Human rights in Islam is a complex issue on which influential Muslims have expressed diverse perspectives. This article identifies the different views held by several scholars, and examines the way in which those views are reflected or contested in contemporary Islamic discourses and particularly the discourses of Saudi scholars. It also argues that different opinions are not necessarily based on a specific Islamic sect but on the perception of international norms and on the readings and interpretation of Islamic texts as (...) well. (shrink)

In search of principles of health care in Islam -- Health and suffering -- Beginning of life -- Terminating early life -- Death and dying -- Organ donation and cosmetic enhancement -- Recent developments -- Epilogue.

Gaze following occurs automatically in social interactions, but the degree to which gaze is followed depends on whether an agent is perceived to have a mind, making its behavior socially more relevant for the interaction. Mind perception also modulates the attitudes we have towards others, and deter-mines the degree of empathy, prosociality and morality invested in social interactions. Seeing mind in others is not exclusive to human agents, but mind can also be ascribed to nonhuman agents like robots, as long (...) as their appearance and/or behavior allows them to be perceived as intentional beings. Previous studies have shown that human appearance and reliable behavior induce mind perception to robot agents, and positively affect attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. What has not been investigated so far is whether different triggers of mind perception have an independent or interactive effect on attitudes and performance in human-robot interaction. We examine this question by manipulating agent appearance (human vs. robot) and behavior (reliable vs. random) within the same paradigm and examine how congruent (human/reliable vs. robot/random) versus incongruent (human/random vs. robot/reliable) combinations of these triggers affect performance (i.e., gaze fol-lowing) and attitudes (i.e., agent ratings) in human-robot interaction. The results show that both ap-pearance and behavior affect human-robot interaction but that the two triggers seem to operate in iso-lation, with appearance more strongly impacting attitudes, and behavior more strongly affecting per-formance. The implications of these findings for human-robot interaction are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter poses the quiestions: how do Muslims solve their ethical problems in biomedicine? Are there any distinctive theories or principles in Islamic ethics that Muslims apply in deriving moral judgments in bioethics? Is the sacred law, the Shari'a, which is regarded as an integral part of Islamic ethics, the only recognized source of ethical judgments in Islam? What is the role of human experience/intuitive reasoning in moral justification? This chapter explores these questions and their answers.

This essay clarifies my stance on the distinctive facets of Christianity as a sole paradigm for a liberal interpretation of Islam in the area of human rights. It attempts to demonstrate the limits of applying a comparative ethics methodology without a firm grounding in historical studies that reveal the contextual aspects of the debate whether any religion, including Islam, is incapable of providing cultural legitimacy to the secular Universal Declaration of Human Rights among Muslim traditionalists. In the absence of the (...) “Church,” Islam has congruent scriptural resources to offer a distinctly enhanced system that works as an alternative to the uncritical secularization of moral-spiritual scriptural resources. Critical evaluation of the political history of Christianity and Islam reveals internal hermeneutical dynamics that lead to accommodation with the demands of secularization to advance human rights across cultures and nations. (shrink)

Presenting an outline of the version of Islamic ethics that is embedded in the textual legacy of the Islamic legal tradition, Abdulaziz Sachedina argues that this juridical ethics is an important, even dominant form of ethics in modern Islam. He notes that this form of ethics has been challenged by modernity and examines the variety of ways in which legal ethical thinkers have reacted to these challenges.

The paper undertakes to investigate the Shī`ī practice of prudential concealment (taqīya) as a source of both quietism and political activism. The practice functioned as a strategy of survival for the Shī `ī minority living under hostile Sunni regimes. Although Sunni ulema criticized the practice as dissimulation and, hence, morally wrong, ironically they too adopted the strategy when encountering autocratic and oppressive Sunni regimes that suffocated the right of the people to voice their demand for just treatment. The article demonstrates (...) that the strategy created a specific sphere of existence for the Shī `ites, known as the “abode of prudential concealment,” which incrementally allowed Muslim opposition to engage in underground activity for regime change and for a political transformation of the public order that accorded with Islamic ideals. In light of Muslim political theology providing doctrinal resources for Muslim societies to work toward the common good in the public sphere, this latter space functions as a means of critical evaluation of the existing autocratic governments in the Muslim world, prompting political action, however underground. The major conclusion of the paper is that although the practice was developed by the Shī `ī minority living under intolerable political conditions, at different times under unbearable political conditions and the absence of democratic processes, it has provided Muslims a strategy to regroup and engage in political transformation. (shrink)

With the growth of Muslim economies, both at the national and international levels, the issue of riba (interest, usury) poses great difficulties. The charging or receiving of riba has been forbidden in Islam, which presents a major problem to financial institutions that charge interest. Muslim legal scholars belonging to all schools of legal thought have reinterpreted scriptural sources to accommodate drastic economic changes; practical considerations have forced Muslim groups, both of Sunni and Shi'ite persuasion, to justify interest-based banking and other (...) institutions of finance. As a matter of religion, the status of interest is far from resolved. However, within the legal tradition, there are ethical principles like maslahah (public good) and la darar wa la dirar (no harm, no harassment) that will determine the future direction of a Muslim search for a morally responsible economy. (shrink)

In reliability engineering and lifetime analysis, many units of the product fail with different causes of failure, and some tests require stress higher than normal stress. Also, we need to design the life experiments which present methodology for formulating scientific and engineering problems using statistical models. So, in this paper, we adopted a partially constant stress accelerated life test model to present times to failure in a small period of time for Gompertz life products. Also, considering that, units are failing (...) with the only two independent causes of failure and tested under type-I generalized hybrid censoring scheme the data built. Obtained data are analyzed with two methods of estimations, maximum likelihood and Bayes methods. These two methods are used to construct the point and interval estimators with the help of the MCMC method. The developed results are measured and compared under Monte Carlo studying. Also, a data set is analyzed for illustration purposes. Finally, some comments are presented to describe the numerical results. (shrink)

Verse work on ethics; with prose commentary.

Critical edition of classical Sanskrit commentary on the Yogasūtra of Patañjali.

Exhaustive study of the philosophy of Rāmāyaṇa, classical Sanskrit work by Vālmīki.

Eh bien ! Tu es quoi toi, dit le Pigeon ? Je vois bien que tu essaies de me raconter des histoires ! Je. Je suis une petite fille, dit Alice, pas très sûre d'elle car tous les changements qu'elle avait subis ce jour-là lui revenaient à l'esprit. En voilà une bonne, vraiment ! dit le Pigeon d'un ton plus que dédaigneux. Les Aventures d'Alice au Pays des merveilles. En juin 1992 s'est tenu à Amsterdam, dans les deux universités, le (...) premier colloque international sur les jeunes filles.. (shrink)

Eh bien! Tu es quoi toi, dit le Pigeon? Je vois bien que tu essaies de me raconter des histoires! Je. Je suis une petite fille, dit Alice, pas très sûre d'elle car tous les changements qu'elle avait subis ce jour-là lui revenaient à l'esprit. En voilà une bonne, vraiment! dit le Pigeon d'un ton plus que dédaigneux. Les Aventures d'Alice au Pays des merveilles. En juin 1992 s'est tenu à Amsterdam, dans les deux universités, le premier colloque international sur (...) les jeunes filles... (shrink)

Prolonged conflict on the southern Thailand border still continues, especially in four provinces – Pattani, Yala, Narathivat, and Satun. These four provinces are the home base of the Malay-Muslim community. However, conflicts have almost never occurred in the province of Phattalung, particularly in the region called ‘Two Religion Community Life’. This is because people can find solutions to every problem using cultural negotiation. This research aims to describe the results of cultural negotiation and social learning between Muslims and Buddhists in (...) solving daily life problems. The most important data collection techniques are in-depth interviews and observations. There are five critical informants chosen purposively: Islamic and Buddhist religious leaders, community leaders, school principals, and community members in the Tamot and Khaocan regions. The results found that there are several forms of cultural negotiation in Phattalung, including annual ritual prayers conducted together by Muslims and Buddhists, agreement on how to slaughter animals to be served during ceremonies, tradition of food bartering, and agreement on animal caring. Furthermore, social learning to preserve the results of the negotiations is carried out through the establishment of voluntary medical groups whose members consist of young men and women from the Muslim and the Buddhist community, sports and arts activities, commemorations of national holidays, and conducting annual religious rituals at the same place and time. This study also found four important aspects to strengthen the social learning in multireligious society – moderate values derived from their respective religious teachings, moderate values taught by the country, the existence of trust among citizens, and win-win solutions to the emerging problems. Contribution: This research promotes the world that there is a heterogeneous religious community in the Phattalung province, Thailand which has a building construction of tolerance and harmony of locality namely the ‘Two Religion Community Life’ by preserving the cultural negotiation values through social learning. (shrink)

The Eurozone Crisis is not just a monetary and economic challenge. It is as well the first tremendous challenge of the European Community and as well the national institutions and constitutions of the member states not only within the Eurozone. On one side the European Commission, the European Parliament and the ECB with its endeavours to safeguard and stabilize the single currency EURO within the Eurozone, to support the suffering countries in the south with its struggle against speculative hedge funds, (...) to render financial relief measures to those countries and its financial industry. Irrespective the fact governments and citizens within that countries, less appear to appreciate or honor that measures as efficient help to stabilize but condemn as form of European paternalism and patronage. On the other hand the countries and its citizenship especially in the north of the Eurozone to set a stop sign to the EU and the ECB. Therefore they stress the Maastricht criteria and cite the Art 125 of the TEU, which prohibits one nation to stand for or to be liable for the Government debts of another nation. Especially in the German perspective the demarcation line appears to run along between the European Commission, European Central Bank and European Court on the European side and the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the Bundesbank on the national German side. Each of the institutions feels to be bound to its origin functions and principles and save the respective constitution and the task rendered by that constitution. For a better understanding it is essential to get aware of and to reinforce the constitutional role which the Grundgesetz awarded to the Bundesverfassungsgericht and the Bundesbank and the German citizenship placing their confidence in these institutions. Es soll konkret das Verhältnis zur Nichtbeistandsklausel No-Bail-out Klausel Art 125 AEUVertrag, den Europäischen Fiskalpakt / dem ESFS, ESM / dem OMT-Programm der EZB, möglichen Entwicklung des EU zur Haftungs- und Transferunion mit einem zukünftigen Haftungsautomatismus der Mitglieder, der Unterscheidung von gemeinsamer Währungspolitik und nationaler Wirtschaftspolitik, der drohenden Vergemeinschaftung von Staatsschulden einzelner EU-Länder, die Budgethoheit des nationalen Parlaments als freie Entscheidung über die Verwendung des nationalen Haushaltes untersucht werden. Mit allen diesen Fragen mussten sich das höchste Deutsche und Europäische Gericht in jüngster Vergangenheit intensiv beschäftigen. (shrink)

"The problem of juridicial and political authority during the occultation of the Twelfth Imam is of central importance to Shi'ism. This is an exhaustive and judicious treatment of the theme, based on intimate and critical acquaintance with the primary sources. Another major contribution to Shi'ite studies by Abdulaziz Sachedina."--Hamid Algar, University of California at Berkeley.

Comparative study of the aesthetic ideas of Ram Chandra Shukla, 1884-1941, Hindi critic, Benedictus de Spinoza, 1632-1677, and Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, philosophers.

A comparative study of the Sikh philosophy and other religion.

Study of the works of Śrīrāma Śarmā Ācārya, 1911-1990, Hindu philosopher.

In this article, the notion of broken bodies is explored in relation to the African body and the history of colonialism in South Africa. This exploration will be rooted in a retelling of the story of the woman, Saartjie Baartman. In this retelling, the product of colonialism comes to the fore in a haunting. Jacques Derrida’s use of the concept of Hauntology is employed to investigate the ethical demand the spectre makes of us. With the help of the African concept (...) of ubuntu and African women’s theologies, we then seek to find healing and restoration for the broken bodies. (shrink)

Vedanta philosophy as propunded by Śaṅkarācārya and Rāmānuja, 1017-1137; a study.