Abstract

Religion is increasingly recognized as important for coping and resilience in contexts of forced migration, yet broad categories such as “religious coping” do not fully explain how specific Islamic concepts become experientially available and action-guiding in everyday life. This article examines sabr among Syrian refugee women living in Turkey as a situated moral–religious concept rather than a simple equivalent of “patience.” The analysis draws on 24 semi-structured interviews conducted in Hatay, Turkey, between 2017 and 2023 and uses reflexive thematic analysis informed by research on situated abstract concepts and cultural model theory. Across the interviews, sabr emerged as a core Islamic idiom through which women made hardship intelligible and organized accounts of endurance, restraint, dignity, and action under prolonged uncertainty. Sabr was described as learned through religious practice and prior adversity, enacted through emotional, bodily, and verbal restraint, sustained through Qur’anic language and exemplary narratives, and closely linked to motherhood, social responsibility, trust in God, and expectations of eventual relief or divine reward. Rather than presenting sabr as a discrete coping strategy or psychological mechanism, the findings show how it organized women’s accounts of endurance, responsibility, and action within a broader religious–moral framework. An emic understanding of resilience among Muslim refugees therefore requires attention to lived concepts through which suffering becomes meaningful, morally framed, and practically bearable.

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