Around 20 million Shia pilgrims shape one of the world’s biggest pilgrimages in Iraq, called “Arbaeen,” many of whom walk long distances to Karbala city as a part of the ritual every year. Faith in Imam Hussein, who was martyred in the battle of Karbala in 680 CE, is central among all pilgrims in this ritual, but the main question is how do the pilgrims’ faith and psychological cognitions translate into this spiritual journey with different meanings during the Arbaeen pilgrimage? The present study aims to discover the different social and psychological reasons for pilgrims’ feelings of attachment to Imam Hussein and to the Arbaeen pilgrimage route. Through 57 semi-structured in-depth interviews with pilgrims in two phases, Arbaeen 2014 and 2019, four different perceived roles for Imam Hussein including beloved, interceding, transformative, and unifier figure were found, leading pilgrims to feel an attachment to him. The current study mainly contributes to the literature by presenting an empirical analysis of Muslims’ experiences and perceptions of Islamic theology, and their loyalty to a sacred route through attachment to a sacred figure.

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The current study outlines the measurement of frontline employees' guest-directed ethnocultural empathy abilities in the context of Islamic hospitality in Iran. To this end, nine 4-and 5-star hotels located in three of the country's main cities were sampled for examining their frontline employees by a modified version of Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy. To test this scale and analyze the data, the variance-based technique of partial least squares structural equation modeling was selected. Out of the scale's dimensions, Empathic Feeling and Expression exerted the strongest influence on the ethnocultural empathy levels, followed by Empathic Perspective Taking, Acceptance of Cultural Differences, and Empathic Awareness. These underlying four dimensions accounted for more than two thirds of the total variance of ethnocultural empathy. This, along with the substantiation of convergent validity, discriminant validity, high reliability, and satisfactory model indices, indicates a high contribution of the above dimensions and their modified items to the quantitatively measurement of frontline employees' competencies to empathize with guests of other racial or ethnic groups. Hotel managers can take advantage of this scale to identify any likely weaknesses with such competencies in order to improve them based on the priorities that various guest segments seek.