First, I argue for historical contextualization of the Qur’an as a given historical collection of discourses propagated by Muhammad as divine inspiration. Secondly, I argue for a distinction between the Qur’an and Islam, since the latter is the outcome of human efforts to construct their lives in accordance with what they understood to be the teachings of the Qur’an. The last point is to show how the role of Muhammad in his interaction with the communities of his time in Hijaz (...) shaped the Qur’an. So, the article is organized as (1) introduction; (2) the Qur’an and lslam; (3) the Qur’an and history: open hermeneutics; (4) Muhammad and the Qur’an; (5) the divine—human communication; (6) Muhammad: the first recipient; (7) Muhammad in the Qur’an; and (8) the community of believers and the need for legal regulations; followed by (9) conclusion. (shrink)

The contemporary Qur’anic studies have been marked by amazing development. Various methods and approaches to understand the Qur’an are offered by the scholars. One of the prominent figures in this field is Nashr Hamid Abu Zayd. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943–2010 M) is a highly controversial contemporary thinker. He is an Egyptian scholar who is accused of being apostate, because of his theory of qur’anic hermeneutic (the textual of Qur’an). This is reflected in his stances towards contemporary (...) religious discourse and the approach to reading religious texts, especially the Quran, which requires reading according to a hermeneutic mechanism. His books ‘Naqd al-Khitab al-Dini (Criticism of Religious Discourse)’ and ‘Al-Takfir fi Zaman al-Takfir (Thinking in the Time of Atonement)’ caused a great uproar in the early nineties of the last century. Abu Zayd was accused of criticising atheists because of their stances on the text. Therefore, this study aimed to discuss Abu Zayd’s position on contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts, and also aims to discuss why Abu Zayd’s theory has been string up Islamic world and ending by his expulsive from his native country. To deal with this problem, this article discusses Abd Zayd’s biography and some cultural framework of his people. The methodology of Qur’anic hermeneutic is the least his. Having examined the topic, the author finds that Abu Zayd believes that modem literary theory and criticism denote the way to understand and interpret the Qur’an ‘objectively’. The contribution of this research is discussing Abu Zayd’s contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts. Contribution: The contribution of this research is discussing Abu Zayd’s contemporary religious discourse and his new approach to reading religious texts. (shrink)

This paper discussed the life background of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and the hermeneutical method used to the interpretation of the Qur’an. Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was among productive Muslim scientists. He wrote over twenty-nine works from 1964 to 1999. His works included books and articles. Nasr’sthought was a product of his educational background and religious thought. An interesting discussion of Nasr’s thought was the conceptual discourse. In the historical trajectory of the Arabic world, (...) the text had a crucial position, especially when we saw the development of Islamic literature from pre-Islamic to the Islamic era. The oral tradition was deeply rooted. The text was ultimately believed to have a major influence in the formation of civilization through a hermeneutical approach, developed by modernists such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, which became an attempt to develop an approaching understanding the Qur’an which had been widely opposed among Muslims. Because there was a very basic difference between hermeneutics on the other hand, and tafsir-takwil on the other hand, so it is considered inappropriate to be used to study the Qur’an. Therefore, this paper will discuss the concept of the hermeneutical method of the Qur’an by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd as a repertoire of Islamic studies. (shrink)

Un saggio in memoria di Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd , filosofo e teologo egiziano che ha contribuito in modo fondamentale alla diffusione dell’approccio letterario applicato al testo sacro dell’islam e al successivo sviluppo di un’ermeneutica di tipo umanistico in grado di affermare la portata rivoluzionaria e antidogmatica del concetto di Corano come insieme di discorsi. Nominato professore onorario all’Università di Leida, dove insegna a partire dal 2000, il professor Abu Zayd è costretto all’esilio nel 1995, dopo la (...) condanna per apostasia che gli viene mossa in ambito giudiziario proprio a causa del suo interesse per un terreno di studio così delicato.An essay written in memory of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd , Egyptian philosopher and theologian who substantially contributed to the spread of the literary approach to the sacred text of Islam and to the subsequent development of a humanistic hermeneutics being able to affirm the revolutionary and anti-dogmatic significance of the concept of the Qur’an asset of discourses. Appointed honorary professor at Leiden University, where he began teaching in 2000, the professor Abu Zayd is obliged to go into exile in 1995, after his judicial conviction for apostasy due to his interest in such a delicate field of study. (shrink)

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, the contentious Egyptian thinker, has proposed different ideas about the revelation and the Qur’an and encountered with different reactions. He made endeavor to provide some natural and non metaphysical explanations for the Islamic phenomena. In this regard he went through the miraculous feature of the Qur’an differently and reduced it to a cultural-literary phenomenon that everyone who knows Arabic takes it as a fundamental cultural text. Analyzing the literature and the linguistic mechanism of the (...) Qur’an from the viewpoint of the current literary criticism will show its role in the creation of history and culture. This view is radically different from the viewpoint of faithful people because it reduces the religious attitude to a cultural atmosphere in which the Qur’an is like the other masterpieces which may be literary criticized. The content of the Qur’an, in this kind of criticism, is ignored while in the current literary criticism the content is heeded too. (shrink)

One of the important domestic developments during the Umayyad period is the rebellions carried out by members of the Ahl al-bayt. After the rebellion of Zayd b. ʿAlī in Kufa, his father, Yaḥyā was intensely prosecuted by the governor of Iraq Yūsuf b. ʿUmar, so he moved to Khurāsān, where he would feel more secure and his supporters were located. In fact, ʿAbbāsids, Kaysānī and Zayd b. ʿAlī’s supporters were active in Khurāsān. Under these circumtances, Yaḥyā left Iraq (...) and followed the road Nineveh, Madāʾin, Ray, Nīshāpūr towards the east and came to Sarakhs and resided here about six months. Here, a group from the Khārijites came and made a revolt proposal, but this proposal was rejected by those with Yahya. After this, Yaḥyā continued on his way to the east and came to Balkh and he stayed until the death of the caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik. The general purpose of Yaḥyā’s journey from Iraq to Balkh is probably to get rid of the prosecution of Iraqi governor Yūsuf, and to establish the appropriate political atmosphere for the rebellion by contacting the Ahl al-bayt supporters in Khurāsān. The governor of Iraq Yūsuf b. ʿUmar determined the location of Yaḥyā in Balhk, and he ordered the governor of Khurāsān Naṣr b. Sayyār that he ensured Yaḥyā was imprisoned in Marw. However, as his imprisonment was reported to the caliph al-Walīd b. Yazīd, he ordered him to be released. Governor Naṣr advised Yaḥyā to go directly to the caliph and avoid situations that could cause sedition. In this case, Yaḥyā first came to Sarakhs, and then reached Nīshāpūr via Ṭūs. Meanwhile, the Khurāsān governor Naṣr wrote a letter to the governors on the route and ordered them to follow the movements of Yaḥyā and to not allow him to stay in the cities for a long time. Yaḥyā did not advance further west from the city of Bayhaq because he was afraid he might be killed by the Iraqi governor. Therefore, he returned from Bayhaq and came to Nīshāpūr. Here, they confiscated the mounts of a caravan they encountered on the way along with seventy other people, but they also paid their fees. Due to this incident, the governor of Nīshāpūr sent soldiers to Yaḥyā and his entourage, but in the clash that broke out, the supporters of Yaḥyā were successful against the soldiers, who were more than them. Yaḥyā and his followers continued their movements towards Balkh in the east after that. Even though the sources do not fully state the reason for Yaḥyā 's movement to Balkh, the geographical distance and the possible Shīʿī potential in the region may have guided him. However, this time Yaḥyā aimed to reach Balkh via Herat and Jūzjān by traveling in the southeast direction, not via Marw. Upon the news that Yaḥyā reached Jūzjān, the governor Naṣr sent an army of eight thousand men on him. Yaḥyā had to fight against the Umayyad army with his small number of supporters, consisting of seventy or one hundred and twenty people. As a result, he and his supporters were killed. Yaḥyā's head was cut off from his body and sent to the caliph, and his body was hung over the entrance gate of the city of Jūzjān. There are some reasons why the revolt of Yaḥyā failed. First of all, Yaḥyā did not prepare a road map to follow in advance for the rebellion movement, and he could not communicate with a large mass of people and did not set his goal. Secondly, Yaḥyā did not have enough support to resist the Umayyad armies in the rebellion. As a result, we can conclude that Yaḥyā was hidden during the three-year period he spent in Khurāsān because he was under prosecution and therefore could not operate openly. In addition, he could not get enough support from the Shīʿī communities in the region. Although Yaḥyā's rebellion was unsuccessful, it had some effects on the peoples of the region in the following process. Especially the murder of Yaḥyā in Khurāsān helped to create a suitable ground for the ʿAbbāsid revolution. In addition, it ensured that all Shīʿī groups were gathered under the invitation of the ʿAbbāsid "Āl-i Muḥammad”. (shrink)

L’Europe et les géographes arabes du Moyen Âge : “La grande terre” et ses peuples. Conceptualisation d’un espace ethnique et politique. By Jean-Charles Ducène. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2018. Pp. 502. €27.

Background: Job satisfaction is largely associated with organizational aspects, including improved working environments, worker’s well-being and more effective performance. There are many definitions regarding job satisfaction in the existing scholarly literature: it can be expressed as a positive emotional state, a positive impact of job-related experiences on individuals, and employees’ perceptions regarding their jobs. Aims: No reliable scales in Arabic language to assess job satisfaction in the sports and physical education field exist.This study aimed to trans-culturally adapt and validate the (...) Pepe’s “Teacher Job Satisfaction Scale” 9 items (TJSS-9), creating the “Teacher of Physical Education Job Satisfaction Inventory” (TPEJSI) in Arabic language. This scale was administered to a Tunisian population of sports and physical education teachers and analyzed according to the Pepe’s theoretical model.. More in detail, this investigation systematically tested its factor structure, in terms of internal consistency/reliability, predictive validity, sensitivity and convergent validity. Methods: A total of 417 Tunisian teachers of sports and physical education participated voluntarily in this study. The sample comprised of 258 males and of 159 females. More in detail, 189 were teachers teaching in primary schools of physical education, 105 teaching in secondary schools, and 123 were university teachers. Both exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses were performed on random-split halves of the sample. Results: The three-dimensional alpha coefficients of the TPEJSI were all greater than 0.80: for satisfaction with colleagues, alpha was 0.865; for satisfaction with parents, alpha was 0.856 and for satisfaction with students alpha was 0.860. The CFA fit indices were satisfactory. Conclusions: Given the good EFA factor loadings, the CFA fit indices, the correlation matrix, the sensitivity analysis, the convergent validity and the excellent internal consistency, it can be concluded that the TPEJSI is a good psychometric tool that can be used to quantitatively assess the job satisfaction level among teachers of sports and physical education in the Arabic-speaking world. (shrink)

Knowledge and its desacralization --What is tradition? -- The rediscovery of the sacred : the revival of tradition -- Scientia sacra -- Man, pontifical and Promethean -- The cosmos as theophany -- Eternity and the temporal order -- Traditional art as fountain of knowledge and grace -- Principal knowledge and the multiplicity of sacred forms -- Knowledge of the sacred as deliverance.

Two Arabic Travel Books: Accounts of China and India and Mission to the Volga. By Abū Zayd al-Sīrāfī, edited and translated by Tim Mackintosh-Smith; by Ibn Faḍlān, edited and translated by James E. Montgomery. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Pp. x + 312. $40.

La concepción dualista de Descartes expulsó lo incorpóreo de la materia y ha sido mal entendida durante siglos. Este artículo inicia reflexionando acerca de la importancia del materialismo para la ciencia. Enseguida, se examinan argumentos de la doctrina dualista relativos a la física, su materialismo y mecanicismo. Finalmente, se considera, desde la perspectiva de la unión, la biología humana, disciplina con características peculiares, dado que su objeto no es un ser meramente corpóreo, sino entremezclado.

Interactive narratives have been used in a variety of applications, including video games, educational games, and training simulations. Maintaining engagement within such environments is an important problem, because it affects entertainment, motivation, and presence. Performance arts theorists have discussed and formalized many techniques that increase engagement and enhance dramatic content of art productions. While constructing a narrative manually, using these techniques, is acceptable for linear media, using this approach for interactive environments results in inflexible experiences due to the unpredictability of (...) users’ actions. Few researchers attempted to develop adaptive interactive narrative experiences. However, developing a quality interactive experience is largely an art process, and many of these adaptive techniques do not encode artistic principles. This paper presents a new interactive narrative architecture designed using a set of dramatic techniques that have been formulated based on several years of training in film and theatre. (shrink)

Interactive narratives have been used in a variety of applications, including video games, educational games, and training simulations. Maintaining engagement within such environments is an important problem, because it affects entertainment, motivation, and presence. Performance arts theorists have discussed and formalized many techniques that increase engagement and enhance dramatic content of art productions. While constructing a narrative manually, using these techniques, is acceptable for linear media, using this approach for interactive environments results in inflexible experiences due to the unpredictability of (...) users’ actions. Few researchers attempted to develop adaptive interactive narrative experiences. However, developing a quality interactive experience is largely an art process, and many of these adaptive techniques do not encode artistic principles. This paper presents a new interactive narrative architecture designed using a set of dramatic techniques that have been formulated based on several years of training in film and theatre. (shrink)

Interactive narratives have been used in a variety of applications, including video games, educational games, and training simulations. Maintaining engagement within such environments is an important problem, because it affects entertainment, motivation, and presence. Performance arts theorists have discussed and formalized many techniques that increase engagement and enhance dramatic content of art productions. While constructing a narrative manually, using these techniques, is acceptable for linear media, using this approach for interactive environments results in inflexible experiences due to the unpredictability of (...) users’ actions. Few researchers attempted to develop adaptive interactive narrative experiences. However, developing a quality interactive experience is largely an art process, and many of these adaptive techniques do not encode artistic principles. This paper presents a new interactive narrative architecture designed using a set of dramatic techniques that have been formulated based on several years of training in film and theatre. (shrink)

In such civilizations the cosmological sciences integrate the diverse phenomena of Nature into conceptual schemes all of which reflect the revealed ...

Le dualisme métaphysique de Descartes a des conséquences importantes pour la physique qu’il a développée. Descartes cherchait à établir une connaissance quantitative et certaine du monde physique, et son dualisme en a retiré toute forme d’esprit ou de force. Néanmoins, « les forces» ne semblent pas totalement absentes de sa philosophie naturelle. Quelques auteurs contemporains estiment que Descartes, dans certains passages du Monde, et des Principes de la Philosophie, s’exprime comme si les forces décrites étaient des propriétés « réelles» des (...) corps. Par conséquent, dans cet article, je vais donner des arguments en faveur de la cohérence du dualisme cartésien, en utilisant une notion peu connue de « force» proposée par Descartes. (shrink)

En esta nota crítica (i) se hace una breve descripción de cada uno de los artículos que componen Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado, (ii) se señalan algunas cuestiones que no están claras en ellos o en las réplicas de Orayen y, (iii) en la medida de lo posible, se indica si los autores desarrollan ulteriormente los problemas abordados en sus artículos. The aim of this critical note is threefold: (i) it briefly describes and comments on each of the (...) articles of Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado; (ii) identifies some issues that may not be clear enough or not fully developed whether in the articles or even in Orayen's replies; (iii) as far as possible, it refers to further studies made by the authors themselves on the same, or quite related, subjects addressed by them in their papers. (shrink)

The Holy City of Medina: Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia. By Harry Munt. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xvii + 226. $95.

"The most comprehensive and intelligent treatment of [religious ecology]....Nasr is one of the major intellects of our day."--Huston Smith, University of California, Berkeley.

Conceptins of nature and methods used for its study by the Ikwan al-Safa; al-Biruni, and Ibn Sina. Bibliography: p. 287.308. Includes index.

Aesthetics, as that branch of philosophy which deals with the meaning of beauty and various theories of art, has not been treated as a separate subject by the Islamic philosophers and one does not find separate treatises corresponding to the works on aesthetics by such Western philosophers as Hegel, Collingwood, and Croce among those Islamic thinkers who are called the falāsifa or ḥukamā’. In order to fully understand Islamic aesthetics, one has first of all to cull passages here and there (...) from the Peripatetic (mashshā'ī) philosophers. But, in addition, one must turn to the works of the Illuminationist (ishrāqī) school and especially the Sufis for much greater elaboration of the subject. Furthermore, one must add to the written sources the oral tradition, the teachings transmitted from masters of various Islamic arts to their disciples from one generation to another, teachings with have underlined the actual production of Islamic works of art over the centuries and which have not died out to this day. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of the best known contemporary Muslim scholars writing in English covers many facets of Islamic life and thought. The author has brought together studies dealing with the practical as well as intellectual aspects of Islam in both their historical and contemporary reality. The contemporary significance of themes such as religion and secularism, the meaning of freedom, and the tradition of Islamic science and philosophy is given particular attention.

This essay is part of a special issue celebrating 50 years of Political Theory. The ambition of the editors was to mark this half century not with a retrospective but with a confabulation of futures. Contributors were asked: What will political theory look and sound like in the next century and beyond? What claims might political theorists or their descendants be making in ten, twenty-five, fifty, a hundred years’ time? How might they vindicate those claims in their future contexts? How (...) will the consistent concerns of political theorists evolve into the questions critical for people decades or centuries from now? What new problems will engage the political theorists (or their rough equivalents) of the future? What forms might those take? What follows is one of the many confabulations published in response to these queries. (shrink)

The mitochondrion is known as the “powerhouse” of eukaryotic cells since it is the main site of adenosine 5′‐triphosphate (ATP) production. Using a temperature‐sensitive fluorescent probe, it has recently been suggested that the stray free energy, not captured into ATP, is potentially sufficient to sustain mitochondrial temperatures higher than the cellular environment, possibly reaching up to 50 °C. By 50 °C, some DNA and mitochondrial proteins may reach their melting temperatures; how then do these biomolecules maintain their structure and function? (...) Further, the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) accelerates with temperature, implying higher oxidative stresses in the mitochondrion than generally appreciated. Herein, it is proposed that mitochondrial heat shock proteins (particularly Hsp70), in addition to their roles in protein transport and folding, protect mitochondrial proteins and DNA from thermal and ROS damage. Other thermoprotectant mechanisms are also discussed. (shrink)