The study offers new insights by examining the influence of personality traits on tourists' intentions to visit ecotourism sites using the lens of the theory of planned behavior. It also investigates whether environmental knowledge moderates the effect of extraversion, neuroticism, and environmental concern on tourists' ecotourism intentions. We applied structural equation modeling on 350 responses collected through the Amazon M-Turk platform. Results highlight that extroverts are more likely to express ecotourism intentions than neurotic tourists. However, it was also noted that (...) neurotic tourists' intention to visit ecotourism sites could be influenced if their environmental concerns were emphasized. The study offers important new insights to managers, policy-makers, and practitioners about the roles of personality traits, environmental knowledge, and environmental concern vis-a-vis their relative significance in shaping tourists' decision-making and choices for ecotourism sites. As a result, managers/practitioners need to devise specific communication strategies to enhance awareness and a sense of responsibility among neurotic tourists. (shrink)

Scientific research and ethics -- Ethical theory and decision making -- Data acquisition and management -- Mentoring and professional relationship -- Collaboration in research -- Authorship -- Publication and peer review -- Misconduct in research -- Intellectual property -- Conflicts of interest and scientific objectivity -- The use of animals in research -- The use of human subjects in research -- The use of vulnerable subjects in research -- Genetics, cloning, and stem cell research -- International research.

The laws are not silent in war, but what should they say? What is the moral function of the law of armed conflict? Should the law protect civilians who do not fight but help those who do? Should the law protect soldiers who perform non-combat functions or who may be safely captured? How certain should a soldier be that an individual is a combatant rather than a civilian before using lethal force? What risks should soldiers take on themselves to avoid (...) harming civilians? When do inaccurate weapons become unlawfully indiscriminate? When does 'collateral damage' to civilians become unlawfully disproportionate? Should civilians lose their legal rights by serving, voluntarily or involuntarily, as human shields? Finally, when should killing civilians constitute a war crime? These are the questions that Law and Morality at War answers, contributing to a cutting-edge international debate. Drawing on the concepts and methods of contemporary moral and legal philosophy, the book develops a normative framework within which the laws of war and international criminal law can be evaluated, criticized, and reformed. While several philosophical works critically examine the moral status of civilians and combatants, this book fills a gap, offering both an account of the laws of war and war crimes, and proposing how the law could be improved from a moral point of view. (shrink)

Through a critical engagement with Jeremy Waldron’s work, as well as the work of other writers, I offer an account of the relative scope of the morality of war, the laws of war, and war crimes. I propose an instrumentalist account of the laws of war, according to which the laws of war should help soldiers conform to the morality of war. The instrumentalist account supports Waldron’s conclusion that the laws of war justifiably prohibit attacks on civilians even if it (...) turns out that some civilians lack a moral right not to be killed. Importantly, the instrumentalist account also offers what Waldron thinks impossible: a non-consequentialist defense of the failure of the laws of war to prohibit the killing of nonthreatening combatants. Finally, I argue that new war crimes can be broader than the morality of war as well as established laws of war and that many of the arguments for defining war crimes more narrowly than either the morality of war or the laws of war are unconvincing. In all of these ways, I hope to carry forward Waldron’s project of exploring the relationship between law and morality in war. (shrink)

This article argues that Habermas’s position on the relationship between religion and politics reaffirms his two-track political theory of the secular state and civic duty. His “hard-core” theory of secularism coupled with an ethics of citizenship seeks new ways of including religious citizens in modern pluralistic societies. The analysis of secularism both as a concept and as a guiding principle in Habermas’s work shows that most critics have misinterpreted his specific use of the term. The result of this is that (...) most secularist and accommodationist critics of Habermas’s ethics of citizenship disregard his two-track political theory and its co-originality principle that assumes the equal status of public and private autonomies of citizens. My aim is thus to shift critical attention to the central aspects of Habermas’s work on religion, specifically to the task of translating religious reasons into an all-accessible language. This task of translation faces several difficulties due to some points that are left unclear by Habermas, such as determining the line separating the informal and the formal spheres, and how to avert the risk of majoritarian hijacks of democracy that could altogether undermine the Habermasian framework. (shrink)

Jensen’s inequality is one of the fundamental inequalities which has several applications in almost every field of science. In 2003, Mercer gave a variant of Jensen’s inequality which is known as Jensen–Mercer’s inequality. The purpose of this article is to propose new bounds for Csiszár and related divergences by means of Jensen–Mercer’s inequality. Also, we investigate several new bounds for Zipf–Mandelbrot entropy. The idea of this article may further stimulate research on information theory with the help of Jensen–Mercer’s inequality.

Vaccination is an important tool for handling healthcare programs both in developed and developing countries. The current global scenario calls for a more‐efficacious, acceptable, cost‐effective and reliable method of immunization for many fatal diseases. It is hoped that the adoption of oral vaccines will help to provide an effective vaccination strategy, especially in developing countries. Mucosal immunity generated by oral vaccines can serve as a strong first line of defense against most of the pathogens infecting through the mucosal lining. Advances (...) in elucidating the mechanism of action of oral vaccines will facilitate the design of more effective, new generation vaccines. There are promising developments in the use of different agents to effectively deliver the vaccine candidate. It is hoped that ongoing research may be able to set another cardinal point, after polio vaccine, in eradicating infectious diseases. BioEssays 29:591–604, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende analizar tanto el nombramiento como el cese de los cadíes desde el punto de vista de sus cualificaciones académicas. Se centra en la práctica del cadiazgo en Egipto durante el período ‛abbāsí. Las fuentes principales son los Ajbār al-quḍāt de Wakī' y el Kitāb wulāt Miṣr de al-Kindī. Ambas obras contienen material de una gran originalidad y son bastante completas, ofreciendo detallada información sobre temas relativos tanto al nombramiento como al cese de los jueces durante los primeros (...) siglos de la historia islámica de Egipto. Se estudia la biografía de cada juez para averiguar cuáles fueron las razones que determinaron su nombramiento y su cese. Los resultados obtenidos son de interés para comprender las prácticas judiciales y su relación con las aptitudes profesionales que se consideraban necesarias en aquella época. (shrink)

How does international financial aid affect the cooperative behavior of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Can NGOs, while turning global, preserve peer connections with local actors and be engaged in local issues? The civil society literature contains competing perspectives on and reports of how international financial aid may restructure local civic networks. Some scholars argue that international support comes at the expense of local integration as inclusion in global networks takes local NGOs out of the local context, while others find evidence (...) that organizations do not have to face “a forced choice”, and may well be integrated both globally and locally. Drawing on this scholarship, we examine two hypotheses on how transnational funding influences cooperation patterns among NGOs. The hierarchy argument states that public entities tend to cooperate with internationally funded NGOs as external contact signals quality and trustworthiness. The segregation argument, on the contrary, suggests financial homophily according to which organizations are more likely to choose peers similar in sources of funding. To test these hypotheses, we apply Exponential Random Graph Models to the data on cooperation among 221 Kazakhstani NGOs. Results support the segregation hypothesis implying that NGOs are likely to have a bias towards similarly funded peers. (shrink)

It is universally accepted that informed consent to participate in medical research should be given by subjects. People have the fundamental human right to freely choose, without coercion or withholding of information necessary to make a reasonable choice, whether they will undergo any risks associated with a research project. United States researchers have known for some time that they have the duty to inform potential subjects of the nature of proposed research and the risks and possible benefits, and to seek (...) consent. Investigators also have the duty to design the research so that it will be scientifically valid while minimizing foreseeable and avoidable harms. (shrink)

There is consensus that children have questionable decisional capacity and, therefore, in general a parent or a guardian must give permission to enroll a child in a research study. Moreover, freedom from duress and coercion, the cardinal rule in research involving adults, is even more important for children. This principle is embodied prominently in the Nuremberg Code (1947) and is embodied in various federal human research protection regulations. In a program named "SATURN" (Student Athletic Testing Using Random Notification), each school (...) in the Oregon public-school system may implement a mandatory drug-testing program for high school student athletes. A prospective study to identify drug use among student-athletes, SATURN is designed both to evaluate the influence of random drug testing and to validate the survey data through identification of individuals who do not report drug use. The enrollment of students in the drug-testing study is a requirement for playing a school sport. In addition to the coercive nature of this study design, there were ethically questionable practices in recruitment, informed consent, and confidentiality. This article concerns the question of whether research can be conducted with high school students in conjunction with a mandatory drug-testing program, while adhering to prevailing ethical standards regarding human-subjects research and specifically the participation of children in research. (shrink)

The police are one of the most powerful and important forces for any country. The main task of the police is to install a sense of security in the ordinary citizens and to protect their life and property when they are in danger. Bangladeshi Police have a glorious past with tremendous achievement. Especially in our great liberation war in 1971, they played an important role in achieving our liberation. Eliminating terrorism & militancy and others several operation that leads with the (...) risk of their life. But there are still a lot of accusations against the police force. Like- abusing of power, Misconducting with the people, Committing crossfire defying the high-court order, Wearing white dress when they move to detain criminals, Arresting without warrant, and many other including Bribery, Extortion, Trading Drug and Yaba, Playing partisan role, keeping Bad association, Filing case against deceased man, Charging sheet against the infant who has not been born yet, Enforcing disappearance, Suppressing the freedom of express, Violating Human rights, Doing anti-social activities such as rape, forcible extortion, drinking alcohol, etc. are the real scenario of Bangladesh Police. Policing ethics or related unethical behaviors, in particular, are shaped by both societal perceptions and organizational socialization of the police personnel on how authority should be exercised, as well as the latter's relationship with the socio-political and economic structures overtime. This paper proposes to explain the role of police as the main law enforcement agency in any democratic country. An Attempt has been made to bring different perspectives of ethics which comprises views of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Immanuel Kant, J S Mill and John Rawls. The paper focuses on police Ethics. Police ethics’ reflects the society and the regulations that shape the policing system. Discuss the results and analysis of the consequences of moral degradation caused by the Police. Explore the police brutality because of the lack of Ethics to highlight the public's attitude towards police. The ethical standards and the code of conduct Police practitioners should actually abide by is an ongoing debate. (shrink)

The concept of knowledge and its implication to national development, with reference to Malaysia; and analysis from Islamic viewpoint.

The right of freedom of religion is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Malaysian Constitution. The provision over the right to freedom of religion is seen as one of the most crucial provisions ever stated in the Federal Constitution. Article 11 has never been amended. Indeed, provision in Article 3 reiterates the right of individuals, especially the non-Muslims to profess and practise their religion freely, without any fear and interference. The special status of the religion of Islam enshrined (...) in Article 3 does not mean that non-Muslims have no right in matter of freedom of religion. However, the Federal Constitution seems to restrict the right to freedom of religion, in the sense that freedom of religion in Malaysia is not absolute. There have been several restrictions imposed not only within the constitutional framework but also other general legislations. Among provisions that furnished such restrictions can be seen in Articles 11, 11 and 10 of the Federal Constitution. Moreover, the Parliament had also passed several legislations allowing such restrictions. This can be seen, among others, the Internal Security Act of 1960, the Societies Act of 1966, the Police Act of 1967, the Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1976 and the Penal Code. As such, Muslims and non-Muslims alike must adhere to certain religious constraints for the sake of public order, public health and morality.While freedom of religion is guaranteed for individuals in the Malaysian Constitution, some states in Malaysia have penalised Muslims who renounced the Islamic faith. Although there is no death penalty for apostasy in Malaysia, apostates are subject to punishments like fine, imprisonment and to a certain extent whipping. In certain states, apostates are detained at the rehabilitation centre for up to 36 months. These have brought concern to human rights activists because such punishments and detention may seem contrary to the right to freedom of religion enshrined under Article 11 of the Federal Constitution and Article 5 that guarantees individual liberty. This article attempts to investigate whether restrictions over the right of freedom of religion particularly when Muslims renounce the Islamic faith is constitutionally valid. It also intends to highlight the conflict in the laws surrounding the punishment for apostasy in various states in Malaysia. (shrink)

Most of the literature on phase one trials has focused on ethical and safety issues in research on patients with advanced cancer, but this article focuses on healthy, adult subjects. The article makes six specific recommendations for protecting the rights and welfare of healthy subjects in phase one trials: 1) because phase one trials are short in duaration (usually 1 to 3 months), researchers should gather more data on the short-term and long-term risks of participation in phase one studies by (...) healthy subjects; 2) researchers should develop strict inclusion/exclusion criteria that exclude unhealthy or vulnerable subjects, such as decisionally impaired people, in phase one studies; 3) subjects should not participate in more than one phase one study at the same time and should wait at least 30 days between participating in different studies; 4) researchers should develop a database to keep track of phase one participants; 5) subjects should be guaranteed a minimum wage equivalent to the equivalent type of unskilled labor, but there should be no upper limits on wages; and 6) subjects should be allowed to engage in collective bargaining with research sponsors. *Disclaimer: The ideas and opinions expressed in this article are the authors' personal views and do not represent the views of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, or the United States government. (shrink)

This article responds to four others that critically and productively engage with my book, Law and Morality at War. Four themes emerge: the law of armed conflict’s claim to legitimate authority, the relationship between the law of armed conflict and the deep morality of war, the moral norms governing killing in the fog of war, and the moral permissibility of targeting civilians.

While heredity is predominantly controlled by what deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences are passed from parents to their offspring, a small but growing number of traits have been shown to be regulated in part by the non‐genetic inheritance of information. Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance is defined as heritable information passed from parents to their offspring without changing the DNA sequence. Work of the past seven decades has transitioned what was previously viewed as rare phenomenology, into well‐established paradigms by which numerous traits can (...) be modulated. For the most part, studies in model organisms have correlated transgenerational epigenetic inheritance phenotypes with changes in epigenetic modifications. The next steps for this field will entail transitioning from correlative studies to causal ones. Here, we delineate the major molecules that have been implicated in transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in both mammalian and non‐mammalian models, speculate on additional molecules that could be involved, and highlight some of the tools which might help transition this field from correlation to causation. (shrink)

Kur’an tasavvuru belli kavramlardan meydana gelmektedir. İnsanın fiziki ve manevî yönünü ifade eden fıtrat kavramı, Kur’an tasavvurunu ifade eden önemli kavramlarından biridir. Fıtrat kavramının ilk günden itibaren tefsircilerin ilgi odağı olması da bundandır. Genellikle fıtrat, İslam dini, ilk yaratılış ve insanın dini kabul etme potansiyeli olarak yorumlanmış ve bunların değişip değişmeyeceği üzerinde durulmuştur. Rum sûresinde geçen “khalqullah” ile Nisâ sûresinde geçen “khalqullah” terkiplerinin bulunduğu âyetler arasında bu çerçevede bağlantı kurulmuştur. Bu çalışmamızda fıtratın mahiyeti ile fıtratla ilgili âyetlerin birbiriyle ilişkilendirilmesi irdelenecek (...) ve fıtratın temel unsurları üzerinde durulacaktır. Akıl, sevgi, aşk, güzel şeylere ilgi duyma ve çirkinliklerden kaçınmanın, insan fıtratının temel bileşenleri arasında yer alıp almadığı tartışılacaktır. Ayrıca fıtrat âyetinde geçen tebdîl kavramı ile Nisâ sûresinde geçen tağyir kavramının, aynı manayı ifade edip etmediği üzerinde durulacaktır. (shrink)

A broad consensus affirms the concept that all human beings have equal moral worth (Beauchamp and Childress 1994; Rawls 1971). Translating this ethical norm into practice requires careful attention...

A broad consensus affirms the concept that all human beings have equal moral worth (Beauchamp and Childress 1994; Rawls 1971). Translating this ethical norm into practice requires careful attention...

The Ahmadiyya Muslim community represents the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a charismatic leader whose claims of spiritual authority brought him into conflict with most other Muslim leaders of the time. The controversial movement originated in rural India in the latter part of the 19th century and is best known for challenging current conceptions of Islamic orthodoxy. Despite missionary success and expansion throughout the world, particularly in Western Europe, North America, and parts of Africa, Ahmadis have effectively been banned from (...) Pakistan. Adil Hussain Khan traces the origins of Ahmadi Islam from a small Sufi-style brotherhood to a major transnational organization, which many Muslims believe to be beyond the pale of Islam. (shrink)

BackgroundThe research shows a growing trend in using an electronic platform to supplement or replace traditional paper-based informed consent processes. Instead of the traditionally written informed consent document, electronic informed consent may be used to assess the research subject’s comprehension of the information presented. By doing so, respect for persons as one of the research ethical principles can be upheld. Furthermore, these electronic methods may reduce potential airborne infection exposures, particularly during the pandemic, thereby adhering to the beneficence and nonmaleficence (...) principle. This scoping review aims to identify the ethics related criteria that have been included in electronic informed consent processes and to synthesize and map these criteria to research ethics principles, in order to identify the gaps, if any, in current electronic informed consent processes.MethodsThe search was performed based on internet search and three main databases: PubMed, SCOPUS and EBSCO. PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews : Checklist and Explanation guideline was used to report this work.ResultsOf 34 studies that met the inclusion criteria, 242 essential original constructs were collated, and 7 concepts were derived. Digital content showed the highest percentage of collated original constructs followed by accessibility, comprehension engagement, autonomy, confidentiality, language, and parental consent. Twenty-five new items were synthesized for eConsent criteria which may provide guidance for ethical review of research involving eConsent.ConclusionThe current study adds significant value to the corpus of knowledge in research ethics by providing ethical criteria on electronic informed consent based on evidence-based data. The new synthesized items in the criteria can be readily used as an initial guide by the IRB/rec members during a review process on electronic informed consent and useful to the future preparation of a checklist. (shrink)

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)

Helen Frowe’s Defensive Killing is in many respects an excellent book, full of arguments that are original, interesting, important, and often persuasive. In other respects, the book is deeply unsettling, as it forcefully challenges the belief that killing ordinary civilians in armed conflict is a paradigmatic moral wrong. In particular, Frowe argues that civilians who make political, material, strategic, or financial contributions to an unjust war may lose their moral protection from intentional and collateral harm. On this point, Frowe’s arguments (...) are original, interesting, and important but, thankfully, not persuasive. (shrink)

Egyptians had many reasons to overthrow the government of Hosni Mubarak, and to challenge the legitimacy of the interim military government. Strikingly, among the leading reasons for the uprising and for continued protest are reasons grounded in criminal justice. Reflection on this dimension of the Egyptian uprising invites a broader examination of the relationship between criminal justice and political legitimacy. While criminal justice is neither necessary nor sufficient for political legitimacy, criminal injustice substantially undermines political legitimacy and can provide independent (...) reasons for revolution. A state may compromise its legitimacy by committing criminal acts, by perverting or subverting the criminal process, and by failing to discharge its duty to punish serious wrongdoing—a duty that then falls to individuals to discharge either directly (through vigilantism) or indirectly (through revolution). Contrary to the views of many leading criminal law theorists, the duty to punish serious wrongdoing applies to individuals and not only to states. The relevance of political legitimacy to criminal justice is more complicated. Individuals are morally obligated to follow the morally justified laws of an illegitimate state, but are not morally obligated to follow the morally unjustified laws of a legitimate state. Nor may any state punish in the absence of moral wrongdoing and moral fault. However, illegitimate states may be incapable of justly holding individuals accountable to the state, to the community, or to victims through criminal trials. This incapacity provides an additional reason to overthrow illegitimate states and replace them with legitimate states capable of justly administering a just criminal law. (shrink)

An intelligent climate and watering agriculture system is presented that is controlled with Android application for smart water consumption considering small and medium ruler agricultural fields. Data privacy and security as a big challenge in current Internet of Things (IoT) applications, as with the increase in number of connecting devices, these devices are now more vulnerable to security threats. An intelligent fuzzy logic and blockchain technology is implemented for timely analysis and securing the network. The proposed design consists of various (...) sensors that collect real-time data from environment and field such as temperature, soil moisture, light intensity, and humidity. The sensed field information is stored in IoT cloud platform, and after the analysis of entries, watering is scheduled by implementing the intelligent fuzzy logic and blockchain. The intelligent fuzzy logic based on different set of rules for making smart decisions to meet the watering requirements of plant and blockchain technology provides necessary security to the IoT-enabled system. The implementation of blockchain technology allows access only to the trusted devices and manages the network. From the experimentation, it is observed that the proposed system is highly scalable and secure. Multiple users at the same time can monitor and interact with the system remotely by using the proposed intelligent agricultural system. The decisions are taken by applying intelligent fuzzy logic based on input variables, and an alert is transmitted about watering requirements of a field to the user. The proposed system is capable of notifying users for turning water motor on and off. The experimental outcomes of the proposed system also reveal that it is an efficient and highly secure application, which is capable of handling the process of watering the plants. (shrink)

To optimize the weak robustness of traditional face recognition algorithms, the classification accuracy rate is not high, the operation speed is slower, so a face recognition algorithm based on local binary pattern and stacked autoencoder is proposed. The advantage of LBP texture structure feature of the face image as the initial feature of sparse autoencoder learning, use the unified mode LBP operator to extract the histogram of the blocked face image, connect to form the LBP features of the entire image. (...) It is used as input of the stacked AE, feature extraction is done, realize the recognition and classification of face images. Experimental results show that the recognition rate of the algorithm LBP-SAE on the Yale database has achieved 99.05%, and it further shows that the algorithm has a higher recognition rate than the classic face recognition algorithm; it has strong robustness to light changes. Experimental results on the Olivetti Research Laboratory library shows that the developed method is more robust to light changes and has better recognition effects compared to traditional face recognition algorithms and standard stack AEs. (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 (3D) 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 (PDWI) and stir sequences of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Excluding congenital malformations and diseases of the skeletal muscle system, MRI scanning was performed on bilateral knee joints. Proton weighted sequence (PDWI 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)

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)

This paper attempts to examine the paradigm shift in ASEAN from a state-based to a people-based organization. We argue that by adopting a people-based organization, ASEAN now enters an era of Neo-Communitarianism replacing the Old Communitarianism of the old generation of ASEAN. By using communitarian perspectives, we look at the continuities and changes in ASEAN with regard to how it deals with issues involving their members. Three important issues namely the debates on intervention principle; the adoption of the three pillars (...) of the ASEAN Community; and the inclusion of human rights are seen as the signposts where ASEAN departs from their Old to a Neo-Communitarianism. Although there have been a lot of challenges to the realization of the people-based organization, we see that the dynamics of debates and the active participation of the community in the debates show good prospects for the new paradigm to realize. In this paper, we use debate on the formation of ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (ICHR), to show the involvements of people in setting the agendas for the future ASEAN. (shrink)

Malaysia has developed its own distinct value system that is accommodative to the country’s rich tapestry of different ethnicities and religions. It is no coincidence that previous Malaysian premiers have actively promoted such system. Leading the way is Mahathir Mohamad, the country’s fourth Prime Minister, who was a vocal advocate of “Asian values,” followed by his successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who championed the idea of Islam Hadhari. These two sets of values are not entirely incompatible to each other but rather (...) share some similarities. The concepts of “Asian values” and Islam Hadhari are premised on several fundamental tenets, which include: promoting Islamic values, championing the Malay agenda, protecting cultural values, and challenging Western cultural imperialism. Their origin can be traced from the aggressive attempt by the ruling power – the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) – Barisan Nasional (BN) to strengthen and consolidate the political supremacy of the alliance. Inevitably, both of these value systems have been subjected to many criticisms, predominantly under the pretext of misguided and ill-properly constructed values by the ruling regime to justify its autocratic rule. The very nature of such value systems has often triggered political debates in terms of defining Malaysia as a nation. The espoused agenda of Islamisation and possibly assimilation have stirred profound uneasiness among the country’s significantly large population of non-Muslims. The value system brought by “Asian values” and IslamHadhari can lead to one understanding of Mahathir’s and Abdullah’s leadership and administration in governing Islam and politics in Malaysia. (shrink)

Arabic language; grammar; syntax; linguistics.

A broad consensus affirms the concept that all human beings have equal moral worth (Beauchamp and Childress 1994; Rawls 1971). Translating this ethical norm into practice requires careful attention...

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

There is consensus that children have questionable decisional capacity and, therefore, in general a parent or a guardian must give permission to enroll a child in a research study. Moreover, freedom from duress and coercion, the cardinal rule in research involving adults, is even more important for children. This principle is embodied prominently in the Nuremberg Code and is embodied in various federal human research protection regulations. In a program named "SATURN", each school in the Oregon public-school system may implement (...) a mandatory drug-testing program for high school student athletes. A prospective study to identify drug use among student-athletes, SATURN is designed both to evaluate the influence of random drug testing and to validate the survey data through identification of individuals who do not report drug use. The enrollment of students in the drug-testing study is a requirement for playing a school sport. In addition to the coercive nature of this study design, there were ethically questionable practices in recruitment, informed consent, and confidentiality. This article concerns the question of whether research can be conducted with high school students in conjunction with a mandatory drug-testing program, while adhering to prevailing ethical standards regarding human-subjects research and specifically the participation of children in research. (shrink)