Approximately one-fourth of all the inhabitants on earth are Muslims. Due to unprecedented migration, physicians are often confronted with cultures other than their own that adhere to different paradigms.

Ethical considerations, especially those religiously driven, play a significant role in shaping business conduct and priorities. Profit levels and earnings constitute an integral part of business considerations and are relevant and closely linked to prevailing ethics. In this paper, Islamic prescriptions on profit maximization are introduced. Islamic business ethics are outlined as well. It is suggested that while Islamic teaching treats profits as reward for engaging in vital activities necessary for serving societal interests, profit maximization is not sanctioned and therefore (...) should not be the goal of ethically guided business ventures. (shrink)

This article examines the nature and reproduction of ‘institutional idiocy’, seen as a form of collective cognitive incapacity generated by cultural conditions. It shows idiocy to be active in numerous paths, wearing different clothes and taking dissimilar forms, spreading to the extent that it dominates communities. An empirically driven framework is established for idiocy-dominated communities – communities with access to futile education and fruitless technology. It demonstrates how idiocy-dominated communities disguise and protect their shared idiocy and handle non-idiotic minorities. It (...) explains that idiocy-intense communities are not necessarily chaotic and arbitrarily organised, entailing ‘formulas of life’, ‘identity politics’ and ‘schools of thought’. It describes that a whole community can thoroughly adapt to life without critical thinking, living in an illusion. Whereas previous works have scrutinised individual idiocy, this research goes beyond this to inspect institutional idiocy by presenting idiocy as a system (and ‘ideology’) that constitutes the foundation of groups. While such notions as technocracy and epistocracy detail the domination of cognitive maturity, this article goes in another direction by recording the domination of cognitive immaturity (idiocracy). It avoids thinking about idiocy binarily (idiocy versus intelligence), viewing it as a question of not intellect but behaviour, culture and ‘being-with’. (shrink)

Mass media play an important role in changing body image. This study aimed to determine the role of media (magazines and television) in body weight concern among university females in five Arab countries. A total sample of 1134 female university students was selected at convenience from universities in five Arab countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Oman and Syria. The females' ages ranged from 17 to 32. A pre-tested questionnaire was used to assess the exposure to mass media regarding weight concerns. For (...) the variables on exposure to mass media, girls were divided into two groups: infrequently exposed and frequently exposed. In general, the females who were exposed to mass media had a greater risk of having dieted to lose weight and changing their ideas of a perfect body shape than those who were not exposed or infrequently exposed. The association of exposure to magazines with having dieted to lose weight was only significant among females in Bahrain (p<0.044), Egypt (p<0.001) and Jordan (p<0.001). Exposure to television had a weaker association than exposure to magazines with body weight concerns of females. The association of exposure to television with females' idea of a perfect body shape was only statistically significant in females in Egypt (p<0.019) and Oman (p<0.019). The pressure from mass media on the body weight concern of female university students may lead these women to practise unhealthy weight control diets. (shrink)

This study investigated the social factors associated with body-shape preferences for females and males as perceived by Arab women living in Qatar, and correlated the current weight status of women studied with these preferences. The subjects were 535 non-pregnant Arab women aged 20–67 years, who attended heath centres in Doha City, the capital of the State of Qatar. Illustrations of male and female body shapes ranging from very thin to very obese using the 9-figure Silhouettes scale were shown to women, (...) and they were asked to select their preferred figure. Body mass index (BMI) was used to determine the weight status of women studied. Age, educational level and employment status were found to be significantly associated with ideal body-shape preference for both males and females, whereas marital status and current weight status had no significant association. In general, the Arab women studied selected a more mid-range of body fatness for males than for females. It is concluded that attention should be given to sociocultural factors, such as body-shape preferences, in any programmes to promote ideal body weight for the public. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 85-100.

The bulk of Orientalist research regarding Islamic theological literature has neglected Ibāḍī theological opinions related to cosmology, which has led to an incomplete understanding of Islamic theology in the West and to a significant gap in Western scholarship. The omission of this important movement of Islam is understandable, considering the unavailability, lack of publication, circulation and translation of Ibāḍī texts. Therefore, this study seeks to address some of these gaps in the scholarship on early Islamic theology. The goals of this (...) article are: 1) to characterize the classical Ibāḍī theological literature dealing with the atomistic theory of substance and accident; 2) to review the texts of Ibāḍī scholars as they argued and engaged with other Islamic theological schools: pre-Bahshamiyya Muʿtazilites and Ashʿarites , in relation to the atomistic theory of substance and accident during the 3 rd /9 th century; 3) to survey the wide range of opinions among the early Ibāḍī theologians, and to examine the specific sources and themes that may have influenced this multifarious school of thought. Likewise, it is the aim of this article to demonstrate the common features in the Ibāḍī approach to producing theological literature during the formation of Islamic theology, and to explore how these early theologians may have gained access to cosmological themes that predate Islam. Résumé Le gros de la recherche orientaliste consacrée à la littérature théologique islamique a négligé les idées théologiques Ibāḍī à portée cosmologique, ce qui a conduit à une compréhension incomplète de la théologie islamique et à un manque considérable dans la recherche occidentale. L'omission de ce mouvement important de l'Islam est compréhensible étant donné que les textes Ibāḍī ne sont accessibles, publiés, diffusés et traduits que de façon très partielle. Cette étude vise donc à combler certaines de ces lacunes dans la recherche sur la première théologie islamique. Les objectifs de cet article sont de: 1) caractériser la littérature Ibāḍī classique portant sur la théorie atomiste de la substance et de l'accident; 2) examiner les textes d'auteurs Ibāḍī du iii e / ix e siècle dialoguant et discutant avec d'autres écoles théologiques islamiques, à savoir les Muʿtazilites pré-Bahshamiyya et les Ashʿarites , en lien avec la théorie atomiste de la substance et de l'accident; 3) passer en revue le grand nombre d'opinions soutenues parmi les premiers théologiens Ibāḍī, et examiner les sources et les thèmes spécifiques susceptibles d'avoir influencé cette école de pensée diversifiée. Cet article cherche aussi à identifier des traits communs dans l'approche Ibāḍī durant la période de formation de la théologie islamique, et à explorer les voies grâce auxquelles ces premiers théologiens ont pu avoir accès à des thèmes cosmologiques antérieurs à l'Islam. (shrink)

BackgroundPsychological distress/morbidity is amongst the primary reason for the cause of pain at multiple sites, its progression, and recovery. Though still not very clear if physical pain in the neck or the back may predict psychological morbidities or not. Thus, we investigated the association between combined neck or back pain and psychological distress/morbidity.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted in Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia, including 1,003 individuals. The questionnaire comprised of General Health Questionnaire-12 and some questions about neck and back pain. Data analysis (...) was done using statistical software SPSS version 26.0.ResultsThe results of the multivariate analysis revealed a significant positive association between neck/back pain status and total GHQ score. Having neck/back pain had almost a 2.5 times greater risk of psychological distress/morbidity. Further, females were more likely to have a higher risk of psychological distress/morbidity than males while adjusting for sociodemographic and clinical characteristics.ConclusionThe combination of neck and back pain was significantly associated with the Saudi population’s psychological problems. Therefore, the Saudi government needs to devise high-risk strategies and allocate adequate resources to the cause so that at-risk people can be shielded from the adverse complications arising from this condition in the long run. (shrink)

This article relies on two international projects to argue for the existence of a ‘centrarchy’ in the fields of education and technology. Centrarchy denotes a power structure in which power rests with ‘the Centre’. The Centre signifies well-respected departments, top-tiered journals, the best editors, critical reviewers and leading authors; the Periphery denotes anyone else. The Centre has assigned itself the mission of guiding the Periphery out of its underdevelopment. It has served as a proxy for quality scholarship and believes that (...) Periphery’s societies require a saviour. It has ignored the knowledge that has been produced by the Periphery’s researchers. Its ways of researching the world have been internalised and taken for granted by the Periphery’s academics, who have come to see these ways as the natural order and common sense. It has seen the Periphery’s societies as outliers appropriate merely for local case studies, whereas its case studies transcend locality and have universal value. The Centre–Periphery ‘wall’ is unbreachable because of empirically uninspected factors, which are unearthed here. This article, furthermore, shows some academics to be on ‘the periphery of the Periphery’. (shrink)

Deep learning techniques, which use a massive technology known as convolutional neural networks, have shown excellent results in a variety of areas, including image processing and interpretation. However, as the depth of these networks grows, so does the demand for a large amount of labeled data required to train these networks. In particular, the medical field suffers from a lack of images because the procedure for obtaining labeled medical images in the healthcare field is difficult, expensive, and requires specialized expertise (...) to add labels to images. Moreover, the process may be prone to errors and time-consuming. Current research has revealed transfer learning as a viable solution to this problem. Transfer learning allows us to transfer knowledge gained from a previous process to improve and tackle a new problem. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive survey of recent studies that dealt with solving this problem and the most important metrics used to evaluate these methods. In addition, this study identifies problems in transfer learning techniques and highlights the problems of the medical dataset and potential problems that can be addressed in future research. According to our review, many researchers use pre-trained models on the Imagenet dataset in many applications such as skin cancer, breast cancer, and diabetic retinopathy classification tasks. These techniques require further investigation of these models, due to training them on natural, non-medical images. In addition, many researchers use data augmentation techniques to expand their dataset and avoid overfitting. However, not enough studies have shown the effect of performance with or without data augmentation. Accuracy, recall, precision, F1 score, receiver operator characteristic curve, and area under the curve were the most widely used measures in these studies. Furthermore, we identified problems in the datasets for melanoma and breast cancer and suggested corresponding solutions. (shrink)

This article examines the role of Islamic ethics in the marketing field. It presents Islamic contributions to the field by referencing original sources and concepts that are often not easily available to researchers and practitioners alike. In foundational texts, Islamic ethics have their own marketing practice prescriptions, practices that are driven by a discipline which shuns any dichotomy between organizational and societal interests. The paper underscores the role of marketers in improving the well-being of individuals and the community and presents (...) a framework for analyzing the link between Islamic ethics and societal welfare vis-a-vis marketing. Several marketing issues are identified and the contributions of Islamic teachings are presented. This paper, too, identifies emerging ethical dilemmas and the necessity to tackle them in a way that strengthens the role of marketing in societal affairs and ensures morally driven conduct. (shrink)

The ADHD Rating Scale—5 for Children and Adolescents, School Version, has been adopted and validated to be used in assessing ADHD among school children within Western contexts. However, there are few assessment tools in use for identifying ADHD characteristics in children in Sudan. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of this rating scale in the context of Sudan. To accomplish this, data were collected on a sample of 3,742 school-aged children and adolescents as reported by their teachers. (...) Psychometric properties can be classified as very good, with very high reliability, and high construct validity tested by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Thus, the ADHD Rating Scale—5 for Children and Adolescents, School Version, is valid, reliable, and suitable to use for assessing ADHD symptoms among children and adolescents in the Sudanese context. (shrink)

This study examines the accountability of assessments in news interview settings on two Arabic networks. It employs a conversation analytic approach, in addition to quantitative analysis to identify the most adopted practices that show participants’ orientation to the accountability of assessments. The data consists of 28 hours of recorded interviews on the Arab television news networks, Aljazeera Al-Arabiya channels. The findings show that interviewers and interviewees adopt different strategies to avoid the accountability of their displayed assessments. Interviewers attribute their assessments (...) either to third parties or to the upshot of interviewees’ answers. Similarly, interviewees introduce accounts before and following their proffered assessments to provide epistemic support to these assessments. Furthermore, interviewers introduce follow-up questions to scrutinize interviewees’ assessments and accounts or seek interviewees’ reaffirmation of these assessments to highlight their accountability. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 92 Heft: 2 Seiten: 500-507.

A Maritime Lexicon: Arabic Nautical Terminology in the Indian Ocean. By Abdulrahman al Salimi and Eric Staples. Studies on Ibadism and Oman, vol. 11. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2019. Pp. 641, illus. €88.

Résumé Cet article présente la notion d’implicite ethnosocioculturel et dresse, avec de nombreux exemples, une typologie des implicites ethnosocioculturels en discours à partir d’un corpus constitué des médiacultures. Onze formes d’implicites ethnosocioculturels ont été détectées dans différents types de discours. Ces formes permettent de distinguer les implicites pragmatiques, logiques et interpersonnels des implicites ethnosocioculturels qui, ces derniers, relèvent désormais d’une sémiotique patrimoniale. Le résultat de cette étude peut aider à combler certains déficits constatés dans la formation des traducteurs-interprètes en matière (...) de bagage cognitif du sujet-interprétant. (shrink)

Over the past century, private tutoring in many countries has increased dramatically. Moreover, the main disadvantage of PT is that has a byproduct and a characteristic on the educational system in developing countries in terms of contributing to conditions such as large class sizes, low public expenditures, and an inadequate number of universities. In Saudi Arabia, the spread of PT at school and university levels has yet to be addressed by researchers. One goal of this examination was to research the (...) spread of PT in relation to mathematics being taught at school and university levels. This investigation used quantitative data of the questionnaire to determine the reasons for the spread. A total of 1000 students responded from University of Ha’il. The edge plans given results that are associated and like the assessment that is performed with the whole data. The current study found that a good family financial situation and lack of parental supervision of the children were significant factors underlying the spread of private tutoring at school and university levels. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of the transition that has taken place in Arab media over the course of time. It focuses more specifically on the case of Saudi Arabia to show how television interviewers there have performed their roles throughout three different phases. The first phase covers the period when the media was still controlled by Arab governments, the second focuses on the advent of satellite and the third focuses on the aftermath of the recent series of uprisings which (...) has become known as the Arab Spring. An examination of these three phases, which includes a discussion of some illustrative examples, will show how television interviewers have shifted from initially taking a very cautious and overtly deferential approach with interviewees, officials and public figures to adopting a more aggressive approach in the third phase. (shrink)

Extropy, as a complementary dual of entropy, has been discussed in many works of literature, where it is declared for other measures as an extension of extropy. In this article, we obtain the extropy of generalized order statistics via its dual and give some examples from well-known distributions. Furthermore, we study the residual and past extropy for such models. On the other hand, based on Farlie–Gumbel–Morgenstern distribution, we consider the residual extropy of concomitants of m-generalized order statistics and present this (...) measure with some additional features. In addition, we provide the upper bound and stochastic orders of it. Finally, nonparametric estimation of the residual extropy of concomitants of m-generalized order statistics is included using simulated and real data connected with COVID-19 virus. (shrink)

This paper asks how perception becomes racializing and seeks the means for its critical interruption. My aim is not only to understand the recalcitrant and limitative temporal structure of racializing habits of seeing, but also to uncover the possibilities within perception for a critical awareness and destabilization of this structure. Reading Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with Frantz Fanon, Iris Marion Young and race-critical feminism, I locate in hesitation the phenomenological moment where habits of seeing can be internally (...) fractured. Hesitation, I claim, makes visible the exclusionary logic of racializing and objectifying perception, countering its affective closure and opening it to critical transformation. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 has taken the world by surprise and has impacted the lives of many, including the business sector and its stakeholders. Although studies investigating the impact of COVID-19 on the organizational structure, job design, and employee well-being have been on the rise, fewer studies examined the role of leadership and what it takes to be an effective leader during such times. This study integrates social cognitive theory and conservation of resources theory to argue for the importance of (...) adaptive personality in the emergence of effective leaders during crisis times, utilizing the crisis of COVID-19 as the context for the study. We argue that managers with an adaptive personality tend to have increased self-efficacy levels to lead during a crisis, resulting in increased motivation to lead during the COVID-19 crisis. Furthermore, managers with increased motivation to lead during the COVID-19 crisis are argued to have enhanced adaptive performance, thereby suggesting a serial mediation model where crisis leader self-efficacy and motivation to lead during the COVID-19 crisis act as explanatory mechanisms of the relationship between the adaptive personality and performance of the manager. In order to test our hypotheses, we collected data from 116 full-time managers in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 crisis and used hierarchical linear regression as the method of analysis. The findings support all of the hypotheses. A discussion of the results, contributions, limitations, and future directions is included. (shrink)

In a digital communication environment, information security is mandatory. Three essential parameters used in the design process of a steganography algorithm are Payload, security, and fidelity. However, several methods are implemented in information hiding, such as Least Significant Bit (LBS), Discrete Wavelet Transform, Masking, and Discrete Cosine Transform. The paper aims to investigate novel steganography techniques based on agent technology. It proposes a Framework of Steganography based on agent for secret communication using LSB. The most common image steganography databases are (...) explored for training and testing. The methodology in this work is based on the statistical properties of the developed agent software using Matlab. The experiment design is based on six statistical feature measures, including Histogram, Mean, Standard deviation, Entropy, Variance and Energy. For steganography, an Ensemble classifier is used to test two scenarios: embedding a single language message and inserting bilingual messages. ROC Curve represents the evaluation metrics. The result shows that the designed agent-based system with 50% training/testing sample set and 0.2 Payload can pick out the best cover image for the provided hidden message size to avoid visual artifact. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine measurement agreement between a vocabulary test that is administered in the standardized manner and a version that is administered with a brain-computer interface.MethodThe sample was comprised of 21 participants, ages 9–27, mean age 16.7 years, 61.9% male, including 10 with congenital spastic cerebral palsy, and 11 comparison peers. Participants completed both standard and BCI-facilitated alternate versions of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - 4. The BCI-facilitated PPVT-4 uses items identical to the unmodified PPVT-4, but each quadrant forced-choice item (...) is presented on a computer screen for use with the BCI.ResultsMeasurement agreement between instruments was excellent, including an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.98, and Bland-Altman plots and tests indicating adequate limits of agreement and no systematic test version bias. The mean standard score difference between test versions was 2.0 points.ConclusionThese results demonstrate that BCI-facilitated quadrant forced-choice vocabulary testing has the potential to measure aspects of language without requiring any overt physical or communicative response. Thus, it may be possible to identify the language capabilities and needs of many individuals who have not had access to standardized clinical and research instruments. (shrink)

Islamic ethics; Muslims; conduct of life.

Faylasū al-ʻArab: al-Kindī -- al-Muʻallim al-thānī: al-Fārābī -- al-Shāʻir al-ḥakīm: al-Mutanabbī -- Baṭalīmūs al-ʻArab: Ibn al-Haytham -- Shaykh al-Islām: Ibn Taymīyah.

Prophets, Pre-Islamic; conduct of life; early works to 1800.

This study reveals that increases in the global population command an augmented demand for products and services that calls for more effective ways of using existing natural resources and materials. The recent development of information and communication technologies, which had a great impact on many areas, also had a damaging effect on the environment and human health. Therefore, societies are moving toward a greener future by reducing the consumption of nonrenewable materials, raw materials, and resources while at the same time (...) decreasing energy pollution and consumption. Since information technology is considered a tool for solving ecological difficulties, the green Internet of things is playing a vital role in creating a sustainable home. Extensive data analysis is required to obtain a valuable overview of the large and diverse data generated by the G-IoT. The gathered information will facilitate forecasting, decision-making, and other activities related to smart urban services and then contribute to the incessant development of G-IoT technology. Therefore, even if sustainable and smart cities become an actuality, the G-IoT approach and the knowledge gained through big data analysis will make cities more sustainable, safer, and smarter. The goal of this article is to combine innovation in technological development with the main focus on resource sharing in creating cities that improve the quality of life while reducing pollution and realizing more efficient use of the raw materials. In the practice of big data science, it is always of interest to provide the best description of the data under consideration. Recent studies have pointed out the applicability of the statistical distributions in modeling data in applied sciences. In this article, we introduce a new family of statistical models to provide the best description of the life span of the wireless sensors network’s data. Based on the proposed approach, a special submodel called new exponent power-Weibull distribution is studied in detail. The applicability of the proposed model is shown by analyzing the life span of the wireless sensors network’s data. (shrink)

International Institute of Islamic Thought; Islam; essence, genius, nature; history.

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)