Professor Hasan Kaplan of the Department of Islamic Sciences at Ibn Haldun University made two presentation during the 2nd. International Congress on Social Sciences held in Jerusalem. The Congress organized in cooperation of Gazi University, Turkish Studies Magazine and Quds University was held in East Jerusalem. Almost 700 scholars, academics and politicians from 10 different countries including Turkey has attended the Congress which is supported by Turkish Cultural and Tourism Ministry, Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) and Yunus Emre Institute. The participants have made almost 500 presentations in 30 sessions including, "History and Art Research", "Religion and Society", "Philosophy, Behavioral and Health Sciences", "Information Technologies and Applied Science", "Economy, Law and Politics", "Educational Sciences" and "Language and Literature."
Professor Hasan Kaplan from the School of Islamic Studies was one of the scholars who made presentations during the Congres. His first presentation was "Religious and Non-Religious Coping with an Exam Anxiety: Example of Çanakkale." Arguing that taking an exam is a source of stress and anxiety for almost everybody, Professor Kaplan observed that people use some coping strategies to relieve their stress and to be successful. During his presentation he argued that most students use all the coping strategies available to them, regardless of them being rational, irrational, religious or superstitious after conducting a 12-item short questionnaire during the national university admission test days. "But parents tend to use more rational and religious coping strategies such as praying and reading some surah from the Qur'an" he said.
Professor Kaplan made another presentation during the 2nd. International Congress on Social Sciences. In his presentation titled "How Religion and Morality Related: A Concise Literature Review", professor Kaplan underlined that, both religion and morality have complex elements and the different combinations of these elements pave the way for different religion-morality relationships. Professor Kaplan stressed that emprical studies can have different or contrary results with the classical theories that claim, religion strengthens morality and suppress the negative emotions of the individual. In order to highlight the future studies professor Kaplan examined several studies during the last fifteen years in the English literature. Professor Kaplan presented that during this brief review, four basic categories regarding religion-morality relationship were identified. "These four basic categories were, religion positively influences morality, religion negatively influences morality, there is no meaningful relation between religion and morality and finally the relationship between religion and morality is complex. Overall, our review highlights the multidimensional structure of both religion and morality." he added.
