This article is about the cholera epidemic that occurred in the Benghazi Sanjak, a region under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, in the year 1858. The purpose of this study is to highlight the measures taken by both the central and local governments against the cholera epidemic that occurred in 1858 and to shed light on the management of the outbreak. In this context, the social health practices and the public's sensitivity towards health in the Benghazi Sanjak during the (...) Karamanli administration in Tripolitania in the early 1800s, as well as the period after it became directly connected to the Ottoman central government from 1835, will be examined, and the historical process leading up to the epidemic will be presented. The implementation of the quarantine measures introduced by the Ottoman Empire from the 1840s onwards, particularly in Benghazi, also holds a significant position in understanding the outbreak. The study is crucial in revealing the advancements in the health sector of the Benghazi Sanjak. The article emphasizes that the region of Berka, where the Benghazi Sanjak is located, was frequently afflicted by epidemics, but by the 1860s, there was noticeable improvement in the health sector. (shrink)

In the Sophist, Plato presents the possibility of the separation of things in relation to each other based on the communion (koinōnia) of logos. In this study, I discuss the linguistic communion revealed in the dialogue by illuminating its three fundamental aspects: (1) Articulation of letters in names as communion on the syntactic level, (2) Predication of names in logoi as communion on the semantic level, (3) Homologoi of logoi as the ultimate communion of language. I thus conclude that these (...) three linguistic aspects are interdependent. (shrink)

This book on Philosophy for Children is a compilation of articles written by its founders and the movement's leaders worldwide. These articles have been prepared in the dialogue and interview format. Part I explains the genesis of the movement, its philosophical and theoretical foundations. Part II examines the specialized uses of philosophical dialogues in teaching philosophy, morality, ethics and sciences. Part III examines the theoretical concerns such as the aims of the method in regards to the search for truth or (...) sense of meaning, or the debate on the novel or short stories and its characteristics. Part IV explains the practices of P4C worldwide and the issue of cultural differences, the ways of the community of inquiry and the necessary adaptation to suit local concerns. The book concludes with a notable review of the progress of P4C, the obstacles, and its international spread to over 60 countries. These penetrating insights make the book an incredibly rich resource for anyone interested in or involved with implementing a P4C programme. Brave Old Subject, Brave New World Teaching Science and Morality Via P4C Showing Children can do Philosophy. (shrink)

On important Islamic religious concepts and terminologies.

We survey the meta-ethical tools and institutional processes that traditional Islamic ethicists apply when deliberating on bioethical issues. We present a typology of these methodological elements, giving particular attention to the meta-ethical techniques and devices that traditional Islamic ethicists employ in the absence of decisive or univocal authoritative texts or in the absence of established transmitted cases. In describing how traditional Islamic ethicists work, we demonstrate that these experts possess a variety of discursive tools. We find that the ethical responsa—i.e., (...) the products of the application of the tools that we describe—are generally characterized by internal consistency. We also conclude that Islamic ethical reasoning on bioethical issues, while clearly scripture-based, is also characterized by strong consequentialist elements and possesses clear principles-based characteristics. The paper contributes to the study of bioethics by familiarizing non-specialists in Islamic ethics with the role, scope, and applicability of key Islamic ethical concepts, such as “aims” (maqāṣid), “universals” (kulliyyāt), “interest” (maṣlaḥa), “maxims” (qawā`id), “controls” (ḍawābit), “differentiators” (furūq), “preponderization” (tarjīḥ), and “extension” (tafrī`). (shrink)

The Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane is one of the leading surviving philosophers of the Arab-Islamic world. His fields of study are issues such as logic, philosophy of language, moral philosophy and political theology. He built a holistic and versatile Islamic methodology in his works and formed a world of thought on the axis of trusteeship (divine contract and trust paradigm) and circulation tedavuliyya (pragmatic-word-action theory). Taha Abderrahmane has analyzed, criticized and constructed the Islamic thought tradition, which he handled with a (...) holistic view, with a versatile reference network. In addition, one of his most important contributions is that he put forward a moral philosophy in the Qurʾānic and prophetic axis. Taha Abderrahmane proved to be a prolific thinker with his thirty-five work consisting of ten thousand pages. He proposes a deliberative model of political communication in harmony with his theo-political writings and physical and metaphysical integrity. While this article aim to provide information on the main components of Abderrahmane’s paradigm of divine contract and trusteeship (i’timaniyya), essentially a theory of morality, such as political theology, linguistics, and negotiation ethics, it also tries to identify the Western references of these elements. In this context how the theory of speech acts that seems quite important in the field of modern social sciences and created by theorists such as John Searl and Austin was transformed by Taha Abderrahmane into an Islamic theory of speech is also subject to a comparative assessment. In addition, the possibility of the issue of negotiation ethics, which gained more importance with new communication theories in the West, in the axis of Islamic thought was questioned in the article. The article reviews how views on negotiation ethics are positioned by Taha Abderrahmane within the Islamic paradigm. Therefore, the article is limited in scope to Taha Abderrahmane’s references about the theories in the West. Taha Abderrahmane attempts to construct an Islamic Pragmatic or Islamic Theory of Verbal Action, with reference to Pragmatics or Theory of Speech Acts, which is a sub-branch of linguistics, but in line with principles specific to the Islamic paradigm. Taha Abderrahmane combined the Islamic concept of pragmatic with the concept of negotiation. The terms “praxis” and “praxeology [fiqh al falsafa]”, which define the framework of the Trust Paradigm and the Islamic Pragmatic Model proposed by Taha Abderrahmane, emphasize “deed” or, in other words, “action” and he is linguistically referencing the founding masters of the pragmatics field such as J. L. Austin and J. R. Searle. However, there are two other fields that constitute the main reference to his concept of praxis (action) and praxeology (action science). These are economics and philosophy. Praxeology is a scientific field that deserves to be mentioned especially with the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973). According to Mises, the laws of the field about which physics, biology, and praxeology [mainly economics] provide information, are independent of human will. These are primary ontological facts that strictly limit the human power to act (Mises, 1998, 67). Taha Abderrahmane references western thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Jürgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe and Hannah Arendt, as well as Islamic sources. However, the way he makes use of them takes place within the framework of criticism and analysis. He also refers to other personalities such as Jonas, Freud, Ellul, Putnam, Ricoeur and Rawls. While Taha Abderrahmane explains the process of turning words into action, he also draws on the Action Theory of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), who was one of the children of Heidegger, such as Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas and Herbert Marcuse, and who was accepted as a real philosopher even though he rejected the title of philosopher during his lifetime. On the other hand, Taha Abderrahmane makes strong references to the basic dimension of Islam, such as “O believers! If you avoid opposing Allah; It gives you an understanding to distinguish good from bad (Al-Anfal, 8/29)” verse. He makes strong references to the supposed dimension of Islam, and in this context, he tries to create a praxis based on nature, especially based on the hadith known as nawāfil hadith. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the legal epistemology that is advocated within Twelver Shi'ite usul al-fiqh (legal theory). It critically surveys the epistemological underpinnings upheld by post-19th century Uṣūlīclerics that impel them to mainly deduce and interpret Sharia using scripture and literalist hermeneutical methods. An evaluation of these underpinnings uncovers the important juxtaposition that exists between the seminarian discourses of usul al-fiqh and philosophy. The book hypothesises that usul al-fiqh has both space and historical precedence to accept alternative epistemological theories (...) that may enable orthodox Shi'ite clerics to display greater dynamism in deducing and interpreting Sharia. (shrink)

_Dialogues for the Future_ provides a sneak peek at the long philosophic and intellectual journey of the renowned Arab scholar Taha Abderrahmane. This English translation allows English-speaking readers to engage with the open canvas of dialogue Taha has resiliently initiated.

Dialogues for the Future provides a sneak peek at the long philosophic journey of the renowned Arab scholar Taha Abderrahmane. The author looks at different thorny issues such as traditions, philosophy, ethics, globalization, and logic through a local prism that is not directedly tainted by the Western epistemic and ontological worldview. While seemingly addressing audiences with a background in the philosophy of language and Islamic philosophy, Taha's intellectual project tackles many questions that wider readerships might have about the Muslims' and (...) Arabs' contribution to knowledge in the past and present. The translator's introduction "on Dialogue, Ethics and Traditions" contextualizes Taha's book within the plethora of his academic work, allowing English-speaking readers to engage with the open canvas of dialogue Taha has resiliently initiated. (shrink)

In Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: A Fresh Interpretation, Mohammad Kamali considers problems associated with and proposals for reform of the hudud punishments prescribed by Islamic criminal law, and other topics related to crime and punishment in Shariah.

From Curriculum Vitae parsing to web search and recommendation systems, Word2Vec and other word embedding techniques have an increasing presence in everyday interactions in human society. Biases, such as gender bias, have been thoroughly researched and evidenced to be present in word embeddings. Most of the research focuses on discovering and mitigating gender bias within the frames of the vector space itself. Nevertheless, whose bias is reflected in word embeddings has not yet been investigated. Besides discovering and mitigating gender bias, (...) it is also important to examine whether a feminine or a masculine-centric view is represented in the biases of word embeddings. This way, we will not only gain more insight into the origins of the before mentioned biases, but also present a novel approach to investigating biases in Natural Language Processing systems. Based on previous research in the social sciences and gender studies, we hypothesize that masculine-centric, otherwise known as androcentric, biases are dominant in word embeddings. To test this hypothesis we used the largest English word association test data set publicly available. We compare the distance of the responses of male and female participants to cue words in a word embedding vector space. We found that the word embedding is biased towards a masculine-centric viewpoint, predominantly reflecting the worldviews of the male participants in the word association test data set. Therefore, by conducting this research, we aimed to unravel another layer of bias to be considered when examining fairness in algorithms. (shrink)

The rapid increase in COVID-19 cases has become the symbol of fear, anxiety, and panic among people around the globe. Mass media has played an active role in community education by addressing the health information of this pandemic. People interact by sharing their ideas and feelings through social media platforms. There is a considerable need to implement different measures and better perceive COVID-19 pertinent facts and information by demystifying public sentiments. In this study, the Quarantine Life dataset of thousand tweets (...) is based on #Quarantine, #Quarantine Days, #Quarantine Life, #My Pandemic Plan, and #Quarantine and Chill from January to September 2020 has been collected from Twitter. The extracted data have been scrubbed through preprocessing techniques. The sentiments and topics extracted from tweets have been analyzed through the TEXT BLOB, VADER, and AFFIN approach. Results show that people were distressed and fearful due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, most people enjoyed by playing games, watching movies, and reading books during the lockdown period. According to the present meta-analysis, physical activity interventions are beneficial for patients with dementia in terms of cognition. The proposed framework illustrates the insight impact of COVID-19 on human physiological and mainly focuses on the evaluation of sentiment dynamics at the topical level. (shrink)

There has been a lot of discussion and debate on the issue of Islamization of Contemporary Knowledge among Muslim intellectuals. Two Muslim thinkers, namely al-Attas and al-Fārūqī were foremost in the attempt to conceptualise the problem of the Muslim Ummah and the issue of Islamization of knowledge as an epistemological and socio-political solution. This article aims to examine, compare and analyse the ideas of both scholars with respect to the various interpretations of the concept of Islamization of knowledge their definition (...) of the concept, their philosophical framework, and their methodology for achieving the goals of Islamization. It aims at understanding the similarities and differences and the strengths and weaknesses of their conceptions, philosophical framework and methodology. This paper also explores the possibility of reconciliation between their ideas in the hope of further advancing the cause of Islamization of knowledge. (shrink)

This research drew on the authors’ long experience in the implementation of the “_Hikmah_ Pedagogy” which is based on the Philosophy for Children’s teaching method. Specifically, the study examined the influence of the pedagogy on the participants’ perceptions of and feelings about their thinking and reasoning skills. The sample comprised 188 Malaysian and international students from an international secondary school in Malaysia. This consisted of students in four Grade levels, ranging from Grades 7 to 10. An instrument named “_Hikmah_ Feedback (...) Survey - HFS” was employed for data collection. The findings were supportive of the positive influence of the pedagogy on students’ abilities to think and reason better after experiencing the programme. Furthermore, the participants demonstrated a considerable improvement in their cognitive and social-communicative skills, as evidenced in the scores obtained for the post-programme’s test. This affirms the fact that the _ḥikmah_ pedagogy is highly recommended in Malaysia’s march towards its Vision 2020 developmental goals. Implications of the study were discussed and suggestions were proposed to educators and stakeholders in secondary school education. (shrink)

This article reports the macro-organizational structure of research articles in mathematics, based on an analysis of 30 published pure and applied mathematics articles. Math RAs eschew the Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion structure for an Introduction-Results model that enables researchers to present new knowledge as clearly and succinctly as possible. Notable omissions from the mathematics RA structure are Method and Discussion sections, which mathematicians do not need because of the well-established methodology used in the field and the relative absence of extended discussion required to (...) interpret research findings. We contextualize the macrostructure of RAs in mathematics within the discourse conventions and disciplinary assumptions about knowledge in the field to suggest the value of such a strategy to teachers and students of academic writing. (shrink)

The development of the third wave of Information and Communication Technology is accompanied by the growing concern on the decline of an individual’s ability to think sharply and wisely. In Malaysia, this concern has brought to fore the prominence of teaching thinking skills within the school system and teachers were expected to be the agents of this change. Are teachers aware of the importance of this thinking ability? Have they been adequately prepared for this paradigm shift? Do they personally feel (...) competent teaching for thinking in the classrooms? This survey attempts to answer these questions and investigates the relationship between teachers’ attitudes and practices. It also examines if there exists any significant differences in teachers’ beliefs and their practices with respect to gender, course attendance and teaching experience. Finally, it explores some of the problems faced by teachers in teaching for thinking. (shrink)

This paper discusses the pragmatic world view and philosophy of education. It argues that it is possible to integrate certain elements of pragmatic education which are actually Islam’s pragmatism into Muslim education as a tool for the development of the Muslim community. The Islamic world view would not object topragmatic aims of education for understanding and helping the child to think, for preparation for life in society, and education as a scientific and experimental enterprise. It argues that these pragmatic aims (...) which are urgently needed in Muslim education today, are coherent with the Islamic world view but has beenneglected. Hence, they should be revived and integrated to complement the traditional aims of Islamic education and to enhance the development of the Muslims for the present century. (shrink)

After almost fifty years of operation, government through a number of announcements declared that FELDA (Federal Land Development) schemes need to be revitalized so that it could play its role more effectively as a vehicle that would accelerate the country’s economic growth. Having raised this point, the major aim of this study is to examine the major socio-economic issues and the current socio-economic status of FELDA settlers.Information was gathered through face-to-face interview with the Mata Air FELDA settlers and the Rimba (...) Mas FELDA settlers in Perlis. Descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and percentages were employed to describe the socio-economic problems and issues studied. The findings of the study indicate the implication of the ageing phenomenon of the FELDA settlers in Perlis to some extent affect the settlers’ ability to work effectively on their plantation. It is also found that the second generation issue has become the most significant factor contributing to the productivity and income increment of the FELDA settlers in Perlis as compared to other selected socio-economic variables. The result also suggested that, the ageing phenomenon, second generation issue and entrepreneurship problem must be seriously taken into consideration in order to accelerate the FELDA’s growth specifically and the country’s growth generally. (shrink)

Following the eclectic itineraries of ‘Near East’ expert, R. M. Graves, this article tells a story of an ongoing Nakba (catastrophe) of small and large legal decisions. Without reducing the human catastrophe of the event of the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian forced exodus), it engages with it as a legal event that crosses (in this story at least) from Cairo to Jerusalem, from the League of Nations’ era (1920–1946) to the United Nations’ era (1945–), from the governance of labour and (...) gender, to labour partition, and finally to the governance of municipalities through law and expertise. Graves’ relationship to both Cairo and Jerusalem was materialized through different forms of affective legal governance. Graves, who in his own dichotomous words was ‘neither a Zionist nor an anti-Semite’, managed Jerusalem across national lines in the wake of the UN Partition Plan (1947), and as the old empire was withdrawing right before Jerusalem itself became a site of the catastrophe—right before the Nakba. (shrink)

The current study investigates Arabic orientational metaphors in Modern Standard Arabic. Specifically, it is a corpus-based study that tries to retrieve conceptual orientational metaphors ofup-down, front-back, right-left, andcentral-peripheralspatial orientation. The study assumes that every orientation can be described using a set of different lexemes, and these lexemes express different linguistic orientational metaphors with different levels of usage frequency. It is hypothesized that studying the relationships between these lexemes, their etymologies, and frequency can provide a detailed, integrative account of metaphorical aspects (...) and conceptual systems related to each spatial orientation. A bottom-up methodology to identify metaphorical usages of spatial lexemes was applied to theStanford Arabic Corpus. The results list the spatial linguistic metaphors comprising conceptual metaphors and show for each orientation that mapping orientations onto conceptual metaphors is a complicated process, which integrates linguistic and cognitive levels. The cognitive-perceptual and cultural implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

This study examines differences in parental stress between parentsof Autism Spectrum Disorder children and Typically Developed children in Malaysia. This study also compares the ages of parentsof ASD children with parents of TD children with stress as a variable in theseparents. Parents completed the Parental Stress Index anda socio-demographic questionnaire. Parents with ASD children were found tobe significantly more stressed compared to parents of TD children.Significant scores were also found in the Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction sub-scale as well as Difficult Child (...) and ParentalDistress sub-scales with lower significance. Results also indicatethat the 30-35-year-old age group among ASD parents was significantly foundto be more stressed compared with parents of TD children of the same ages.Implications of the findings regarding support and intervention for familieswith ASD are also discussed. (shrink)

Les Sphériques ont été écrites par Ménélaos sous la forme d’un traité d’apparence purement mathématique. Cependant, la matière qui y est développée dans les deuxième et troisième livres est étroitement liée à des problèmes rencontrés en astronomie: calcul des coordonnées équatoriales du Soleil, établissement de tables d’ascensions, étude du mouvement du Soleil dans la sphère oblique, levers simultanés. Ce lien, qui demeure implicite dans le texte, a été mis en évidence par deux mathématiciens et astronomes arabo-musulmans, qui ont exposé la (...) signification astronomique de certains théorèmes des Sphériques. Nous présenterons, commenterons et complèterons cette explicitation en classant les théorèmes concernés en trois groupes: sens de variation de certaines grandeurs sur la sphère, propositions de trigonométrie sphérique et applications, sens de variation de rapports entre certaines grandeurs sur la sphère. The Spherics were written by Menelaos in the form of a purely mathematical treatise. However, the material developed in the second and third book is closely linked to problems met in astronomy: computation of equatorial coordinates of the Sun, setting up of rising-time tables, study of the motion of the Sun in the sphaera obliqua, simultaneous risings. This link, which remains implicit in the text, was clearly displayed by two arabo-islamic mathematicians and astronomers, who expounded the astronomical meaning of some theorems of the Spherics. We describe, comment and complement their explanations, by classifying the implications of the theorems in three groups: direction of variation of some quantities on the sphere, spherical trigonometry and applications, direction of variation of ratios of some quantities on the sphere. (shrink)

The semiotic model that disregards the normative context represented by the protagonist examines how we can distinguish the three conceptions of heroism, namely hero, semi-hero, and anti-hero. What are the methodological criteria whereby we can follow the protagonist in the text from beginning to end? To answer them, this article tries to present a model made up of five stages/criteria which constitute a semiotic model by means of which the connection to heroism can be determined. These are: (1) motivation, (2) (...) will, (3) ability, (4) execution, and (5) outcome. These stages can be logically classified into three categories: 1) Pre-action (the first three stages), 2) Action (the fourth stage), 3) Post-action (the fifth stage). The model proposed here suits all types of narrative and drama and all performance and film production arts. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 435-455.