Muslim attitudes towards religion scale: Factors, validity and complexity of relationships with mental health in Iran

Iranian students responded to the 'Muslim Attitudes Towards Religion Scale' (MARS) along with measures of psychiatric symptoms, religious motivation, and mystical experience. The MARS contained three factors and these factors and the full scale were internally reliable. They also correlated positively with an extrinsic religious orientation, even more robustly with greater religious interest and an intrinsic religious orientation, and less consistently with slightly higher levels of self-reported mystical experience. The MARS failed to predict self-reported psychiatric symptoms, but partial correlations uncovered both direct and then inverse linkages with such symptoms after controlling for the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, respectively. Theology students with a concentration in Islamic philosophy displayed the highest MARS scores. The MARS, therefore, was a valid measure of Iranian religiosity, but in Iran, and perhaps in other Muslim societies as well, motivational factors may be critical in determining how the MARS correlates with mental health.