Religious Coping and Resilience among Muslim Students An Interpretative Phenomenological Study

Abstract

University students experience psychological pressure arising from academic demands, personal difficulties, uncertainty, emotional burdens, and expectations concerning their future, creating a need to understand the psychological and religious resources through which Muslim students adapt to adversity. This study explores how Muslim university students experience psychological pressure, employ Islamic religious practices as coping strategies, and develop psychological resilience through their interpretation of difficult academic and personal experiences. A qualitative design using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed to investigate participants’ lived experiences and the meanings attached to religious coping and resilience. Data were obtained through semi-structured in-depth interviews, life-experience narratives, and reflective notes, followed by systematic coding, emergent theme development, cross-case analysis, and interpretative synthesis. The findings identified three interconnected experiential domains involving academic and life challenges, religious practices as coping, and religious experience as a resource for psychological resilience. Participants’ experiences of pressure involved academic demands, uncertainty, perceived failure, emotional burden, and personal struggles. Religious coping was reflected through prayer, Qur’anic reflection, dhikr, religious community, and religious meaning. Resilience was expressed through acceptance, hope, meaning, faith, and psychological recovery, indicating that religious coping functioned as a meaning-making process connecting emotional regulation with adaptive responses to adversity. The study contributes to Islamic psychology, psychology of religion, and positive psychology by conceptualizing Muslim students’ resilience as a lived process shaped by spiritual interpretation, religious practice, personal agency, and adaptive recovery.