This is a tale of two thinkers across time and space who have been read together but in conventional ways as representing the meeting of the East and the West. I propose instead a different relationship between them, that of hidden relays and realizations, in which one who comes later receives and actualizes a potential in the writings of the one earlier but in implicit ways to avoid the political and theological pitfalls of his times. To draw out this line (...) of transmission requires me to offer a different reading of a famous poem by the one who comes later than that usually proffered. The tale starts with the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal visiting the Mosque of Cordoba during a sojourn at Spain in 1933 and writing a lyrical poem (ghazal) of the same name to mark the event. The poem, widely considered a great work, has been well plumbed for its formal qualities and for the themes with which Iqbal has long been associated, such as a new appreciation of the Muslims’ past and harkening to Muslims of the future. If we take into consideration that Iqbal was an avid reader of philosophy and poetry, with an attraction to German thought, then his engagement with the writings of the eighteenth-century thinker Goethe provides a way to rethink the Muslim present within the poem. It becomes a space of possibility for Muslims, historical ruins, and poetical verse, which is neither about bemoaning a lost caliphate nor anticipating Muslim becoming but about Muslim participation in nature as natural beings. (shrink)

This book is about the life and teachings of Abu Bakr Siddiq (may Allah be pleased with Him)- The Frist Caliph of Islam.

Green innovation plays a critical role in mitigating environmental issues and balancing the interaction between economic growth and the natural environment. Drawing on social network and resource-dependence theory, this article scrutinises the relationship between independent director interlocks and corporate green innovation. Using the data from listed Chinese companies from 2010 to 2022, this study finds that independent director interlocks can significantly promote corporate green processes and product innovation. This research further finds that internal corporate contexts can also influence the relationship (...) between independent director interlocks and green innovation. Moreover, the results indicate that corporate environmental commitment positively moderates the relationships between independent director interlocks and corporate green innovation. This study also provides significant implications for firms seeking green innovation performance and for policymakers seeking ways to fulfill the mission of carbon dioxide abatement. (shrink)

On Western philosophy from the point of view of Burmese philosophers.

Within the Ideological Surround Model of the social sciences and religion, so-called “universal” perspectives within the psychology of religion can dialogically clarify and be clarified by the “particular” elements of Muslim commitment. This study developed new scales for operationalizing the experience and behavior of Pakistani Muslims during Ramadan. In a sample of university students, one set of experiential factors apparently facilitated, whereas another interfered with the practices of Ramadan. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Personal Religious Orientations correlated with greater and the Extrinsic (...) Social motivation with lower levels of involvement in Ramadan. Relative to these religious orientation measures, Ramadan experience scales displayed incremental validity by explaining additional variance in Ramadan behavior. Women proved to be more religious than men. At the most general level, these data further supported the dialogic assumptions of the Ideological Surround Model of research in the psychology of religion. (shrink)

Mostly consists of works composed in Tibetan, with translations into Mongolian, on the Soyombo script.

A modern classic of Universal Sufism that explores the mystical dimensions of music-and the musical dimensions of mysticism. Music, according to Sufi teaching, is really a small expression of the overwhelming and perfect harmony of the whole universe-and that is the secret of its amazing power to move us. The Indian Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927), the first teacher to bring the Sufi mystical tradition to the West, was an accomplished musician himself. His lucid exposition of music's divine (...) nature has become a modern classic, beloved not only by those interested in Sufism but by musicians of all kinds. This newly reissued edition includes a foreword by Pir Zia Inayat Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan's grandson and the current leader of the Inayati Order, the widespread Western Sufi organization that Hazrat Inayat Khan founded. (shrink)

A Theory of Universal Democracy empowers cultures and communities across the world to custom design democracy in consonance with their traditional values. For example, the book makes concrete proposals for Muslim countries to democratize their constitutions without accepting Western values and without violating the principles of Islamic law. More importantly, Universal Democracy further develops the idea of Free State, which the author first presented in his previous book, The Extinction of Nation-States (Kluwer, 1996). The proposed fusion of Universal Democracy and (...) Free State is designed to revolutionize the classical theory of government and to offer a new paradigm that accommodates both universality and uniqueness. Scholars, teachers and students of international law, constitutional law, legal theory, and Islamic law will find this book a source of valuable ideas. (shrink)

_Unemployment poses a significant threat to Pakistan's economy alongside other global countries. The current study tries to determine the substantial determinants affecting unemployment in the country. Data was retrieved from the worldwide development indicator (WDI) and worldwide governance indicators (WGI) by employing Time series analysis from 1996 to 2021. Augmented Dicky Fuller and Philips-Perron Unit root test were employed to check the stationary of the data. To figure out the short-run and long-run cointegration among variables, the model Autoregressive distributed lag (...) (ARDL) was applied. Findings indicate that all variables were statistically significant. Inflation, FDI and GDP are negatively affecting unemployment. While population growth, external debt and governance index have a positive association with unemployment. Growing population and external debt are substantial contributors to unemployment, while governance reveals inadequate effectiveness in addressing this challenge. Study recommended to improve FDI and GDP growth in Pakistan to reduce unemployment. Furthermore, govt stability and effective policies are necessary to overcome the problem of unemployment._. (shrink)

Moral foundations theory provides a theoretical framework for understanding the universal and societal aspects of morality. The focus thus far has been on understanding the influence of group categories on moral foundations by controlling for relevant factors and then examining the unique contribution of a single factor. Although this type of analysis was critical to demonstrate the efficacy of the Moral Foundations Theory and Moral Foundations Questionnaire, the current study examines moral responses from the intersection of culture, ethnic identity and (...) gender group membership in the United States and India. Significant results suggest that moral foundations are better understood through a multiple group identity perspective and that the MFQ is equipped to capture differences in moral foundations within subgroups. (shrink)

Aesthetics of art and literature; articles.

Code switching is defined as the use of two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation. It is a general phenomenon in Pakistani society. This research was conducted through a qualitative descriptive method; it produces descriptive data in the form of code switched sentences from editorial of Urdu newspaper. In this research paper I discussed code switching in editorial of an Urdu newspaper. Daily Khabrain Newspaper was selected for this purpose. One week newspapers were collected for research from (...) 1st January, 2020 to 7th January, 2020 to analyze code switching in editorial. In this research paper I discussed code switching in editorial of an Urdu newspaper. Aims and Objectives are; in this research paper I discussed code switching in editorial of an Urdu newspaper. Research Question was what type of code switching is in editorial in Daily Khabrain Newspaper? Daily Khabrain Newspaper from first January 2020 to 7th January 2020 was collected for the analysis of language or code switching and its type in editorial. Through the analysis of data of newspaper it can be concluded that the type of code switching was intra sentential, word code switching and total integrated Urdu. (shrink)

Keyword extraction refers to the process of selecting most significant, relevant, and descriptive terms as keywords, which are present inside a single document. Keyword extraction has major applications in the information retrieval domain, such as analysis, summarization, indexing, and search, of documents. In this paper, we present a novel supervised technique for extraction of keywords from medium-sized documents, namely Corpus-based Contextual Semantic Smoothing. CCSS extends the concept of Contextual Semantic Smoothing, which considers term usage patterns in similar texts to improve (...) term relevance information. We introduce four more features beyond CSS as our novel contributions in this work. We systematically compare the performance of CCSS with other techniques, when implemented over INSPEC dataset, where CCSS outperforms all state-of-the-art keyphrase extraction techniques presented in the literature. (shrink)

: The modern era may be deemed as that of scientific and technologicaldevelopment but peace and harmony among the people remain elusive. Thetwo world wars, Palestinian problem, bombing of world twin towers, invasionof Muslim countries by Americans and allied forces, and the continuous bloodshedding of humanity in one form or another in different parts of the world, allthese horrifying phenomena prove lack of political will on the part of UnitedNations. Had religions in the strife-torn regions played their crucial role, therewould (...) never have occurred bloodshed of the humanity. Judaism, Christianity,and Islam account for the big majority in the world today and have so manythings in common, especially essential human values guided by two universalprinciples, unity of God and unity of man. The Ten Commandments in theTorah, confirmation of the Mosaic Law in the Bible, and reconfirmation of theMosaic and Biblical instructions in the Qur’an still hold the significance forcreating peace and harmony among people of the three creeds. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s theory of ‘discourse ethics’ has been an important source of inspiration for theories of deliberative democracy and is typically contrasted with agonistic conceptions of democracy represented by theorists such as Chantal Mouffe. In this article I show that this contrast is overstated. By focusing on the different philosophical traditions that underpin Mouffe’s and Habermas’s respective approaches, commentators have generally overlooked the political similarities between these thinkers. I examine Habermas’s and Mouffe’s respective conceptions of democratic politics and argue that (...) they cannot be so neatly distinguished from each other. I show that much of Mouffe’s criticism of Habermas’s theory does not hold up to careful scrutiny, and discourse ethics shares important points of similarity with her own democratic theory. By using critical republican theory to show the similarities in their work, I push beyond the agonistic versus deliberative debate, and show that at the heart of both of these approaches is a critical republican emphasis on the need for civic solidarity, on the constructive role of conflict in democratic politics and on the vital importance of self-government. These are crucial ingredients for the regeneration of democracy in contemporary pluralistic societies. (shrink)

L. A. Paul’s Transformative Experience makes the claim that many important life decisions are epistemically and personally transformative in a way that does not allow us to assign subjective values to their outcomes. As a result, we cannot use normative decision theory to make such decisions rationally, or when we modify it to do so, decision theory leads us to choose in a way that is in tension with our authenticity. This paper examines Paul’s version of decision theory, and whether (...) this version in fact admits of the challenge she wants to raise. I focus on her psychological realist view of utilities and beliefs and her notion of rational, authentic preferences as informed by imaginative acquaintance. I argue that Paul fails to engage critically with traditional accounts of decision theory and, on closer inspection, it is not clear that her version of decision theory entails a tension between rational and authentic choice. More importantly, I argue that if her contribution is instead to bring to light the importance of authenticity alongside rational decision-making, the definition she provides of authenticity in fact undermines her argument. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 outbreak, educational institutions were closed, and students worldwide were confined to their homes. In an educational environment, students depend on collaborative learning to improve their learning performance. This study aimed to increase the understanding of social media adoption among students during the COVID-19 pandemic for the purpose of CL. Social media provides a learning platform that enables students to easily communicate with their peers and subject specialists, and is conducive to students' CL. This study addresses the key (...) concept of CL during the COVID-19 pandemic by assessing social media use among students in higher education. The relationship between social media use and students' performance is crucial to understanding the role of social media during a pandemic. This study is based on constructivism theory and the technology acceptance model. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the conceptual model using SmartPLS. The research findings indicate that social media plays an important role during the pandemic because it provides opportunities for students to enhance CL under the aforementioned situations. This study makes noteworthy theoretical and practical contributions. (shrink)

This paper examines incorrect use of oral contraceptives (OCs) in rural Bangladesh by using data from an OC compliance survey. Of the 1031 current users of OCs interviewed, about 13% took their pills out of sequence, while 17% left incorrect intervals between pill packs. Forty per cent of the women reported missing one active pill during the 6 months prior to the survey, and 74% of them took correct action with the missed pill. Of the women who missed two active (...) pills (16%), only 9% took correct action. Multivariate analyses revealed that women support helped protect against taking incorrect action with a missed pill. The fieldworker support is essential to improve the pill-taking behaviour of Bangladeshi women. (shrink)

This paper draws a correlation between processes of research and drawing by analyzing the formation of emotional content and stylistic representation in art. The paper suggests that research process fundamentally involves a systematic development of understanding on a particular issue through a process of rational inquiry. The research outcome or an intellectual understanding is therefore nothing more than a thoroughly investigated form of a hypothesis/ premise/ theory/ idea that has undergone a careful process of scrutiny, comparison and evaluation. On similar (...) grounds, drawing process also involves a systematic development of form in which adjustments are made with the help of nonverbal reasoning till the final form is evolved. The development of form in drawing becomes a systematic rational process but operates at a subconscious plane; reason is substituted by aesthetic sensibility. It is suggested that aesthetic sensibility is a judgment that the human mind tailors through the use of non-verbal criteria of evaluating the beautiful and ugly. The paper develops a theoretical model in the light of above and then applies it to analyze various drawing conventions used by Sadequain in figurative treatment. (shrink)

Our objective is to examine the effects of Big Five personality traits on ethical ideologies using a time-lagged design of 406 employees of higher education institutions in Pakistan. Based on low/high idealism versus relativism, we investigate the conceptual linkage between each of the personality traits and moral philosophy. The results illustrate that extraversion and openness to experience believed on subjectivism moral philosophy, agreeableness believed on situationism, and neuroticism believed on absolutism moral philosophies. In addition, contentiousness believed on exceptionism moral philosophy. (...) Furthermore, managerial implications and future research directions are suggested. (shrink)

This study uncovers a new finding on the impact of CEO tenure on corporate social and environmental performance (CS&EP) in coastal and non-coastal areas of China using fixed-effect panel data regression models. The Two-Stage Least Squares instrumental panel regression is used to validate the veracity of the empirical results. To this end, we extract data from all non-financial Chinese listed firms for the period of 2009 to 2015. By applying the multivariant framework, the findings of the study exhibit a negative (...) and significant effect of CEO tenure on CS&EP. Moreover, this study shows that firms with head offices in coastal areas of China tend to weaken the negative impact of CEO tenure on CS&EP, indicating that CS&EP is more focused in coastal areas of China than non-coastal ones. The findings suggest that the increase in CEOs’ CS&EP in the early years of their service tenure tends to increase their compensation packages. This study is useful for policymakers to link CS&EP with firm economic practices to attain sustainable development objectives. (shrink)

This article deals with the complex personality and legacy of a mysterious saint known both as a Sufī (Ḥājji Ratan) and a Nāth Yogī (Ratannāth) and links his multiple identity as well as the religious movement originated from him, to the specific cultural context of the former North-West Indian provinces. The first part is devoted to Ratan in the Nāth Yogī tradition, the second to his many facets in the Muslim tradition, in connection with his dargāh in the Panjabi town (...) of Bhatinda. The third and main part explores a particular movement, the Har Śri Nāth tradition. Presently centered around a “ dargāh mandir ” in Delhi, this movement, with its two branches issued from Ratan and from his “son” Kāyānāth, was rooted in what is now Pakistan. The influence of location and history has led to many peculiarities which lead us to stress the blurred boundaries between Islam and Hinduism and the essential part played by charismatic figures in the construction of religious identities. (shrink)