Religious Media in the Maghreb: What Are the Boundaries between the Public and Private Spheres?

The Maghreb region, besides being a melting pot, is also a region that has known all Mediterranean civilizations thanks to the culture of its people who have always assimilated the monotheistic religions. In addition, the privileged place of this religious variable has made it a required tool for the governors towards their people. Since the 1956’s, the traditional use of religion has dissipated to the detriment of new models of influence through the classical and then digital media, which have put forward several new powerful political and economic actors who have overturned the divine word as well as the references of the believers.

FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI PERILAKU MASYARAKAT ACEH DALAM MEMILIH PRODUK PERBANKAN SYARIAH (Studi Kasus pada PT. Bank Aceh Cabang Banda Aceh)

This study aims to determine the factors that influence Acehnese’s behavior in choosing Islamic banking products. In this study the author used descriptive statistical approach with quantitative research method.The primary data were collected by distributing questionnaires to 100customers of Bank Aceh Branch Banda Aceh. In choosing the samples the author used incidental sampling method, which is a sampling technique based on coincidenc, in this technique anyone can be a sample of the study as long as he/she is suitable as a source of data. In analyzing the data, the author used SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions) analysis tools version 20 for windows. The results of this study showed that the religious variable has a correlation value of 0.876, social variable has a correlation value of 0.878, economics variable has a correlation value of 0.869 and geographical variable has a correlation value of 0.860. Overall, it can be concluded that the religious, social, economic, and geographical variables have a positive relationship with the Acehnese’s behaviorin choosing Islamic banking products.Keywords: Behavioral Factors, Society, Islamic banking products.

The “Marital Conventionalization” Argument; Implications for the Study of Religiosity and Marital Satisfaction

The “marital conventionalization” argument set forth by Edmonds, Withers, and Dibatista (1972) claims that empirical relationships observed between measures of religiosity and marital satisfaction are spurious artifacts of the common contamination of such measures with social desirability/acquiescence response bias, identified by Edmonds (1967) as “marital conventionalization” and measured through the Marital Conventionalization Scale (MCS). More recently, Glenn and Weaver (1978) have adopted the “marital conventionalization” argument to discount the importance of the substantial, positive associations they observed between a religious variable and a measure of marital happiness. Data from two Kansas samples of husbands and wives were analyzed to evaluate the validity of the “marital conventionalization” argument. Results indicate that religiosity is an important predictor of marital satisfaction, at least in some samples, even among subjects who do not respond in a “conventionalizing” way to an abbreviated version of the MCS. Therefore, the limitations of the “marital conventionalization” argument should be considered prior to discounting empirical relationships found between religiosity and marital satisfaction as mere artifacts of social desirability or acquiescence response biases, as measured by the MCS.