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Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explore the ways in which people belonging to the worldviews of modernity and tradition differ in terms of their death attitudes. Two studies were carried out. The first study was based on text analysis. Relevant pages and passages from Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s Bahishti Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments), Imam Ghazali’s Kimia e Sa’adat (The Alchemy of Happiness), Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle were taken and analyzed through grounded theory methodology. In the second study, three traditionalist scholars and three modernist scholars were interviewed through semistructured interviewing technique. Grounded theory was used for the analysis of the transcripts. The findings revealed that the major dimensions of traditional and modern death attitudes are widely at odds with each other. Two contrasting theoretical models are developed to illustrate the affect-behavior-cognition triad of death attitudes rooted in modernity and tradition.