This research examines the complex interplay of religiosity, sexuality, and infidelity. We adopted a case study approach in this research, and discourse was made central to the analysis. There were two participants; both identified as homosexuals. One participant, Fahrin, is married while the other, Muzz, is divorced at the time of the interview. The participants were subjected to an in-depth, semi-structured interview to gauge their experiences, perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and thoughts on their sexuality, Islamic faith as well as relationship with (...) their spouses. The data were then transcribed and analyzed using the Discursive Action Model and Discursive Psychology frameworks. From the analysis, two overarching themes were identified. They are the allocation of blame and accountability and the participants’ attachment to their Islamic identity. The discussion then revolves around the societal role that pressures gay men to marry women and contextualizes the position of Islam on Homosexuality. (shrink)

Background: This article aims to review research manuscripts in the past 5 years that focus on the effects of debt on depression, anxiety, stress, or suicide ideation in Asian countries.Methods: A search for literature based on the PRISMA guidelines was conducted on Medline, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ScienceDirect, resulting in nine manuscripts meeting inclusion criteria. The studies were conducted in Thailand, Korea, Singapore, Pakistan, India, Cambodia, and China.Results: The findings of the studies show that there is evidence to (...) support that being in debt is related to Asian participants experiencing depression, anxiety, stress, or suicide ideation. However, the studies are limited to quantitative studies only. The definition of debt is also unclear in most manuscripts. Few manuscripts also examined how other factors influence the relationship between debt and mental illness.Conclusion: There are limited studies on the psychological effects of debt on the Asian population. Future studies should focus on the relationship between debt and psychological well-being among this population. (shrink)

Yaratma meselesi, insanlığın asırlardır üzerinde durduğu bir konudur. Kanaatimizce bu meseleyi önemli kılan unsurlar, üç kategoride değerlendirilebilir. Birincisi insanın ‘bilme’ gereksiniminden kaynaklı olarak yaptığı ontolojik sorgulama. İkincisi var olma niteliğinin müşterekliği bakımından; varlığı, epistemolojinin temeline yerleştirme zorunluluğu ve son olarak yaratmanın âlem ve insanın başlangıç tarihi olması. Tarih boyunca başlangıçla ilgili farklı görüşler ortaya atılmıştır. Kelamcılar ve Felsefeciler, bu konuda hem Tanrı ve Âlem olmak üzere iki temel varlık hem de niteliksel ve varoluşsal anlamda farklı yapıya sahip iki varlık alanı (...) belirlemişlerdir. Felsefeciler ile Kelâmcılar, bu iki varlığın ilginliğini araştırmışlardır. Genel kabule göre Kelâmcılar, yoktan yaratmayı (ex nihilo); Felsefeciler ise sudûr (emanation) nazariyesini benimsemişlerdir. Söz konusu iki yaratılış izahı, birbirlerinin karşısında konumlandırılmasına rağmen yaratmayı açıklama bakımından sudûr nazariyesini tercih eden İbn Sînâ’nın; ibda‘ kavramını, yoktan yaratma anlamında kullandığı iddia edilmektedir. Bu bağlamda İbn Sînâ’da yoktan yaratmadan söz edilebilir mi? sorusu, cevaplanması gereken önemli bir sorunsal olarak karşımızda durmaktadır. Biz makalemizde sudûr nazariyesi ile yoktan yaratmayı ilişkilendirmenin mümkün olup olmadığını tartışmayı hedeflemekteyiz. Özellikle ibda‘ kavramının bazı âlimler tarafından yanlış anlaşıldığı varsayımından hareketle çalışmamızda Kemâlpaşazâde’nin konu hakkındaki görüşleri odak noktamızı teşkil edecektir. Bu bağlamda İbdâ‘ kavramı çerçevesinde iki farklı yaklaşımın olduğunu ortaya koyacağız. Hüseyin Atay, İbn Sînâ’nın İbdâ‘ nazariyesinin, özellikle İbdâ‘ kavramının yoktan yaratma şeklinde anlaşılabileceğini iddia etmektedir. Buna göre İbn Sînâ’nın İbdâ‘ nazariyesi bir tür yoktan yaratma olarak yorumlanabilir. Bu durumu ibda’ kavramı ile temellendirmeye çalışan Atay’ın tersine bazı araştırmacılar Kemalpaşazâde’ye atıfta bulunarak olayın ıskalandığı kanaatindeler. Zira onlara göre ibda’ kavramında kullanılan “leysiyyet” mutlak yokluğa karşılık gelmemektedir. Onlara göre leysiyyet mümkünün mahiyetinin varlığa ve yokluğa maruz kalma mertebesindedir. Dolayısıyla İbn Sînâ’nın yaratma hakkındaki yorumu birbiri ile zıt iki görüşü savunanları ortaya çıkarmıştır. Biz bu makalede söz konusu olan iddiaları değerlendirip kendi çözüm yolumuzu sunacağız. (shrink)

A board of directors consists of a set of key personnel that hold vital positions in a company. Based on the premise of the resource dependence theory, we explore the association between board diversity and innovation performance in Malaysia. The sample consists of 220 companies from the industrial product sector of the main market of Bursa Malaysia for the financial year 2013. Board diversity is represented by a comprehensive score that includes age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, education, tenure, area of experience (...) and directorship in other companies. Results of the regression analysis show that there is a positive association between board diversity and innovation performance. Our findings contribute to the policy involving the diversity of corporate boards by suggesting that policy, such as one of gender diversity in Malaysia, is expanded to include multi-dimensional aspects of board diversity that better represent the economic, legal and cultural environment of a country. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to reconstruct and pinpoint the peculiarities of Ismail Kadare’s idea of Europe. Kadare’s idea of Europe, it is argued, differs from the ideas of Europe embraced or presumed by intellectuals like Paul Valéry, Georg Simmel, Danilo Kiš, Václav Havel, Adam Michnik, or Milan Kundera, or from that of the European Union. For Kadare it is literature rather than the polis or its particular ideology that is the guardian of European values. Thus the European (...) legacy, in his view, is primarily Homeric rather than Socratic. I suggest first that the persecution of writers and the repression of literature in totalitarian regimes underlies Kadare’s idea of Europe. I then further characterize Kadare’s theme of persecution as a dialectic between regime and culture. Finally, I reconstruct Kadare’s narrative of Albania’s “return to Europe” as the struggle for recognizing Albania as the birthplace of European culture. (shrink)

In _Knowing God_, Ismail Lala investigates the nature of God and whether we can truly know Him according to the influential mystic, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī, and his disciple, ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Qāshānī.

Shiʿi jurists have three different theories with regard to gestational surrogacy and who should be recognized as the mother of the newborn: (1) the surrogate mother (2) or the ovum provider (biological mother) (3) or both of them. The religious law (al-Aḥkam al-sharʿi) regarding the title of ‘mother’ and issues such as inheritance, will (Waṣiya), marriage, and custody have been discussed by Shiʿi jurists but no exact definition of this term has been provided by them. Because the fertilized ovum is (...) considered the origin of humans and the formation of an embryo also determines the kinship of the newborn, the mother of the child is the woman that fetus created by her ovum. It is this woman who has all the rights and responsibilities of a mother; even if the surrogate mother is considered the mother of the child, she has no rights over the child nor does she have any duties towards him/her. (shrink)

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect and use of distributed practice in the context of self-regulated mathematical learning in high school. With distributed practice, a fixed learning duration is spread over several sessions, whereas with massed practice, the same time is spent learning in one session. Distributed practice has been proven to be an effective tool for improving long-term retention of verbal material and simple procedural knowledge in mathematics, at least when the practice schedule is (...) externally guided. In the present study, distributed practice was investigated in a context that required a higher degree of self-regulation. In total, 158 secondary school students were invited to participate. After motivational and cognitive characteristics of the students were assessed, the students were introduced to basic statistics, a topic of their regular curriculum. At the end of the introduction, the students could sign up for the study to further practice this content. Eighty-seven students did so and were randomly assigned either to the distributed or to the massed practice condition. In the distributed practice condition, they received three practice sets on three different days. In the massed practice condition, they received the same three sets, but all on one day. All exercises were worked in the context of self-regulated learning at home. Performance was tested two weeks after the last practice set. Only 44 students finished the study, which hampered the analysis of the effect of distributed practice. The characteristics of the students who completed the exercises were analyzed exploratory: The proportion of students who finished all exercises was significantly higher in the massed than in the distributed practice condition. Within the distributed practice condition, a significantly larger proportion of female students completed the exercises compared to male students. Additionally, among these female students, a larger proportion showed lower concentration difficulty. No such differential effects were revealed in the massed practice condition. Our results suggest that the use of distributed practice in the context of self-regulated learning might depend on learner characteristics. Accordingly, distributed practice might obtain more reliable effects in more externally guided learning contexts. (shrink)

On advance medical directives in Malaysia from Islamic bioethics; papers of a seminar.

Israel has always mattered to American Christians. They are among the strongest supporters of the State of Israel in the United States. The paper argues that the support that was extended by American Christians in general and the Christian Right in particular, to Israel and the Jewish people is the continuation of a long tradition in conservative American Christians rooted mainly in their theological doctrine. However, the study shows that the Christian Right is ambivalent in its view on Jews. On (...) the one hand, Jews are considered to be God’s chosen people and to have a special Biblical status and role. On the other hand, the Christian Right is allegedly anti-Semitic, as it views Jews as a condemned nation for their rejection of Christ as the Messiah, the reason for which they are unsaved and need to be converted to Christianity. Interestingly, both views, love and hatred of Jews, are based on the Biblical teachings and grounded in conservative Protestant theology; their paradoxical views on Jews are not a new phenomenon among conservative American Christians. Nevertheless, the study found that the support of the American Christians of the establishment of the State of Israel goes beyond theological doctrines or values. In fact, the humanitarian considerations of the liberal Christian and secular organizations in particular, were significant in contributing to the establishment of the Jewish state. (shrink)

Karl Popper’s critique of idealism manifests itself with the application of his method, falsificationism, to metaphysics, epistemology, and social and political philosophy. According to Popper, who identifies himself as a philosophical realist, idealism has emerged as a result of the idea that reality cannot be known by reason and of the search for certainty which is erroneous, and it has begotten two mistaken and detrimental views. These views are historicism, the notion that history has an irresistible course, and holism, the (...) notion that social wholes are organic structures that amount to more than the individuals constituting them. Historicism and holism have become the philosophical underpinnings of closed societies throughout history, such as the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Therefore, with a practical leaning, Popper actually takes aim at these pernicious consequences of idealism while criticizing it. In this study, idealism and the contours of Popper’s philosophy are examined, and then Popper’s metaphysical, epistemological, social, and political critiques against idealism are investigated. Keywords: Karl Popper, idealism, historicism, holism, falsificationism. (shrink)

Reproductive medical technology has revolutionized the natural order of human procreation. Accordingly, some have celebrated its advent as a new and liberating determinant of kinship at the global level and advocate it as a right to reproductive health while others have frowned upon it as a vehicle for “guiltless exchange of sexual fluid” and commodification of human gametes. Religious voices from both Christianity and Islam range from unthinking adoption to restrictive use. While utilizing this technology to enable the married couple (...) to have children through the use of their own sexual material is welcome, the use of third party, surrogacy, and reproductive cloning are not in keeping with the sacrosanct principles of kinship, procreation through licit sexual intercourse, and social cohesiveness for building a cohesive family as uphold by both Christianity and Islam. To examine such larger issues emanating from these new ways of human procreation, beyond the question of legality, is a point which legal scholars in both Christianity and Islam, when issuing religious decrees, have not anticipated sufficiently. The article proposes to be an attempt to that end through a qualitative critical content analysis of selected literature written on the subject. (shrink)

Kadim bir dil olan Arapça, İslamiyet’in gelişiyle birlikte kutsal bir kitap olan Kur’an-ı Kerim’in dili olmuş, günümüze kadar varlığını ve önemini korumuştur. Anadili Arapça olmayanlara bu dilin öğretilmesi için farklı coğrafya ve farklı dönemlerde medreselerde veya devletin resmi eğitim kurumlarında Arapça dersleri verilmiştir. Verilen Arapça eğitimlerinde nahiv ve sarf temelli bir eğitim uygulanmıştır. Gramere dayalı bu dil eğitimi İlahiyat veya İslami İlimler fakültelerinde verilen eğitimlerle daha ileri bir seviyeye taşınmaya çalışılmıştır. İlahiyat veya İslami İlimler fakültelerinde verilen Arapça eğitimleri temelde dört (...) beceriyi kazandırma odaklı hazırlanmıştır. Ancak gramer odaklı verilmeye çalışılan Arapça eğitimlerinde hedeflenen başarı elde edilememektedir. Bu araştırmanın konusu, İlahiyat veya İslami İlimler fakültelerinde okutulan Arapça hazırlık eğitiminin değerlendirilmesi ve bu eğitimin kalitesinin arttırılması için yapılması gerekenlerdir. Bu doğrultuda bu çalışmada Bitlis Eren Üniversitesi İslami İlimler Fakültesi %30 Zorunlu Arapça Hazırlık Sınıflarının 2018-2019 Eğitim ve Öğretim Yılında aldıkları Arapça eğitimi model alınmıştır. Hazırlık Sınıflarında Arapça eğitimi alan 90 öğrenciye 33 sorudan oluşan anket uygulanmıştır. Anket sonuçları değerlendirilmiş ve verilen Arapça eğitiminin kalitesi ortaya konulmuştur. Elde edilen sonuçlardan hareketle, verilen eğitimde eksik ve hatalı durumlar tespit edilerek, eğitimin daha kaliteli bir düzeye ulaştırılması için önerilerde bulunulmuştur. Giriş bölümünde İlahiyat veya İslami İlimler fakültelerindeki Arapça eğitimi hakkında bilgiler verilmiştir. Sonrasında çalışmanın amacı, önemi, sınırlılıkları, problemi ve örneklem ortaya konulmuştur. Fakültede uygulanan Arapça hazırlık eğitimi hakkında bilgiler verilmiş ve uygulanan anket çalışmaya eklenmiştir. Son olarak bulgular ve yorumlar verilerek çalışma sonuç ve öneriler ile sonlandırılmıştır. (shrink)

Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, ed. Rabbi Eliyahu Touger, 18 vols.

South Asian regional integration is seemingly confronting many challenges. The aim of this paper is to identify those challenges and also look for prospects. Although regional integration in South Asia has adopted a kind of institutionalization, it is yet to deliver any concrete outcomes. High-politics and the not-so-conducive regional economic structures hinder any effectual culmination. However, constructivism, as a theory, is given due credence in this paper when looking for future prospects. The paper highlights the issues, and attempts to offer (...) certain policy directions by analyzing the challenges and identifying the prospects in the on-going integration/cooperation process. (shrink)

This article presents the Islamic bioethical deliberation on the issue of sex assignment surgery for infants with disorders of sex development or intersexed as a case study. The main objective of this study is to present a different approach in assessing a biomedical issue within the medium of the Maqasid al-Shari’ah. Within the framework of the maqasidic scheme of benefits and harms, any practice where benefits are substantial is considered permissible, while those promoting harms are prohibited. The concept of Maqasid (...) al-Shari’ah which is the mechanistic interpretation of Qur’an and Hadith presents the holistic attention of Islam on many life activities, including healthcare. Indeed, this concept encompasses many aspects of worldly life, both for the human individual and collectively for the whole society. In healthcare, the practice of SAS on DSD newborns has presented an assortment of implications on the future livelihood of the affected individual. The process of decision-making seems to be very multifaceted since every element such as the determination of the ‘correct’ sex and the urgency of early surgery must consider the benefits and harms, as well as the child’s rights and best interest. The application of the concept of Maqasid al-Shari’ah, would convey a pragmatic approach that is often disregarded in Western medicine. This approach considers the right of the individual to live life optimally, individually and socially and practice his faith, precisely, in accordance with the assigned gender. (shrink)

Kierkegaard raises many issues in his account of the near sacri­fice of Isaac by his father. Responding to and critiquing Hegelian and Kantian depictions of Abraham, Kierkegaard moves to elevate Abraham into a position as a knight of faith. The Sunnī perception of the incident in the exegetical tradition is far more ethically unequivocal than that of the Latin philosophical tradi­tion. The ubiquitous Sufi theorist, Ibn ʿArabī, however, in a single act of interpretive ingenuity, managed to extirpate the central root (...) of contention raised by the philosophers when he alleges that Abraham was only ever commanded to sacrifice a ram. Despite his abiding commitment to spiritual unveiling and his insistence on the personal nature of God, Ibn ʿArabī advo­cates the employment of a Kantian criterion of universal ratio­nality to adjudicate between literal and metaphorical dreams. (shrink)

There is a growing demand for information and computational technology for surgeons help with surgical planning as well as prosthetics design. The two-dimensional images are registered to the three-dimensional model for high efficiency. To reconstruct the 3D model of knee joint including bone structure and main soft tissue structure, the evaluation and analysis of sports injury and rehabilitation treatment are detailed in this study. Mimics 10.0 was used to reconstruct the bone structure, ligament, and meniscus according to the pulse diffusion-weighted (...) imaging sequence and stir sequences of magnetic resonance imaging. Excluding congenital malformations and diseases of the skeletal muscle system, MRI scanning was performed on bilateral knee joints. Proton weighted sequence and stir pulse sequence were selected for MRI. The models were imported into Geomagic Studio 11 software for refinement and modification, and 3D registration of bone structure and main soft tissue structure was performed to construct a digital model of knee joint bone structure and accessory cartilage and ligament structure. The 3D knee joint model including bone, meniscus, and collateral ligament was established. Reconstruction and image registration based on mimics and Geomagic Studio can build a 3D model of knee joint with satisfactory morphology, which can meet the requirements of teaching, motion simulation, and biomechanical analysis. (shrink)

The concept of sustainability was developed in response to stakeholder demands. One of the key mechanisms for engaging stakeholders is sustainability disclosure, often in the form of a report. Yet, how reporting is used to engage stakeholders is understudied. Using resource dependence and stakeholder theories, we investigate how companies within the same industry address different dependencies on stakeholders for economic, natural environment, and social resources and thus engage stakeholders accordingly. To achieve this objective, we conducted our research using qualitative research (...) methods. Our findings suggest that the resource dependencies on different stakeholders lead to development of different stakeholder relationships and thus appropriate resources within the company to execute engagement strategies that are informing, responding, or involving. Our research explains why diversity exists in sustainability disclosure by studying how it is used to engage stakeholders. We find that five sustainability reporting characteristics are associated with the company’s stakeholder engagement strategy: directness of communication, clarity of stakeholder identity, deliberateness of collecting feedback, broadness of stakeholder inclusiveness, and utilization of stakeholder engagement for learning. Our study develops the literature by providing insight into companies’ choices of stakeholder engagement strategy thus explaining diversity in sustainability reporting based on the characteristics and relationships with specific stakeholders. (shrink)

The novel COVID-19 has created an exogenous shock to capital markets and, hence, an ideal opportunity for researchers to assess whether CSR-related activities provide an insurance-like mechanism to protect firms against the shock. Using a large sample of 4361 firms domiciled in 40 countries, we investigate the roles of CSR reporting and assurance in the negative consequences of COVID-19 on firm value. The results confirm that prior CSR reporting experience buffers firms against the adverse effects of the health crisis. The (...) results also support that not only does the assurance on CSR reports create a buffering effect against the health crisis, but it also intensifies the buffering effects of prior CSR reporting experience against the pandemic. Moreover, using difference-in-difference method for testing the link between CSR reporting and firm value, we show that the positive association of reporting and assurance with firm value is more pronounced during the pandemic as compared with the years preceding it. The results of this study are robust to various analyses. Replicating the analyses to the context of the global financial crisis, we find that prior CSR reporting experience and assurance provide similar buffering effects when a market is exposed to various exogenous shocks. The results also hold for the mandatory disclosure regimes. By distinguishing first and subsequent reports and assurance, we show that, unlike subsequent CSR reports and assurance, the initial ones cannot mitigate the negative effects of the crisis on firm value, indicating that stakeholders take into account longer-term CSR reporting experiences. Aside from reporting and assurance aspects of CSR, we analyze the role of CSR report's quality and accuracy and show that the adoption of Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) frameworks can enhance socially responsible firms' resilience against systematic shocks. (shrink)

Since Ibn Mattawayh and Mm up until George Hourani and Marie Bernand, there is an unstoppable interest among scholars towards r theory of knowledge. This interest has increased after the publication of the works of the late Mub al-Mu Ul al-D and Kitaffu al-rAbd al-Jabb and other sources from his students and the late MuAbd al-JabbAbd al-Jabbn).