mosque architecture; Religion; Spirituality.

MeSH terms

  • Architecture* / statistics & numerical data
  • Environment*
  • Humans
  • Iran
  • Islam / psychology
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Religion*
  • Spirituality*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires