<![CDATA[Emotion regulation is an important psychological capacity that enables individuals to manage emotional experiences and responses adaptively. For university students, this capacity is relevant to academic, social, and developmental demands. From an Islamic psychology perspective, voluntary Monday–Thursday fasting is understood as a spiritual practice that involves self-restraint and behavioral control. Previous studies have examined fasting in relation to self-control, self-regulation, emotional intelligence, and emotional stability; however, comparative evidence concerning specific emotion-regulation strategies remains limited. This study aimed to examine differences in overall emotion regulation between Muslim undergraduate students who practiced Monday–Thursday fasting and those who did not, with an exploratory analysis of five emotion-regulation strategies based on Gross’s Process Model of Emotion Regulation. A quantitative comparative design was employed with 48 Muslim undergraduate students aged 18–22 years recruited using purposive sampling. Participants comprised 20 students who had practiced Monday–Thursday fasting regularly for at least one month and 28 students who had not practiced it regularly during the same period. Data were collected using a 24-item Emotion Regulation Scale covering Situation Selection, Situation Modification, Attentional Deployment, Cognitive Change, and Response Modulation. The primary analysis used an independent-samples t test. The fasting group had a higher mean emotion-regulation score (M = 94.75, SD = 13.14) than the non-fasting group (M = 91.68, SD = 9.17), but the difference was not statistically significant, t = 0.955, p = .345, Cohen’s d = 0.280, 95% CI for the mean difference [-3.40, 9.54]. Exploratory dimensional analyses indicated moderate effect sizes for Attentional Deployment (d = 0.544, p = .070) and Response Modulation (d = 0.470, p = .115), although neither difference reached statistical significance. These findings indicate that no statistically significant difference in overall emotion regulation was identified between the two groups in this sample. The observed patterns in Attentional Deployment and Response Modulation require confirmation in studies with larger samples and more rigorous designs.]]>
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