This essay explores the current and historical meaning of forgiveness in Arab and Islamic cultural and religious contexts. It also hopes to encourage further empirical research on this understudied topic in both religious and peacebuilding studies. In addition to the perceived meaning of forgiveness in an Arab Islamic context, this essay examines the links between forgiveness and reconciliation. Relying on religious sources including the Qur'an and Hadith, as well as certain events in Islamic history, the essay identifies various ways to (...) conceptualize and explain the meaning of forgiveness. This theoretical and conceptual segment is followed by a section which explores current perceptions of forgiveness among Arab Muslim teachers in five different communities. The empirical data for this analysis is based on a larger comparative regional study that has been completed through surveys and structured interviews with educators from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestinians from the West Bank and Israel. Our study concluded that the teachers' perceptions of forgiveness were mainly derived from religious sources and identities and that Islamic religious discourse provided a solid foundation for framing the meaning of forgiveness. (shrink)

War and Border Crossings brings together renowned scholars to address some of the most pressing problems in public policy, international affairs, and the intercultural issues of our day. Contributors from widely varying disciplines discuss cross-cultural ethical issues and international topics ranging from American international policy and the invasion and occupation of Iraq to domestic topics such as immigration, the war on drugs, cross-cultural bioethics and ethical issues involving American Indian tribes. The culture clashes discussed in these essays raise serious questions (...) about what principles ought to inform the negotiating of conflicts in order to achieve, or at least approach, outcomes that are fundamentally just, fair, responsible, and ethical. (shrink)

Though some studies describe attempts to integrate Facebook in education, little is known how to use it in mathematics education. This article describes an attempt to populate Facebook with mathematicians from the past, as well as strategies to involve friends with the mathematics of the mathematicians. The experiment shows that Facebook can attract friends to content knowledge, beginning with social talk, and transiting gradually and smoothly to mathematics content knowledge through cultural discourse. The experiment implies that Facebook, representing social networks (...) not intended from the beginning for education, can be adopted successfully for mathematics education. (shrink)

This study explores the sustainability reporting (SR) and assurance market in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region from the Big 4 auditors' perspectives and investigates the drivers and barriers of SR and assurance in the GCC region. We have interviewed ten representatives of auditing firms (i.e., members of Big 4) in the GCC region. The results of study reveal the immaturity of the SR and assurance market in the region but are hopeful for the future contingent upon certain factors. In (...) addition, the voluntary nature of SR, the cost of reporting and assurance, and religious concerns among others are primary barriers in front of the eagerness of firms to adopt SR and its assurance. Reputation building and accessing international markets among others are the main motivations for the adoption of SR and assurance. The interviewees have firmly expressed that there is no direct relationship between SR assurance and financial report audit. (shrink)

This article provides an exposition of restorative justice ethics, briefly explaining how and why its relational constitution enables it to comprise a theory of justice. I then describe how that relational constitution permits it to overlap, and work in tandem, with a wide range of religious and philosophical traditions. Numerous writings in religion and peacebuilding explore the roles that restorative justice has played in transitional justice contexts (Tutu 2000, Abu-Nimer 2001, de Gruchy 2002, Biggar 2003, Walker 2004, Villa-Vicencio 2009). (...) Less examined are cases in which restorative justice aims to provide a sustainable alternative to justice institutions and systems that generate substantial systemic injustices—what peace studies scholars describe as the inter-lacing of structural, cultural, and direct forms of violence (Springs 2015). In part two, then, I make the case that intervening in, and countering, structural and cultural violence, and systemic injustices, is conceptually intrinsic to restorative justice. Moreover, this opens possibilities for restorative justice to present sustainable alternatives to—and work to transform— structural violence occurring in retributive justice systems. Restorative justice can uniquely intervene in these ways, I argue, because of the form of moral and spiritual association its relational constitution engenders. As a test case, I briefly examine its capacity to intervene in the justice system that perhaps leads the world in the levels of structural and cultural violence—the United States. (shrink)