Individuals’ beliefs, as well as their spiritual orientations (SOs), can affect the quality of their work life cycle. Given that a large portion of people’s lives are spent in organisations, it is crucial to consider the factors affecting quality of work life (QWL) among employees. Against this background, the present study investigated the effects of the Islam-based SOs on the QWL in Muslim employees working for Iraqi municipalities in 2022. For this purpose, an applied research design was adopted, using field (...) studies of the correlational type for data collection. In total, 1345 staff of Iraqi municipalities were selected by simple random sampling in 2022, and two standardised questionnaires were utilised to collect the data. The content validity method was further recruited to determine the validity of the questionnaires, and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to measure the reliability. To analyse the data, descriptive tests, including frequency, mean and standard deviation (SD), along with inferential statistics, namely one-sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and independent-samples t-test, were implemented using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software package. The correlation coefficients accordingly showed a rising trend in the QWL among these employees following the growth in their SOs. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between the components of SOs, namely spiritual beliefs, sense of spirituality, spiritual self-actualisation and spiritual practices, and the QWL of the Muslim employees.Contribution: This study revealed that the increase in the Islam-based SOs and its components led to an increase in the QWL of Iraqi Muslim employees. (shrink)

As emphasised in Islamic sources, justice is one of the most important issues covered in the religion of Islam. In fact, justice is a central theme in Islam and has a special value in this regard. Conversation about justice and its nature, as well as its realisation in human communities, has been thus far a necessity in human life. Actually, the establishment and implementation of justice in all areas are crucial for the utopia. Given the importance of this subject, the (...) present study aims to determine and explain the components of the justice-oriented Islamic community based on the teachings of Nahj al-Balaghah. Therefore, the components that introduce justice orientation in the Islamic community are extracted from the sermons, letters and wise sayings (viz. narrations) of Nahj al-Balaghah. Afterward, the extracted components are classified based on the similarity of the themes and concepts. In the end, five classifications are introduced, including distributive justice, procedural justice, interactional justice, social justice and fairness.Contribution: Based on the determined indices, the model of justice-oriented Islamic community is developed. It is thus recommended to pay more attention to the realisation of a justice-oriented Islamic community by researchers and leaders. This is mainly because of the fact that the opposite of a justice-oriented community is one with injustice, where oppression and disrespect for the rights of others occur, divine blessings change, divine wrath and anger are provoked and destruction approaches. (shrink)

The human being is the most wonderful creation of God and the highest sign of his infinite power. Humanity is capable of achieving all divine perfections. God created them to reach the position of God’s closeness and God’s successor on Earth, and this path will not be realised except by the correct education. A human is a divine being who has settled in this earthly world, and correct education is the only way to achieve that sacred truth. Divine prophets have (...) come to prepare the Earth for this great transformation in human existence and guide them to the light of divine teachings. There is no doubt that if human beings are not educated according to divine standards, they will remain at the level of animality. The Holy Qur’an, as the most precious Islamic divine book, presents the best way of education based on the knowledge of the truth of humanity and their needs. In addition, it is appropriate to discuss the role of behavioural gentleness in the education of people, and in this regard, the Qur’anic verses have been reviewed carefully. Therefore, the aim of this manuscript is to study the Islamic teachings in education with an emphasis on behavioural gentleness.Contribution: If curriculum planners and educators in general pay attention to Qur’anic teachings in education and base their curriculum and educational programs on Qur’anic teachings and according to characteristics and abilities and appropriateness of methods, and if the contents are paid attention to and educational programs are produced based on the will and authority of the educators, we will definitely witness progress and development in educational systems on the one hand and development and progress in all levels of life. (shrink)

Even if religiosity has long been introduced as the major cause for backwardness by anti-religion philosophers, the divine religion has been an important source of value for individuals and society, encouraging them to shape economic and sociocultural outcomes. In this manner, religiosity and religious capital (RC) are the stimuli for society-wide development. Against this background, religion can have positive implications for enriching individual and social economy. Assigning tasks, providing guidance on productivity and more effort, living a purposeful life, establishing effective (...) socio-economic institutions and assessing functional behaviours in organisational settings are accordingly among the ways in which RC induces economic behaviours. On the other hand, job engagement (JE) has been one of the relatively common concepts within the novel approaches to human resource management. Considering employment and the promotion of standard Islamic culture, how religion and JE are associated is thus of utmost importance. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the effect of RC on JE among 2500 Malaysian Muslim nurses working in Kuala Lumpur and Penang hospitals during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2021, as the statistical population selected via random sampling. A standardised questionnaire was also administered as the data collection tool, whose validity and reliability were confirmed. The SPSS and LISREL software packages were further utilised to analyse the data. The study results revealed that RC had a significant positive effect on nurses’ JE in the course of COVID-19 (p = 0.83, t = 11.94).Contribution: The research findings suggest that reinforcing RC in Islamic societies, such as Malaysia, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, affects nurses’ sense of hope, faith and beliefs regarding their capabilities to achieve career success. (shrink)

Education has been acknowledged as the key factor contributing to personality development and identity formation. To ensure appropriate education, it is thus of utmost importance to reflect on the power of the educational content. As a result, respecting Islamic values from a major authentic source, like the Holy Qur’an, paves the ground to fulfil this goal. On the contrary, the first and foremost educators to convey these values are the family, because each person mainly spends the time of one’s education (...) in this small, primary social institution. Above and beyond, the building block of a society and the starting point of a culture, a civilisation and human history is the family. As a noble book of guidance for the human beings, the Holy Qur’an has accordingly shed light on the role of the family. Against this background, this study, adopting a descriptive analytical approach, aimed to investigate the Islamic family from the perspective of the Holy Qur’an with an emphasis on the education of children. Accordingly, the Holy Qur’an reveals that the main purposes of creating a family are inner peace, generational survival and expansion of the faith and monotheism. A healthy family environment can thus have a profound impact on cultivating moral character and virtues. In view of the Holy Qur’an, the family is the first place to seek relief and perform the acts of worship. No divine religions have also given as much value to the family as Islam, which implies its comprehensiveness. Despite much attention to the family in most societies, it receives special importance in the Qur’anic teachings. This article is a review study that dealt with Qur’anic concepts related to education in the family. Therefore, after categorising different Qur’anic verses, analyses have been presented in each category. Contribution: Islam has set many specific programmes and educational instructions from childbirth and then delegated their implementation to the family. Accordingly, this noble religion offers many guidelines for picking a perfect name, breastfeeding and weaning, loving, observing justice and fulfilling promises in relation to children. (shrink)

Education has been acknowledged as the key factor contributing to personality development and identity formation. To ensure appropriate education, it is thus of utmost importance to reflect on the power of the educational content. As a result, respecting Islamic values from a major authentic source, like the Holy Qur’an, paves the ground to fulfil this goal. On the contrary, the first and foremost educators to convey these values are the family, because each person mainly spends the time of one’s education (...) in this small, primary social institution. Above and beyond, the building block of a society and the starting point of a culture, a civilisation and human history is the family. As a noble book of guidance for the human beings, the Holy Qur’an has accordingly shed light on the role of the family. Against this background, this study, adopting a descriptive analytical approach, aimed to investigate the Islamic family from the perspective of the Holy Qur’an with an emphasis on the education of children. Accordingly, the Holy Qur’an reveals that the main purposes of creating a family are inner peace, generational survival and expansion of the faith and monotheism. A healthy family environment can thus have a profound impact on cultivating moral character and virtues. In view of the Holy Qur’an, the family is the first place to seek relief and perform the acts of worship. No divine religions have also given as much value to the family as Islam, which implies its comprehensiveness. Despite much attention to the family in most societies, it receives special importance in the Qur’anic teachings. This article is a review study that dealt with Qur’anic concepts related to education in the family. Therefore, after categorising different Qur’anic verses, analyses have been presented in each category.Contribution: Islam has set many specific programmes and educational instructions from childbirth and then delegated their implementation to the family. Accordingly, this noble religion offers many guidelines for picking a perfect name, breastfeeding and weaning, loving, observing justice and fulfilling promises in relation to children. (shrink)

While humans are the best of creations and God’s caliphs on Earth, such a status is always hard to achieve and necessitates many efforts and too much practice. This world also has a two-way path, one terminating in the lowest of the low and the other culminating in the highest of the high. It means that one way leads to misfortune and misery and the other to happiness and perfection. To attain happiness, accountability can be of utmost importance. Besides, the (...) purpose of human creation is closeness to God by preferring the right path, which is not often possible unless they speak the truth and make the best use of the enlightening teachings of the revelation to spot the bad and good, becoming aware of their own duties and responsibilities and ultimately putting them into effect. This research aimed to investigate the mediating role of values in the relationship between accountability and trust among Muslim managers and employees in Islamic organisations, using a descriptive method through a field study. The statistical population included 2500 senior Muslim managers and employees of Iraqi government organisations, selected via simple random sampling. In this research, structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis was recruited for data analysis in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of a Moment Structures (AMOS). The study results demonstrated that accountability in Muslim managers and employees has a significant positive effect on trust (p = 0.45) and values (p = 0.81). Moreover, the findings revealed that values have a positive effect on reinforcing trust in Islamic organisations (p = 0.54), and above all bolster the relationship between accountability in managers and employees and organisational trust (p = 0.43).Contribution: The accountability of managers and employees can have a positive effect on individuals’ performance in organisations. In general, psychological pressures in organisations result in organisational transformation and then maintain values through trust-building. Such changes can be subsequently operationalized and have a profound impact on people’s behaviour by affecting work order and keeping them always growing, agile and diligent, in order to reach a new level of performance. (shrink)

Religion is among the determinants of human beliefs and values in various societies, shaping people’s behaviours in a range of life aspects, including the workplace. In view of the influence of religion in Malaysia, this issue becomes highly significant. With regard to the profound impact of religion on creating individual and collective behaviours, the present study aims to investigate the effects of religious behaviours (RBs) on organisational commitment (OC) among Malaysian healthcare workers (HCWs) in 2022, by a survey method implemented (...) using standardised questionnaires for data collection. The statistical population comprised of 2500 HCWs from 10 hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, Georgetown and Malacca, Malaysia, selected by the simple random sampling among the Muslim staff. The data analysis was further fulfilled using the AMOS software package for structural equation modelling (SEM). In general, the study results demonstrated a significant and positive relationship between RBs and OC among Malaysian HCWs (p-value = 0.84, t-statistic = 6.50).Contribution: As demonstrated by the study results, it is possible to inspire OC among employees through strengthening RBs and take advantages of the results. Thus, RBs shown by employees can definitely bring positive results to organisations; therefore, OC in Malaysian HCWs improves. (shrink)

Organisations are increasingly involved in what they call ‘ethical dilemmas’, that is, the conditions under which wrongdoing and righteous deeds must be defined once again because the line between right and wrong has blurred more than ever. In general, human beings have special moral characteristics in the individual and personality dimension that shape their thoughts, speech and behaviour. It is possible that the same people in the same position and organisation could be affected differently, and their ideas, speech and behaviour (...) affect the efficiency and effectiveness of the organisation. Ethics can have positive or negative consequences at each organisational level. One of the effective factors on the occurrence of employees’ ethical behaviours is the role of spirituality in the work environment and humility of leaders. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of humility of Muslim leaders on the moral behaviours of followers and spirituality at work in Islamic society. The statistical population of the study was 370 Muslim employees of International Islamic University Malaysia. After distributing the questionnaires among the statistical population, 352 questionnaires were returned. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by the content validity method, and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha. In this research, the structural equation modeling approach and Amos software were used to analyse the data. All hypotheses were confirmed at a 95% significance level. The results showed that the humility of leaders has a positive and significant effect on spirituality in the workplace and work ethic of followers. Spirituality in the workplace has also a positive effect on employees’ work ethic.Contribution: It is recommended that the officials of organisations should pay attention to spirituality in the workplace and the humility of managers and supervisors towards employees in order to promote work ethics. Further, it can be concluded that organisations can increase the ethical behaviours of employees by promoting the components of organisational spirituality. (shrink)

Lifestyle refers to a set of personal and group behaviours related to normative and semantic aspects of social life. Any coherent set of behavioural patterns derived from religious teachings that exist in life can be considered a religious lifestyle. Considering that the dominant religion in Jordan is Islam, the present study focused on the Islamic lifestyle. In addition, given that the correct relationship between couples has been compared to life-giving blood in marriage, and since the quality of marital role plays (...) a determining role, the existence of communication skills in any of the couples can generate satisfaction and compatibility, whereas lack of awareness of these skills could cause misunderstandings and tension. Therefore, the current study aims to study the role of the Islamic lifestyle in communication skills of 250 Muslim couples of Jordan (Amman, Zarqa and Irbid) in 2022. Data were collected using questionnaires during four months, and the validity and reliability was confirmed. In addition, data analysis was performed in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) using mean tests and structural equation modelling. According to the results, Islamic lifestyle had a positive, significant effect on the improvement of communication skills in Muslim couples in Jordan (P-value: 0.76; T-value: 7.92). Therefore, it is recommended that more attention should be paid to this issue by families, researchers and cultural authorities in the country.Contribution: Our findings revealed that Islamic lifestyle improved communication skills in Muslim couples, which demands special attention. By adhering to the Islamic lifestyle, couples can influence each other’s knowledge, emotions, education and growth, and try to have a realistic understanding of each other’s desires, needs, living environment and perceptions that each has in life issues. Furthermore, they can organise their role in the common life in appropriate ways to prevent problems and solve them in the event of problems. (shrink)

International economic law is peculiar. It claims universal character, yet eschews engagement with many, if not all, the racialised features of the global political economy. Its scholars mostly ignore imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism; they exclude slavery, predation, and racism altogether. In the following article, we draw upon Walter Rodney’s dialectics of development to offer a racial capitalist critique of international economic law. The disciplinary boundaries and operative logic normalised by its denizens corral us in a white, Eurocentric episteme. Ahistoricism, decontextualisation, (...) and externalisation are three epistemic devices at the forefront of the exclusionary discourse of IEL. In this space, the histories and epistemologies of Black peoples are ghettoised, treated as alien to the framework. After identifying this bias, we use the Black Radical Tradition to evaluate IEL’s amenability to the racial capitalism critique. (shrink)

There are few examples in the literature of objective measures for the assessment of donor willingness. The author describes the scoring system in use at his own renal transplant unit which has brought objectivity to the process of determining the willingness of living related donors. In this system, a total score to determine the degree of willingness or unwillingness is calculated based on responses to a series of questions. The author believes that with minor modifications this system could be implemented (...) by transplant units in different countries and cultures to screen out donors who are acting under duress. (shrink)

Neutrosophy, the study of neutralities, is a new branch of Philosophy that has applications in many different fields of science. Inspired by the idea of Neutrosophy, Smarandache introduced NeutroAlgebraicStructures (or NeutroAlgebras) by allowing the partiality and indeterminacy to be included in the structures’ operations and/or axioms.

Abstract - The aim of the study is to identify the degree of administrative transparency in the Palestinian higher educational institutions in the Gaza Strip. In the study, the researchers adopted a descriptive and analytical method. The research population consisted of administrative staff, whether academic or administrative, except for those in senior management or the university council. The study population reached 392 employees. A random sample was selected (197). The number of questionnaires recovered was (160) with a recovery rate of (...) (81.2%). The researchers used a questionnaire for the data collection and were treated using SPSS to obtain the results. The results show that there is no significant difference between male responses and female responses due to gender variable. The results also confirm that there is no significant difference between respondents' responses due to the age variable. The results also showed a significant difference between respondents' responses attributed to the university variable. There is a fundamental difference between respondents' responses attributed to the scientifically qualified variable. The results also confirmed a significant difference between respondents' responses attributed to the management level variable. The results also confirmed a significant difference between respondents' responses due to variable years of service. The research reached a number of recommendations, the most important of which is: The necessity of Palestinian universities to adhere to the application of transparency standards in all university activities. The need to benefit from regional and international experience in the application of transparency systems within universities and to examine the possibility of applying these systems in our universities. As well as the need to engage in the program of teaching transparency in universities, as it is confirmed that only five universities participated in this experiment. The importance of raising awareness among the employees of Palestinian universities to clarify the foundations of building transparency and its dimensions to represent the active supporter through workshops and seminars. (shrink)

Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1469-1527; political views; political science; international relations; philosophy.

Deformation of ground during tunnelling projects is one of the complex issues that is required to be monitored carefully to avoid the unexpected damages and human losses. Accurate prediction of ground settlement is a crucial concern for tunnelling problems, and the adequate predictive model can be a vital tool for tunnel designers to simulate the ground settlement accurately. This study proposes relatively new hybrid artificial intelligence models to predict the ground settlement of earth pressure balance shield tunnelling in the Bangkok (...) MRTA project. The predictive models were various nature-inspired frameworks, such as differential evolution, particle swarm optimization, genetic algorithm, and ant colony optimizer to tune the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system. To obtain the accurate and reliable results, the modeling procedure is established based on four different dataset scenarios including preprocessed and normalized, preprocessed and nonnormalized, non-preprocessed and normalized, and non-preprocessed and nonnormalized datasets. Results indicated that PPN dataset scenario significantly affected the prediction models in terms of their perdition accuracy. Among all the developed hybrid models, ANOFS-PSO model achieved the best predictability performance. In quantitative terms, PPN-ANFIS-PSO model attained the least root mean square error value of 7.98 and a correlation coefficient value of 0.83. Overall, the attained results confirmed the superiority of the explored hybrid AI models as robust predictive model for ground settlement of earth pressure balance shield tunnelling. (shrink)

I develop a phenomenological account of racialized encounters with works of art and film, wherein the racialized viewer feels cast as perpetually past, coming “too late” to intervene in the meaning of her own representation. This points to the distinctive role that the colonial past plays in mediating and constructing our self-images. I draw on my experience of three exhibitions that take Muslims and/or Arabs as their subject matter and that ostensibly try to interrupt or subvert racialization while reproducing some (...) of its tropes. My examples are the Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2015), the exposition Welten der Muslime at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin (2011–2017), and a sculpture by Bob and Roberta Smith at the Leeds City Art Gallery, created in response to the imperial power painting, General Gordon’s Last Stand, that is housed there. My interest is in how artworks contribute to the experience of being racialized in ways that not only amplify the circulation of images but also constitute difficult temporal relations to images. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, I argue that such racialized images are temporally gluey, or stuck, so that we are weighted and bogged down by them. This essay received Honorable Mention from the American Society for Aesthetics Feminist Caucus Committee in the Feminist Research Essay prize in 2020. (shrink)

This article goes behind stereotypes of Muslim veiling to ask after the representational structure underlying these images. I examine the public debate leading to the 2004 French law banning conspicuous religious signs in schools and French colonial attitudes to veiling in Algeria, in conjunction with discourses on the veil that have arisen in other western contexts. My argument is that western perceptions and representations of veiled Muslim women are not simply about Muslim women themselves. Rather than representing Muslim women, these (...) images fulfill a different function: they provide the negative mirror in which western constructions of identity and gender can be positively reflected. It is by means of the projection of gender oppression onto Islam, and its naturalization to the bodies of veiled women, that such mirroring takes place. This constitutes, I argue, a form of racialization. Drawing on the work of Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and Alcoff, I offer a phenomenological analysis of this racializing vision. What is at stake is a form of cultural racism that functions in the guise of anti-sexist and feminist liberatory discourse, at once posing a dilemma to feminists and concealing its racializing logic. (shrink)

Islamic sects; Motazilites; early works to 1800.

ʻAyyānī, Yaḥyá ibn Ḥumaydān, ca. 12th century; Muslim scholars; Yemen; views on Islamic philosophy.

Hādī ilá al-ḥaqq, Yaḥyá ibn al-Ḥusayn, 859-910; view on Islamic philosophy; Islam; doctrines.

I counter a tendency in critical phenomenology to read Frantz Fanon as derivative upon, indeed reducible to, other (European) phenomenologies, eliding the originality and contemporaneity of his method. I propose it is time to read phenomenology through Fanon, instead of centering analysis on his assumed debt to Maurice Merleau‐Ponty's body schema. Fanon reconfigures and ungrounds phenomenology in Peau noire, masques blancs (Black Skin, White Masks). I show how he creates his own method through an anticolonial phenomenology of touch and affect (...) that breaks with the perceptual spectacle at the center of most phenomenologies before him. I read Fanon's “toucher du doigt”—in contrastive relation to Edmund Husserl's touch‐sensings—to define a phenomenology that dwells with colonial wounding and holds the memory of a “burning” colonial duration. This is to say that Fanon's phenomenology is not mere description; rather, Fanon invents a critical, distinctly temporal, and anticolonial method from the affective territory in which he has had to dwell. This method addresses the conditions of possibility for doing (critical) phenomenology. Fanonian phenomenology makes tangible the (de)structuring violence through which colonialism ontologizes itself, while providing tools to dwell with the wounding and critically mine it—to create possibilities for living otherwise than what colonialism makes of us. (shrink)