The cliché of the clergymen or the religious scholars battling against modern science oversimplifies the history of the encounter between modern science and religion, especially in the case of non-Western societies. Many religious scholars, Muslim and Christian, not only did not oppose modern science but used it instrumentally to propagate their religions. Marwa Elshakry, in her brilliant study of Darwin's opinions among the Arab World, concentrates more on Arab Christians and Sunni Muslims rather than on Shiite Muslims. Muḥammad-Riḍā (...) Iṣfahānī, a Shiite clergyman educated in Islamic theology in Najaf, composed A Critique of Darwin's Philosophy in 1912 as a review of the theory of evolution. However, even before the publication of this book, controversy concerning this topic had been raging in the Arab World for decades. Under the influence of Muslim scholars (Sunni and Shiite) to reconcile modern science with Islam, Iṣfahānī did his best to gather knowledge of modern biology. He applied his self-taught knowledge of modern biology to find new solutions to the difficulties of establishing a dialogue between Islam and modern science. Thanks to the rationalism of his premodern scientific education, Iṣfahānī was more sympathetic towards science than many of his Arab counterparts and able to deeply engage in these debates. Iṣfahānī believed that the theory of evolution in nonhumans did not contradict Islamic discourse nor experimental and rational facts. Nevertheless, he denied the theory of human evolution as a nonscientific hypothesis. He justified his opinion through a detailed refutation of Darwin's heuristic evidence for human evolution in the first chapter of Descent of Man, such as the similarities between anatomy, embryology, and vestigial organs in humans and other animals. He also referred to other Western evolutionists of his time, such as Alfred Russel Wallace and Rudolf Virchow, who also rejected human evolution, and added some other scientific refutations of his own. Undoubtedly, Iṣfahānī's final aim was to demonstrate the possibility of reconciliation between religion in general, and Islam in particular, with modern science. This article provides a detailed consideration of Iṣfahānī's opinions, identifying his Arabic sources and comparing them to the original non-Arabic sources. I also examine the scientific details of Iṣfahānī's achievements and the roots of his misunderstandings. (shrink)

The problem of salvation of non-Muslims is a crucial element in the discourse of Islamic modernism. It was no less important for such Islamic thinkers of the classical period as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and Abu Ḥamid al-Ġazali. The attention of the author of the present paper focuses on understanding the problem of salvation in the teaching of Muhammad Rashid Rida, who was one of the key participants in the modernist movement in Islam. Being a representative of “intellectual salafism”, Rashid Rida (...) proposes a solution for the issue of salvation that comes as an alternative for traditionalist views predominating in Sunni Islam. The present paper serves to prove that Rida’s quite peculiar solution is deeply rooted in Islamic tradition. In particular, it relates to viewpoints of al-Jawziyya and al-Ġazali, which deflect from mainstream. Similar to many other Islamic modernists, the main although not the only argument of Rida is based on the Quranic idea of all-embracing Divine grace. In his analysis of Rida’s position, the author notes that the former does not lean towards the liberal variant of Islamic reformism that supposes religious pluralism as one of its basic ideas. Advocating the superiority of Muhammad’s message, the Egyptian thinker adhered to a specific form of soteriological inclusivism that differs from religious pluralism. According to Rida, the main criterion for one’s salvation is whether one was touched upon by undistorted Islamic message or not. Rida was convinced that Gehenna only awaits those non-Muslims who received undistorted Islamic message, clearly understood its Divine source and thenintentionally rejected it. But even they may be redeemed, as God is not obligated to act on his declared threat. (shrink)

We examined the direct and indirect (via relational social capital) relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding. We also tested the moderating role of instrumental thinking in the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding and the relationship between ethical leadership and relational social capital. Data were collected from 245 employees in different firms spanning different manufacturing and service sectors. The results showed that ethical leadership was negatively related to knowledge hiding, both directly and via relational social capital. The results (...) revealed that instrumental thinking moderated the positive relationship between ethical leadership and relational social capital, such that the relationship was weak when instrumental thinking was high. The results also showed that instrumental thinking moderated both direct and indirect relationships between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding, such that the relationships were weak when instrumental thinking was high. The study carries important practical implications for managers concerned about the destructive consequences of knowledge hiding. (shrink)

Introduction Good quality of care is dependent on nurses’ strong clinical skills and moral competencies, as well. While most nurses work with high moral standards, the moral performance of some nurses in some organizations shows a deterioration in their moral sensitivity and actions. The study reported in this paper aimed to explore the experiences of nurses regarding negative changes in their moral practice. Materials and methods This was a qualitative study utilizing an inductive thematic analysis approach, which was conducted from (...) February 2017 to September 2019. Twenty-five nurses participated in semi-structured interviews. Results The main theme that emerged from our analysis was one of moral neutralization in the context of an unethical moral climate. We found five sub-themes, including: feeling discouraged; normalization; giving up; becoming a justifier; and moral indifference. Conclusions Unethical moral climates in health organizations can result in deterioration of morality in nurses which can harm both patients and health systems. Some unethical behaviors in nurses can be explained by this process. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the strategic sensitivity and its impact on enhancing the creative behavior of Palestinian NGOs in Gaza Strip, and the study used the descriptive analytical approach and the questionnaire as a main tool for collecting data from employees of associations working in Gaza Strip governorates, and the cluster sample method was used and the sample size reached (343) individuals (298) questionnaires were retrieved, and the following results were reached: The relative weight of strategic sensitivity was 79.22 (...) (%), and the relative weight of creative behavior was 78.99 (%), a statistically significant relationship between all strategic sensitivity and creative behavior, and the presence of a sensitivity effect The strategy’s strategy on creative behavior, there are statistically significant differences in the scale dimensions attributable to the gender variable and the differences were in favor of females, there are no statistically significant differences between the averages of strategic sensitivity due to the age variable, and the educational qualification, and there were no statistically significant differences in creative behavior according to The gender variable, age, educational qualification, specialization, and the study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the need for civil organizations in Gaza Strip to seek funding from external countries in order to provide self-income for associations to face crises and give them independence Mechanism in order to keep them to carry out their role in society, the need to follow up the strategic plan of civil organizations using e-mails as they pave the way to reach excellence and creativity in the field of work. (shrink)

Mankind is faced with a number of serious problems that demand an effective solution. The prevalence of injustice and the frequency of financial crises are two of the most serious of these problems. Consisting of an in-depth introduction along with a selection of eight of Muhammad Umer Chapra's essays--four on Islamic economics and four on Islamic finance--this timely book raises the question of what can be done to not only minimize the frequency and severity of the financial crises, but also (...) make the financial system more equitable. The author considers the origins of Islamic economics and outlines its development and underlying principles. He compares the approach taken to ethics and economics in Islam with that taken in the West, considering whether lessons can be applied to the global financial architecture in order to mitigate against financial crises. The book also examines the case against interest and looks at both innovation in Islamic finance, as well as challenges facing the industry. Written by a leading authority in the field, this book will be a stimulating resource for students and researchers in Islamic economics and finance, as well as providing valuable insight to all of those with an interest in financial systems and their interaction with society. (shrink)

Data analytics, machine intelligence, and other cognitive algorithms have been employed in predicting various types of diseases in health care. The revolution of artificial neural networks in the medical discipline emerged for data-driven applications, particularly in the healthcare domain. It ranges from diagnosis of various diseases, medical image processing, decision support system, and disease prediction. The intention of conducting the research is to ascertain the impact of parameters on diabetes data to predict whether a particular patient has a disease or (...) not. This paper develops an improved ANN model trained using an artificial backpropagation scaled conjugate gradient neural network algorithm to predict diabetes effectively. For validating the performance of the proposed model, we conduct a large set of experiments on a Pima Indian Diabetes dataset using accuracy and mean squared error as evaluation metrics. We use different number of neurons in the hidden layer, ranging from 5 to 50, to train the ANN models. The experimental results show that the ABP-SCGNN model, containing 20 neurons, attains 93% accuracy on the validation set, which is higher than using the other ANNs models. This result confirms the model’s effectiveness and efficiency in predicting diabetes disease from the required data attributes. (shrink)

This short book, based on authentic sources, outlines the story of Imam al-Ghazali's life.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, 1877-1938, Urdu poet and philosopher.

This study investigates the significance of understanding police perspectives on community policing as a means of addressing insecurity, particularly within the context of localised and asymmetrical conflicts. It highlights the pivotal role of the police in shaping community security and the substantial impact they can have (positive or negative) in fragile environments. The study contends that the localised nature of the community policing effectively addresses security and development issues and empowering citizens. Qualitative interviews were conducted with senior police in Islamabad, (...) to assess the implementation and potential impacts of community policing in Pakistan’s Federal Capital Territory. The findings reveal how the historical foundations of police structures and operations – which date back to the colonial period – have led to the promotion of fear, mistrust and manipulation under successive regimes. Despite these challenges, the findings are promising highlighting enhanced human security through context-specific community policing. Finally, the paper argues that the movement towards community-oriented policing marks a departure from the control of elites within state systems, and encourages values such as local ownership, social cohesion, mutual engagement, accountability and agency. These developments have profound implications for global security and justice. (shrink)

With the growing call for private sector actors to address global challenges, it is necessary to first assess whether regions with the greatest needs are accessing corporate philanthropy. In this paper, we ask whether corporate philanthropy is reaching those with the greatest health-care needs. Drawing on economic geography and corporate homophily, we argue that corporate philanthropy tends to exacerbate health inequality as grants are destined for counties with fewer health problems. We test and find support for this hypothesis using data (...) on health grants made by US corporate foundations and county-level health data. Our results that corporate health grants are less likely to go to counties which have a lower proportion of medical service providers and insured citizens suggest that corporate foundations are unwittingly complicit in worsening the resource gap between small, poor, rural counties and large, wealthy, urban counties. From an ethical perspective, we provide some guidance as to how this may be corrected. (shrink)

Muslim communities in the village facing the COVID-19 Pandemic attempts to find refuge from the plague and hope for survival. However, this led to more caution, which may lead to xenophobia. Via ethnography, this study unmasks the xenophobic attitude. This research discusses the root causes of panic in the community so that remedies can be implemented. The research attempts to explain, from a socio-anthropological viewpoint, how people and religious groups in the village perceive the pandemic of COVID-19 based on their (...) belief in their faith and in the science. The research takes place in Cigagak village, an area of approximately 7000 m2 on the outskirts of Bandung of West Java of Indonesia. This study examines the selected respondents from about 190 inhabitants who had close ties to managing places of worship and public places. This study utilises a collaborative self-ethnographic method and qualitative analysis. The influence of COVID-19 has moved to new exclusive and disintegrating practices from the inclusion-cohesive religious tradition. Therefore, this study tries to find out ways on how to reduce exclusive perception and religious practices to a minimum level and how to disappear xenophobia. Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic, inclusive awareness and actions were re-established, and even social cohesiveness was fostered. This study concludes that in its deep conviction nature, theology can change exclusive behaviour to be inclusive if it is based on the religious principles that are raised in response to human events. In this case, the Muslim community in a village can change the fear of COVID-19 pandemic to be a reducer of the panic based on the support of the religious doctrines.Contribution: This article used a collaborative self-ethnography with a religious socio-anthropological viewpoint. This study could help to solve social problems through theological convergence in Islamic milieu, especially that of the government’s formal Islamic organisation and organic Islamic leaders of the society. (shrink)

Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women’s dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood’s “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for (...) a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood’s work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood’s work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women. (shrink)

Khalafzai, Rida Usman Female genital mutilation (FGM) is thought to be a custom practiced for the subjugation of women. The significance of FGM for practicing communities, however, is much more profound. The best hope of eradicating this practice lies in the recognition and comprehension of its cultural and social meanings.

I begin the first part by showing how situationism should make us question traditional understandings of virtues as intrinsic dispositions. I concentrate specifically on situationist experiments related to mood. I then introduce Islamic virtue ethics and the dawa movement. In parts two and three I examine ethnography of the dawa movement to explore how they deal with worries about the influence of mood on their virtue. In part two I show how they train their habits in very traditional virtue ethics (...) ways in order to be more resilient when faced with virtue-diminishing affective situations. In part three I show how the situation, rather than hindering practitioners, is recruited into helping these women achieve piety. I conclude, in part four, by showing the dawa movement's creative use of the Islamic veil as a way to help these women deal with the objection that one cannot avoid all bad situations. Going beyond social psychological experiments, I examine two methodological sources not found in situationist debates. First, I argue for ethnography as an empirical method through which to study virtue. I draw on ethnography of the Islamic women's dawa movement. Secondly, the work in the philosophy of mind on ‘affective scaffolding’. (shrink)

In step with rapid advancements in computer vision, vehicle classification demonstrates a considerable potential to reshape intelligent transportation systems. In the last couple of decades, image processing and pattern recognition-based vehicle classification systems have been used to improve the effectiveness of automated highway toll collection and traffic monitoring systems. However, these methods are trained on limited handcrafted features extracted from small datasets, which do not cater the real-time road traffic conditions. Deep learning-based classification systems have been proposed to incorporate the (...) above-mentioned issues in traditional methods. However, convolutional neural networks require piles of data including noise, weather, and illumination factors to ensure robustness in real-time applications. Moreover, there is no generalized dataset available to validate the efficacy of vehicle classification systems. To overcome these issues, we propose a convolutional neural network-based vehicle classification system to improve robustness of vehicle classification in real-time applications. We present a vehicle dataset comprising of 10,000 images categorized into six-common vehicle classes considering adverse illuminous conditions to achieve robustness in real-time vehicle classification systems. Initially, pretrained AlexNet, GoogleNet, Inception-v3, VGG, and ResNet are fine-tuned on self-constructed vehicle dataset to evaluate their performance in terms of accuracy and convergence. Based on better performance, ResNet architecture is further improved by adding a new classification block in the network. To ensure generalization, we fine-tuned the network on the public VeRi dataset containing 50,000 images, which have been categorized into six vehicle classes. Finally, a comparison study has been carried out between the proposed and existing vehicle classification methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed vehicle classification system. Consequently, our proposed system achieved 99.68%, 99.65%, and 99.56% accuracy, precision, and F1-score on our self-constructed dataset. (shrink)

This article examined the recent emergence of the national and international issue of religious polarisation and identity, which affects some groups’ populism and fanaticism. Regarding social phenomena, religion and identity are intertwined like the two sides of a coin. This discourse has an impact how to interpret diversity on religious issues that are caused by political influences. Given the polarisation of identity politics and religion, the national and state campaign slogan ‘unity in diversity’ is merely wishful thinking. The polarisation of (...) identity and religion is heavily implicated in the Indonesia–Philippines border case; consequently, in some instances, the ‘seeds’ of these cases are discovered, eventually resulting in group fanaticism. This article employed the historical way of writing while also taking a social science angle that interacts with the research being done. For some communities, religion and identity may take on symbolic meaning, affecting how well they adapt and are accepted. However, the qualities of a community group or region are also shaped by historical events. According to the study’s findings, religion and ethnic identity have played important roles in long-standing historical processes and impacted them. This study is anticipated to ‘suppress’ the problem of political division involving religion and identity because the identification of ‘border’ communities depends not only on entity and identity issues but also on the community’s culture.Contribution: The contribution in this study is that it has an impact on religious issues and cultural identity relations perspectives. (shrink)

Khalafzai, Rida Usman A summary of Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls, the book edited by Melinda Tankard Reist on the issue of early sexualisation of girls.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman Obesity is the bane of modern times. Its ever-rising incidence and the frequent lack of success of conventional weight loss methods, has lead to the evolution of surgical weight loss techniques. Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) is one such procedure aimed at assisting in the loss of weight in obese individuals for whom traditional methods have failed.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman The legalization of egg donation for medical research has resulted in the use of assisted reproductive techniques for the creation of embryos for research. This carries significant risks for the women undergoing these procedures and has brought humankind to a major ethical and moral crossroads.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman The prevalence of eating disorders is increasing. This article provides an overview of these disorders and explores the biological and social conditions that influence their development.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman; Hameed, Imran Obstetric fistula is the most devastating complication of parturition. The impact of this ailment extends beyond physical morbidity, with immense social repercussions for the women who suffer from it.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman This article explores race as a social construct, discrimination based on race, and its impact on health.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman In this era, health has been redefined. The emphasis has shifted from the individual-focussed bio-medical model to a preventative model of collective health. This model of public health often challenges the concept of individual autonomy, the basis of human rights, in the name of the greater good. This article explores the relationship between public health and human rights, and the need for a public health ethic based on the principles of human rights.

Khalafzai, Rida Usman Harms of alcohol consumption are not limited to the consumer. For women, it poses a significant threat to their unborn child. This article discusses one type of alcohol-related harm to the fetus: the fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).

Khalafzai, Rida Usman There is currently much debate about the medical and ethical issues related to male circumcision. This article explores this controversial subject in the light of current research.

The notion of 'natural kinds' has been central to contemporary discussions of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Although explicitly articulated by nineteenth-century philosophers like Mill, Whewell and Venn, it has a much older history dating back to Plato and Aristotle. In recent years, essentialism has been the dominant account of natural kinds among philosophers, but the essentialist view has encountered resistance, especially among naturalist metaphysicians and philosophers of science. Informed by detailed examination of classification in the natural and social sciences, (...) this book argues against essentialism and for a naturalist account of natural kinds. By looking at case studies drawn from diverse scientific disciplines, from fluid mechanics to virology and polymer science to psychiatry, the author argues that natural kinds are nodes in causal networks. On the basis of this account, he maintains that there can be natural kinds in the social sciences as well as the natural sciences. (shrink)

The research addresses the effect of sense of control on perceived stress by controlling for the intervening effects of Religiosity and Materialism. A total of 609 emerging adults living in Dhaka city participated in the survey; surveyors used a 48-item structural closed-ended questionnaire to collect the responses. The elicited responses were quantified, and structural equation models were formulated to identify any associations among the variables of interest. The findings suggest that sense of control is a strong determinant of perceived stress; (...) neither religiosity nor materialism mediate the association. The study advances the transactional model of stress and coping. (shrink)

Building on conservation of resource (COR) theory, this study adds to the business ethics literature by examining how employees' religiousness might help them cope with a stressful work environment. In doing so, this study examines the differential effects of challenge and hindrance stressors on employees’ job performance and their helping behaviors; and the moderating role of religiousness in this process. Findings from a multisource and three-wave survey data, collected from dyads of employees and their supervisors in Pakistan-based organizations, indicate that (...) challenge stressors positively predict employees' job performance; however, the link between challenge stressors and helping behavior was not significant. Religiousness invigorates both these relationships such that the employees with high religiousness exhibit higher job performance and helping behavior when confronted with challenging stressors. In contrast, hindrance stressors had a negative effect on employees' job performance and their propensity to engage in helping behaviors. Religiousness mitigates this negative effect of hindrance stressors such that the effect is weaker for employees who can draw strength from their religiousness. Finally, this paper discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the study’s findings and offers directions for future research. (shrink)

Forced migration changes people’s lives and their sense of self-continuity fundamentally. One memory-based mechanism to protect the sense of self-continuity and psychological well-being is autobiographical meaning making, enabling individuals to explain change in personality and life by connecting personal experiences and other distant parts of life to the self and its development. Aiming to replicate and extend prior research, the current study investigated whether autobiographical meaning making has the potential to support the sense of self-continuity in refugees. We therefore collected (...) life narratives from 31 refugees that were coded for autobiographical reasoning, self-event connections, and global narrative coherence. In line with prior research, results suggest that autobiographical meaning making relates to a higher sense of self-continuity and less psychological distress. Yet, if refugees experienced many continuing postdisplacement stressors in addition to their forced displacement, autobiographical meaning making was associated with higher self-discontinuity and greater psychological distress, especially with trauma-related symptoms such as memory intrusion and hyperarousal. Altogether, results indicate that autobiographical meaning making helps to compensate the effects of extreme biographical disruptions on the sense of self-continuity, as long as the stress caused by the biographical change is not overwhelming or too protracted. (shrink)

This article theorizes the relationship between two ways of “seeing” and organizing urban mobility markets: the abstract, algorithmic vision of the mobility platform and the experiential, relational vision of the platform driver. Using the case of mobility platforms in Jakarta, we empirically demonstrate how drivers experience the limitations of the platform's visions and how they deploy their own alternative visions of work and the city. We offer this drivers’ “View from Within” as a counterpoint to the visions of the platform, (...) decentering the platform's visions as the sole arbiter of change and optimization in the city. At the same time, we disrupt the assumed binary between these views, showing how they exist in a complex dance of complementarity and contestation. We conclude with a discussion on the opportunities this entanglement presents for worker agency in the algorithmic market, the hurdles toward more “worker centered design” in platform economies and the tensions between globalizing technological solutions and their localized instantiations. Through this article, we argue for seeing deep, embedded relationships as culturally and historically important modes of urban life which technology has to interact with but cannot fully capture nor do away with. (shrink)

The aim of this work focuses on the relationship among the Dark Triad, perceptions of organizational politics, political skills, and counterproductive work behavior. This study empirically tests the mediating role of perceptions of organizational politics in the relationship between the Dark Triad and counterproductive work behavior. Furthermore, the study investigates the moderating role of political skills in strengthening the link between the Dark Triad and the perceptions of organizational politics. A sample of 149 participants was randomly selected. To analyze the (...) data of the present work, we employed a structural equation model using partial least square and PROCESS. From empirical findings, we imply an inference that perception of organizational politics partially mediates the Dark Triad's influence on the counterproductive work behavior. Moreover, the results identify the moderating role of political skills in strengthening the link between the Dark Triad and the perceptions of organizational politics. Empirical findings suggest important policy implications for the hospitality industry. (shrink)