The purpose of this study is to explore the linguistic aspects of police FIR using Michael Halliday’s system of transitivity and three-dimensional model of CDA, encompassing the macro-sociological analysis of social practice. FIR is a genre of discourse, referring to a report prepared by the police, which reaches the police station first after the commission of a cognizable offence. FIR needs thorough and careful reading, and very difficult to understand by the people of a particular community. In this regard, the (...) Transitivity system is a medley of six different processes realizing ideational meaning which is further strengthened by CDA, which also helps the people of a community to comprehend complex discourses. In accordance with this study, the researchers used the qualitative approach as a paradigm. They used close reading technique as a strategy and relying on purposive sampling in the selection of data. Further textual analysis is used as a method of analysis. The researcher took five FIRs which were analyzed with respect to the transitivity system. This study reveals that the FIRs conform to five processes out six processes of the transitivity system and the three-dimensional model of CDA. Moreover, this study can be extended to other police reports and common people may easily expand their awareness to understand the language and context of FIRs. (shrink)

Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are intelligent algorithms derived on the principles inspired by human immune system. In this research work, electroencephalography (EEG) signals for four distinct motor movement of human limbs are detected and classified using Negative Selection Classification Algorithm (NSCA). For this study, a widely studied open source EEG signal database (BCI IV - Graz dataset 2a, comprising 9 subjects) has been used. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) are extracted as selected feature from recorded EEG signals. Dimensionality reduction of (...) data is carried out by applying two hidden layered stacked auto-encoder. Genetic Algorithm (GA) optimized detectors (Artificial Lymphocytes) are trained using Negative Selection Algorithm (NSA) for detection and classification of four motor movements. The trained detectors consist of four sets of detectors, each set is trained for detection and classification of one of the four movements from the other three movements. The optimized radius of detector is small enough not to mis-detect the sample. Euclidean distance of each detector with every training dataset sample is taken and compared with optimized radius of detector as a non-self detector. Our proposed approach achieved a mean classification accuracy of 86.39% for limb movements over 9 subjects with a maximum individual subject classification accuracy of 97.5 % for subject number eight. (shrink)

This article’s central aim is to debunk the overly simplified, paradigmatic, and essentialist description of certain types of Muslim sexuality, arguing that such essentialist characterization of Muslims ignores the nonunique social determinants (poverty, education, and sociostructural exclusions) of HIV/aids risk in an increasingly globalized world. To support this argument, we rely on a thematic and comparative analysis. A reoccurring theme in this project is that issues of public health, human rights, justice, and social empowerment are inextricably intertwined. Having established a (...) conceptual framework linking health and human rights, we use a comparative analysis of the cases of Iran, Indonesia, and Bangladesh in an attempt to single out similarities and differences among these cases. All these cases hold a majority Muslim population (at 98%, 86%, and 89%, respectively) and are also representative of the two primary strands of Islam: Shi’a and Sunni. Additionally, each of these states has signed the Declaration of Commitment on HIV/aids and reports the progress of their HIV/aids treatment and prevention efforts to United Nations Program on HIV/aids, the United Nations organization tasked with monitoring and combating the spread of HIV/aids. (shrink)

This is a book review of Dominic McGoldrick's Human Rights and Religion: The Islamic Headscarf Debate in Europe, Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2006, pp. 309, Plus Index.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 32.3-4 (2002) 33-59 [Access article in PDF] Amnesty or Impunity? A Preliminary Critique of the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa (TRC) Mahmood Mamdani The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa was the fruit of a political compromise whose terms both made possible the Commission and set the limits within which it would work. These limits, in turn, defined the space available (...) to the Commission to interpret its terms of reference and define its agenda. This paper takes the compromise legislation that set up the TRC as a historical given and focuses attention on the TRC's interpretation of its terms of reference.The TRC claimed to be different from its predecessors, whether in Latin America or Eastern Europe. It would practice neither impunity nor vengeance. It was therefore determined to avoid two pitfalls: on the one hand, reconciliation becoming an unprincipled embrace of political evil and, on the other hand, a pursuit of justice so relentless as to turn into revenge. To do so, the Commission was determined to address both "victims" and "perpetrators," not just one or the other.This double determination was first written into the interim constitution that paved the way for the legislation that set up the TRC. First, there would be no blanket amnesty. Amnesty would be conditional. It would not be a group amnesty. Every perpetrator would have to be identified individually, and would have to own up to his or her guilt—the truth—before receiving amnesty from legal prosecution. Second, any victim who is so acknowledged would give up the right to prosecute perpetrators in courts of law. Justice for the victim would thus not be criminal but restorative: acknowledgment would be followed by reparations. In sum, individual amnesty for the perpetrator, truth for the society, and acknowledgement and reparations for the victim—this was the pact built into the legislation that set up the TRC.Since the Act did not clearly define "victim," however, the definition of "perpetrator" was unclear as well. The task of defining "victim" and "perpetrator" was left to the Commission and was the single most important decision that determined the scope and depth of the Commission's work. Without a comprehensive acknowledgment of victims of apartheid, there would be only a limited identification of perpetrators and only a partial understanding of the legal regime that made possible the "crime against humanity." From this perspective, the paper identifies three key limitations in the Commission's Report.First, the TRC individualized the victims of apartheid. Though it acknowledged apartheid as a "crime against humanity" which targeted entire communities for ethnic and racial policing and cleansing, the Commission majority was reluctant to go beyond the formal acknowledgment. The Commission's analysis reduced apartheid from a relationship between the state and entire communities to one between the state and [End Page 33] individuals. Where entire communities were victims of gross violations of rights, the Commission acknowledged only individual victims. If the "crime against humanity" involved a targeting of entire communities for racial and ethnic cleansing and policing, individualizing the victim obliterated this particular—many would argue central—characteristic of apartheid. Limiting the definition of harm and remedy to individuals center-staged political activists as victims of apartheid, as indeed happened with the victim hearings. The consequence was to narrow the TRC perspective to a political reconciliation between state agents and political activists, individual members of a fractured political elite, rather than the "national unity and reconciliation" mandated by the legislation that set it up. To pursue its actual mandate, the TRC needed to broaden its perspective: to work for a social reconciliation between perpetrators and victims required that the relationship between the state and the entire South African people be addressed.Second, by focusing on individuals and obscuring the victimization of communities, the TRC was unable to highlight the bifurcated nature of apartheid as a form of power that governed natives differently from non-natives. If the apartheid state spoke the language of rights to... (shrink)

Aversion towards logic is a characteristic feature of the Islamic traditionalists. There is in fact a history of opposition to logic in Islam. As any other areas of history, here also the correct picture will not be achieved unless all of the pieces are put together. In what follows, I am going to shed light on a chapter written by Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī (d. 966/1558), the Twelver Shīʿī Scholar better known as al-Shahīd al-Thānī. The chapter not only shows al-Shahīd al-Thānī’s (...) negative stance towards logic, but also is important because it is a part of less studied Shīʿite traditionalists’ tendencies towards logic; those who are considered as the most influential figures in Iranian seminaries from the Safavid period up until today. (shrink)

Predication is a central theme in Arabic logic that has undergone significant semantic transformation throughout history. This article explores the evolution of predication's scope and meaning across four successive stages. Rather than pinpointing specific historical moments—given that these transitions lack clearly defined beginnings or endings—the focus is on key propositions that enrich our understanding of predication, drawing on the classifications of thinkers such as Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950), Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 1262-65), Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), and Muhammad Ḥusayn (...) Ṭabātabāʾī (d. 1981). The transition from the first to the second stage is characterized by the acceptance of natural propositions (ṭabīʿīya), while subsequent stages involve essential primary (dhātī awwalī) and stronger/weaker (ḥaqīqa-raqīqa) propositions. This progression illustrates a shift from expressing the properties of external objects to articulating the properties of concepts, ultimately culminating in the expression of identity between concepts and external entities. The four stages can be summarized as follows: (1) First-order predication; (2) Second-order predication; (3) Second-order identity; (4) First-order identity. (shrink)

Predication is a central theme in Arabic logic that has undergone significant semantic transformation throughout history. This article explores the evolution of predication's scope and meaning across four successive stages. Rather than pinpointing specific historical moments—given that these transitions lack clearly defined beginnings or endings—the focus is on key propositions that enrich our understanding of predication, drawing on the classifications of thinkers such as Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950), Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. 1262-65), Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), and Muhammad Ḥusayn (...) Ṭabātabāʾī (d. 1981). The transition from the first to the second stage is characterized by the acceptance of natural propositions (ṭabīʿīya), while subsequent stages involve essential primary (dhātī awwalī) and stronger/weaker (ḥaqīqa-raqīqa) propositions. This progression illustrates a shift from expressing the properties of external objects to articulating the properties of concepts, ultimately culminating in the expression of identity between concepts and external entities. The four stages can be summarized as follows: (1) First-order predication; (2) Second-order predication; (3) Second-order identity; (4) First-order identity. (shrink)

For the safe and economical construction of embankment dams, the mechanical behaviour of the rockfill materials used in the dam’s shell must be analyzed. The characterization of rockfill materials with specified shear strength is difficult and expensive due to the presence of particles greater than 500 mm in diameter. This work investigates the feasibility of using an extreme gradient boosting computing paradigm to estimate the shear strength of rockfill materials. To train and validate the proposed XGBoost model, a total of (...) 165 databases obtained from the literature are chosen. The XGBoost model was compared against support vector machine, adaptive boosting, random forest, and K-nearest neighbor models described in the literature. XGBoost beats SVM, RF, AdaBoost, and KNN models in terms of performance evaluation metrics such as coefficient of determination, Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient, and error in the root mean square ratio to the standard deviation of the measured data. The results demonstrated that the XGBoost model has the highest prediction performance with, followed by the SVM model with, RF, the AdaBoost model with and the KNN model with. A sensitivity analysis has been conducted to ascertain the impact of each investigated input parameter. This study demonstrates that the established XGBoost model for estimating the shear strength of rockfill materials is reliable. (shrink)

Rockburst phenomenon is the primary cause of many fatalities and accidents during deep underground projects constructions. As a result, its prediction at the early design stages plays a significant role in improving safety. The article describes a newly developed model to predict rockburst intensity grade using Adaptive Boosting classifier. A database including 165 rockburst case histories was collected from across the world to achieve a comprehensive representation, in which four key influencing factors such as maximum tangential stress of the excavation (...) boundary, uniaxial compressive strength of rock, tensile rock strength, and elastic energy index were selected as the input variables, and the rockburst intensity grade was selected as the output. The output of the AdaBoost model is evaluated using statistical parameters including accuracy and Cohen's kappa index. The applications for the aforementioned approach for predicting the rockburst intensity grade are compared and discussed. Finally, two real-world applications are used to verify the proposed AdaBoost model. It is found that the prediction results are consistent with the actual conditions of the subsequent construction. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to understand how leader humility effectively stimulates follower creativity in the workplace during the coronavirus disease 2019 scenario. Relying on social cognitive and social information processing theories, this study investigates how leader humility cultivates follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. Furthermore, it explores an intervening mechanism of follower self-efficacy and examines a moderating role of leader proactive personality. The hypothesized model is empirically tested by collecting the data from 405 employees and 87 managers working in (...) the banking sector of Pakistan. The results indicate that leader humility is positively related to follower self-efficacy and follower creativity, which improve the organization’s innovation climate and an environment for social sustainability. Follower self-efficacy is also significantly related to follower creativity. The mediation analysis shows that follower self-efficacy mediates the relationship between leader humility and follower creativity. Additionally, leader proactive personality moderates the relation between follower self-efficacy and follower creativity. This study highlights the importance of leader humility for creativity and extends the literature by explaining the role of self-efficacy. Furthermore, the findings may assist the policymakers in how a humble leader heightens employee creativity and social sustainability in COVID-19. (shrink)

Though the current research stream has provided some risk factors for envy at the workplace, little is still known about the drivers and consequences of envy. Based on Vecchio’s theory, this study investigates the ripple effect of the span of supervision on envy. Moreover, it sheds light on the moderating role of meaningful work in their relationship. The data comprising sample size 439 were collected from confrères of four fast food companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Pakistan. Partial Least (...) Square Structural Equation Modeling technique was implemented through SmartPLS 3.3.2 to analyze the measurement and structural relationships. The results demonstrate that a narrow span of supervision will increase work engagement, and reduce instigated incivility via decreasing envy and resource depletion in sequence. Moreover, meaningful work would help regulate the inimical stream of dénouement of envy. Theoretical and practical implications, along with the limitations and future directions, have also been discussed. (shrink)

We develop the concept “political residency” in this essay to highlight both the foundational role of built environments in our political life as well as how access to, and displacement from, built environments is therefore a central feature of political harms and goods. The example of housing and housing displacement is instructive for developing our concept because it is central to most people’s everyday life, yet residential security and stability—having control with other inhabitants over shared, built spaces—is often missing from (...) peoples’ lives, especially those who are most socially and politically vulnerable. (shrink)

BackgroundCOVID-19 break out has created panic and fear in society. A strict kind of lockdown was imposed in Wuhan, Hubei province of China. During home confinement due to lockdown, people face multidimensional issues. The present study explored the psychological impacts of COVID-19 home confinement during the lockdown period and Wuhan’s residents’ attitude toward physical activity.MethodsA cross-sectional online survey was conducted to collect the primary data according to the study objectives. The population was Wuhan residents who were in home confinement. A (...) total of 2280 participant’s reply to the online questionnaire survey and collected data after quantifying the data, about 2200 ; about female, about male, others about, and about were not disclosed their gender participants responses were used for analysis. The collected data were analyzed through appropriate statistical techniques.ResultsAccording to results, H1 is supported with β = −40.793, t = 57.835, p = 0.000, which claimed a negative association between COVID-19 lockdown policy and behavior and attitude. Results for H2 reveals that the COVID-19 lockdown policy have negative influence on emotional control with β = −0.769, t = 46.766, p = 0.000 and it is supported. H3 documented a significant positive relationship between COVID-19 lockdown policy and lockdown period psychological impact, which means lockdown policy, is the main reason to increase the lockdown psychological impact. Further, COVID-19 lockdown policy have negative influence on physical activity and self-belief with β = −0.657, t = 32.766, p = 0.000 and β = −0.620, t = −6.766, p = 0.000 respectively. H6 stated that there is a positive impact of behavior and attitude toward physical activity. The results for H6, behavior, and attitude affecting the physical activity with β = 0.401, t = 10, p = 0.000, which is supported.ConclusionCOVID-19 home confinement created various psychological impacts, negatively affecting the emotional state due to depression and anxiety. Physical activity is the best strategy to manage human nature’s psychological issues, and people’s attitudes were positive toward physical activity during home confinement. However, the lockdown policy also affects physical activity participation negatively, and a sedentary lifestyle prevailed during home confinement. (shrink)

Mullah Jazarī’s Sufi and mystic poetry blends the Kurdish and the Arabic languages under the influence of the Persian and Turkish tradition of poetry. This is manifested as a cross-cultural element in his poetry. This study examines this cross-cultural manifest Aron in Mullah Jazarī’s poetry through his poetical expressions on religion and Sufism. The main strength of his poetry is the blend of religion and Sufism in a symbolic and allegorical portrayal of the concepts of love and beauty of the (...) Divine. There is a dearth of studies on the Divine aspect of Beauty in Mullah Jazarī’s Sufi poetry. This study adopted a historical and descriptive research design to collect and investigate evidence of the cross-cultural manifestation in Mullah Jazarī’s poetry. Both primary and secondary data were used from available sources to fill the literature gap. The study found out that love and beauty are two most fundamental themes of Mullah Jazarī’s poetry, manifested through a symbols and analogies. Due to its mystic approach, the readers are enchanted by the manner in which the poet unites the love and beauty of a woman with the divine mystical experiences. (shrink)

The study aims to unfold the linguistic strategies employed by the former prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan in his speech delivered at the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly in the year 2021. However, the primary objective has been to explore the functions these linguistics strategies performed to convey the target meanings to the global audience. Fairclough 3D model has been employed as the framework of this study. Hence, the population of the study included the multiple speeches (...) delivered by the former prime minister Imran Khan to UNGA throughout his tenure while the researcher selected a particular sample of only one speech given in 2021 through purposive sampling. The findings revealed the constant use of multiple linguistic strategies by the former prime minister to portray the positive image of Pakistan in front of the whole world by highlighting the importance of global peace. (shrink)

Data mining’s primary clustering method has several uses, including gene analysis. A set of unlabeled data is divided into clusters using data features in a clustering study, which is an unsupervised learning problem. Data in a cluster are more comparable to one another than to those in other groups. However, the number of clusters has a direct impact on how well the K-means algorithm performs. In order to find the best solutions for these real-world optimization issues, it is necessary to (...) use techniques that properly explore the search spaces. In this research, an enhancement of K-means clustering is proposed by applying an equilibrium optimization approach. The suggested approach adjusts the number of clusters while simultaneously choosing the best attributes to find the optimal answer. The findings establish the usefulness of the suggested method in comparison to existing algorithms in terms of intra-cluster distances and Rand index based on five datasets. Through the results shown and a comparison of the proposed method with the rest of the traditional methods, it was found that the proposal is better in terms of the internal dimension of the elements within the same cluster, as well as the Rand index. In conclusion, the suggested technique can be successfully employed for data clustering and can offer significant support. (shrink)

Climate change and farming malpractices are harmful to the globe's productive soil and biodiversity, thereby posing a hazard to the survival of future generations. Innovative technologies provide continuous smart conservation solutions, such as regenerative farming, to confront the ongoing climate crisis and maintain biodiversity. Albeit, regenerative farming has the potential to conserve climate change by upgrading the soil's organic materials and reinstating biodiversity leading to carbon attenuation. However, a critical problem remains concerning adapting conservation farming practices that can assist low-income (...) farmers. In this scenario, theoretical-driven communication campaigns are critical for addressing individuals' resistance to innovation. Thereby, this research uncovers the moderating influence of the numerous communication tools in determining the adoption of regenerative farming through diminishing farmers' resistance to innovation. The study employed a cross-sectional design vis-à-vis a survey method. A sample of 863 farmers participated by responding to the self-administrated questionnaire. In line with prior theories, the study's results identified that communication campaigns such as public service advertisements and informative scientific documentaries could reduce the resistance to innovation that increases the attitude toward the adoption of regenerative farming with varied intensity. Besides, informational support also remained a significant contributor in determining the intention to adopt regenerative farming. This specifies that implanting habits of conservation farming requires the initiation of communication campaigns using different media content. These results may be advantageous for policymakers to influence farmers' intentions to adopt regenerative farming. (shrink)

This study uses a qualitative discourse analysis approach to investigate Pakistani female politicians' discursive representation in print and electronic media. Specifically, the research focuses on the narratives and framing strategies employed by the media to construct and portray the public image of these political figures. By employing Corpus-Assisted Diachronic Discourse Analysis (CADDA), the study traces the changes in media discourse over time, uncovering how gender biases, societal norms, and power dynamics shape the representation of women in Pakistani politics. The findings (...) reveal significant trends in gendered framing, highlighting how media portrayal fluctuates between marginalization and recognition of female politicians' contributions, though gender stereotypes remain deeply embedded in these narratives. The findings of this study have important implications for future media reform initiatives, advocating for a more equitable and balanced representation of women in politics. The insights gained can also inform gender advocacy strategies and policy efforts to enhance women's visibility and leadership roles in traditional and digital media. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of rhetoric and rhetorical strategies that are implicit in the standalone sustainability reporting of the top 24 companies of the Fortune 500 Global. We adopt Bormann’s :396–407, 1972) SCT framework to study the rhetorical situation and how corporate sustainability reporting messages can be communicated to the audience. The SCT concepts in the sustainability reporting’s communication are subject to different types of legitimacy strategies that are used by corporations as a validity (...) and legitimacy claim in the reports. A content analysis has been conducted and structural coding schemes have been developed based on the literature. The schemes are applied to the SCT model which recognizes the symbolic convergent processes of fantasy among communicators in a Society. The study reveals that most of the sample companies communicate fantasy type and rhetorical vision in their corporate sustainability reporting. However, the disclosure or messages are different across locations and other taxonomies of the SCT framework. This study contributes to the current CSR literature about how symbolic or fantasy understandings can be interpreted by the users. It also discusses the persuasion styles that are adopted by the companies for communication purposes. This study is the theoretical extension of the SCT. Researchers may be interested in further investigating other online communication paths, such as human rights reports and director’s reports. (shrink)

In computational mathematics, it is a matter of deep concern to recognize which of the given iteration schemes converges quickly with lesser error to the desired solution. Fixed point iterative schemes are constructed to be used for solving equations emerging in many fields of science and engineering. These schemes reformulate a nonlinear equation f s = 0 into a fixed point equation of the form s = g s ; such application determines the solution of the original equation via the (...) support of fixed point iterative method and is subject to existence and uniqueness. In this manuscript, we introduce a new modified family of fixed point iterative schemes for solving nonlinear equations which generalize further recursive methods as particular cases. We also prove the convergence of our suggested schemes. We also consider some of the mathematical models which are categorically nonlinear in essence to authenticate the performance and effectiveness of these schemes which can be seen as an expansion and rationalization of some existing techniques. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented time in history. Surrounding this pandemic are many enormous uncertainties across the globe. Severe consequences have assessed for the incomes of almost 84% of employers and 68% of self-employed who are working and living in countries that are or have went through a phase of closing workplaces. Similarly, the global rate of unemployment is also expected to be increased in the coming years as 54% of employers worldwide are running their businesses in the hardest-hit (...) sectors. All of these clearly show the uneven impact of the Coronavirus crisis which will remarkably compound already present inequalities, difficulties, and vulnerabilities. The economic ramifications for 186 countries under the crunch of the COVID-19 pandemic is also considered tremendous for Pakistan. The core aim of this research was to test a new conceptual framework depicting the ramifications of restructuring processes carried out by management for their organizations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic on an Institute’s reputation as an employer brand. It also investigates the impact of perceived restructuring on a corporate brand promise made by the university or institute from the viewpoints of other key stakeholders and potential job seekers. The current study had proposed four hypotheses and according to the results of Structural Equation Modeling, the direct hypothesis based upon the relationship between restructuring and employer branding has been rejected. This study shows that restructuring and employer branding has a negative and insignificant effect on each other. The second direct hypothesis of the study that measures the effect of restructuring on corporate branding has been accepted. A corporate brand is a kind of a hub and it considers how an institute treats and deals with all of its stakeholders. It is different from employer brand as the perceptions of employees were the main focus. So, according to the results restructuring did not cause massive damage to the overall outlook of the institute. Furthermore, for the purpose of mediation analysis, the maximum likelihood method by bootstrapping was adopted to test the indirect hypotheses of the study. Crowdsourcing was introduced as a mediator in this study with restructuring, employer, and corporate brand all together in one framework, which is the novel aspect of this study. There are two indirect hypotheses and according to the results both of them did not show any insignificant results. Firstly, the study analyzed mediation among crowdsourcing, restructuring, and employer branding which was fully accepted as the results showed full mediation between these constructs. Secondly, the study analyzed mediation among crowdsourcing, restructuring, and corporate branding which was partially accepted as results showed partial mediation between these constructs. (shrink)

This conceptual article aims to shed light on the significance of human spiritual dimension in the process of human resource development (HRD). It suggests spiritual intelligence as the missing link in the process of human development that should be identified and considered as an important factor for developed and morally qualified human resources. Moreover, this article also uncovered the growing interest of spiritual intelligence and its implications for HRD. The interest in spiritual intelligence in the body of knowledge has been (...) established in depth which assures that SI embedded in the fabric of the fields of organizational behaviour and psychology. The article emphasizes the vital influence of SI on bottom line of the organization, whereby, human resources can meaningfully contribute towards organization with improved performance. The conventional strategy of organizations in flourishing their employees is more on enhancement of individual’s knowledge, skills, abilities (Intelligence Quotient) and emotions control (Emotional Quotient). However, despite this immense interest in human capital, organizations tend to fail to have holistic approach of human resource development which eventually affects their performance. Further, the article indicates that without considering spiritual development of employees, the logic (IQ) and emotions (EQ) could not be the only ample source for human beings to perform utmost standard performances. Therefore, based on this, we conclude that the emerging notion of human spiritual quotient and its multi-dimensions must be included in HRD initiatives in order to have holistic mechanism. (shrink)

The cessation of the merchant from paying his commercial debts entails entering into financial hardship that leads to the possibility of declaring bankruptcy, and ruling in the case of bankruptcy, so there must be a competent court that considers all bankruptcy affairs, and in the event that the court announces the bankruptcy decision, this decision is absolutely authoritative, whether in terms of funds or persons, so most legislation at the present time assigns the task of declaring bankruptcy to specialized courts (...) that differed in their rulings, whether in terms of jurisdiction or in terms of The entity that administers the bankruptcy and in terms of the impact obtained from the bankruptcy decision and the parties to appeal those decisions, the origin is that there is only a relative authority of the judgments, so their effects do not occur except for those who were a party to the litigation, and they are related only to the subject matter of the dispute. As for the bankruptcy judgment, its argument is absolute, when the judgment of bankruptcy is issued, the debtor is not considered bankrupt in view of the creditor only who requested the bankruptcy month, but it is also considered bankrupt for everyone and other creditors, even if they are not a party to the bankruptcy lawsuit, and the bankruptcy judgment deals with the entire liability of the merchant, as the bankruptcy month is considered as a general limitation of the trader's funds, whether they are related to his trade or not, and also includes existing (present) funds and future funds. It is possible to exist later as the goal here is to carry out a collective liquidation of the bankrupt's money. However, the bank tries to stand on its feet before carrying out any bankruptcy declaration procedure through the guardianship system or banking reorganization means in order to try to avoid the bank entering into more dangerous procedures of bankruptcy and liquidation and try to avoid declaring bankruptcy. (shrink)

The paper explores the insights of Mahmood Mamdani regarding recent U.S. military actions in Iraq and the U.S. role in setting up a new government there. The majority of the paper does not, however, rely on sources of Mamdani addressing this topic directly. Rather the author consults Mamdani's work on colonialism and imperialism to find clues as to what is at heart wrong with the colonial approach to ruling. Four key attributes of colonialism that also play a role in (...) recent U.S. actions in Iraq are the use of indirect rule, the politicization of indigeneity, economic domination, and the »civilizing mission.« While some advocates of imperialism such as Niall Ferguson think that there can be a good imperial power, Mamdani's analysis leads to a different conclusion. In Mamdani's early works we find that colonialism always sows the seeds of its own destruction; this insight is applied to the current Iraq situation as a cautionary tale. (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)

This article explores the work of the influential poststructuralist and postcolonial anthropologist Saba Mahmood. Mahmood’s work in anthropology adopts an Asadian and Butlerian approach, particularly in the seminal Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. In this work, Mahmood critically interpellates the categories of ‘Western’ secular feminism through an exploration of the lives of pious Muslim women of Salafi orientations in Cairo in Egypt. Mahmood’s work constitutes an important intervention at a point in (...) time when secular feminist discourses are increasingly instrumentalized across the political spectrum in anti-Muslim discourses in the ‘Western’ world and in Europe. I argue, however, that in wanting to use the understandings and practices of pious Muslim women in Egypt in order to critique Western secular feminism, Mahmood fails to pose critical questions about the historicity of these practices and understandings, and lends her analysis to a form of cultural relativism which offers few prospects for a way forward for feminism. (shrink)

This article analyses how recent critiques of secularism in political philosophy and cultural anthropology might productively be combined and contrasted with each other. I will show that Jürgen Habermas' postsecularism takes insufficient account of elementary criticisms of secularism on the part of anthropologists such as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. However, I shall also criticize Saba Mahmood’s reading of secularism by arguing that, in the end, she replaces the secular–religious divide with a secularity–piety divide; for example, in her (...) reading of Nasr Abu Zayd’s secular Islamic hermeneutics. This inhibits the use of her framework of analysis for a criticism of a problem central to Habermas' postsecularism, namely that it remains focused on specific intensities of belief. I shall then argue that, combined with the anthropological critiques of the secular, the political-historical nature of the fanaticism–piety–violence nexus should be integrated into political philosophical debates on secularism and postsecularism. (shrink)

This article reviews the common models of pious women's agency in the literature with respect to pious feminist perceptions in Turkey, and calls for a relational approach to subjectivity and autonomy. After critically assessing individualistic models of pious women's autonomy as well as the main theoretical tenets of Saba Mahmood's landmark study on the women's piety movement in Egypt, I argue that previous models cannot fully explain the second stage of pious subjectivity-formation in the pious feminist narratives in Turkey, (...) which combines habituation with informed choice. In the intersection of applied theory and ethnographic empirical research, my study posits the need for a relational reformulation of these common models that can account for self-constitutive engagement with multiple discursive traditions, and the importance of complex and interrelated webs of relationships. I suggest that Jennifer Nedelsky's relational self and relational autonomy and Kenneth Gergen's relational multi-being might provide a starting point for such an approach. (shrink)

This response draws on Saba Mahmood's work on Muslim subjectivities in order to consider how Stalnaker's conceptualization of virtue might be applied to non-Confucian sources. I argue that when applied cross-culturally, Stalnaker's revised definition of “skillful virtue” raises normative and metaethical questions about what counts as a skill versus a mere bodily practice, the process by how skill is acquired, and how we can both allow for the ambiguity of skills and continue to make constructive arguments about them.

The general scholarship on armed conflict in Manipur, India, ignores the experiences of women as agents. Feminist scholarship counters this tendency, revealing women's everyday responses to the violence that constrains them. However, this scholarship often fails to be intersectional, and it lauds every instance of women's agency without evaluating it in terms of its ability to build peace. Employing Kimberlé Crenshaw's underused distinction between structural and political intersectionality and Saba Mahmood's concept of agency, I analyze my field research conducted (...) with women's peacebuilding groups in Manipur in 2014 and 2015. Using structural intersectionality, I first describe the qualitatively different experiences of women peacebuilders living at different social locations. Using political intersectionality as a normative tool, I then show that ethnic and religious hierarchies often disrupt women's attempts to build peace. Interethnic peacebuilding groups that rely on gender-based solidarity tend to privilege the experiences of the women coming from the majority ethnic group. Other peacebuilding groups, bound by ethnicity, often distrust and resent women who come from different ethnic enclaves. I argue that women's peacebuilding agency must aim at an inclusive justpeace if it is to succeed. We should evaluate agency, rather than glorifying all instances of women's responses to violence. (shrink)

ANALYZED THROUGH THE WORK OF FEMINIST AND QUEER THEORIST JUDITH Butler, anthropologist Saba Mahmood, and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, motherhood complicates theories of performativity that separate sex from gender and that equate women's agency with progressive politics. Motherhood should be understood as performative, that is, entailing self-reflective agency but not entirely separable from women's bodies. While motherhood may be manipulated to support patriarchal institutions, experiences of motherhood also inspire fresh interpretations and critiques of anthropocentric Christian theology and Muslim religious texts. (...) Given the political dimensions of motherhood, the appearance of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin as prominent politicians attests to the variety of performativity and the need to protect women's agency. (shrink)

This paper examines the temporality of agency in Judith Butler's and Saba Mahmood's writing. I argue that Mahmood moves away from a performative understanding of agency, which focuses on relations of signification, to a corporeal understanding, which focuses on desire and sensation. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze's reading of Henri Bergson, I show how this move involves a changed model of becoming: whereas Butler imagines movement as a series of discontinuous beings, in Mahmood's case, we get an understanding (...) of becoming. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 253—278. A Sense of French Politics Politics itself is not the exercise of power or struggle for power. Politics is first of all the configuration of a space as political, the framing of a specific sphere of experience, the setting of objects posed as "common" and of subjects to whom the capacity is recognized to designate these objects and discuss about them.(1) On April 14, 2011, France implemented its controversial ban of the niqab and burqa , commonly (...) referred to as the Islamic veil, in public places. On the coattails of the 2004 prohibition of religious artifacts, including the less concealing hijab or Islamic headscarves, in schools, the veil ban sparked equal outrage across both political and theological spectra, and many on both sides of the debate were quick to inquire about enforcement. As Steven Erlanger reports, “The police do not have the authority under the law to remove full veils, only to fine or require citizenship lessons for those who violate the new law.”(2) While the legal and social implications of this interdiction are ripe for study, the reprisals for breaking the law, notably compulsory citizenship classes, illuminate the strategic governmentality underlying the French government's targeting of the Muslim community, particularly those elements it considers affiliated with fundamentalist factions and/or terrorist organizations, if only through fashion—an integral component of French citizenship. Indeed, in allowing the (fashion) police to mandate instructional courses in citizenship for offenders, France implies that any Muslim choosing to wear the niqab or burqa , perhaps even for those who are already citizens, must not be aware of the subtle nuances of dress indicative of the French citizenry within public space. Furthermore, the degree of instruction requisite to citizenship, which clearly can and must be updated as the state sees fit, cements the imagined relation between citizens and states within the discourses on the veil ban. As Sharma contends, “Concepts of citizenship are the ideological glue that bonds the nation to the state. Citizenship provides the legal framework through which the state performs its role as ruler for the nation.”(3) Speaking for/as the state, French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in a 2009 presentation before members of the government and other citizens that the burqa “is not welcome on the territory of France.”(4) Although there is nothing unique, especially recently, about a nation-state taking extreme measures to guard itself against what it deems to be threats to its sovereignty, the way in which the ongoing discourses on hijab have (d)evolved, which coincide with recent pronouncements by governmental leaders in Germany, Britain, and France that policies of multiculturalism have “failed,”(5) points toward nationalist reterritorializations, which is also to say physical and ideological re-appropriations, of public space within democratic milieux, which remain predicated upon the mediation of spaces. As Panagia deduces from Rancière, “Democracy […] is not an institutional form of government […], but an appearance whose visibilities and audibilites arise out of the dissonant blur of the everyday.”(6) Ultimately, the veil ban represents a calculated move to regulate the every day, which is to say the micropolitics of, that which is visible and invisible within French society, which makes it nothing short of a struggle to manage (the sensation of) bodies. Re-situating the political within the context of sense, Rancière argues that the fundamental essence of politics lies within the distinction between consensus and dissensus , and whereas most consider politics proper as fundamentally concerned with the fluid operations of the state— consensus , Rancière actually locates the political within events that disrupt the normative sensory order of things— dissensus . He explains, “Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”(7) This reformulation of politics centers on agency and, albeit perhaps unintended, representationality and offers a useful formulation for spatializing the discourses surrounding the Islamic veil, which are mired within seemingly senseless policies and practices of objectification. Instituting a normative “regime of visibility,” the French veil ban encapsulates the political economy of agency, now both mediated and representational, under the rule of nationalist governmentalities in increasingly transnational contexts.(8) Adjudicating presence within public space signals a concern with the sensory aspects of agency itself—what Rancière terms the “distribution of the sensible,” which is “a matrix that defines a set of relations between sense and sense: that is, between a form of sensory experience and an interpretation which makes sense of it.”(9) To be concerned with sense is to focus upon the body, and this somatic repositioning of the (fashionable) citizen within the territory of the state augurs the resurgence of nationalist bio-politics within Europe, since, as Hage explicates, “Nationalism, before being an explicit practice or a mode of classification, is a state of the body. It is a way of imagining one's position within the nation and what one can aspire to as a national.”(10) The French government's attempt to make (bodily) sense of public space for its citizens by and through policies aimed against a burqa-clad Muslim minority, which might only apply to “less then 400 to fewer than 2,000” women(11), reveals the necessary, yet mercurial, transmutation of public space into national space through bio-political strategies of sense-making, which, as Hage observes, denotes that “nationalists perceive themselves as spatial managers.”(12) At the center of this concern over public space is the equally contentious dimension of governing female Islamic identity, which has become one of the main critiques levied against Islam from outsiders who view the veil in its various forms as a clear sign of the religion's actual and symbolic violence against women, even if such critiques remain ensconced within nationalist discourses. As Halim and Meyers argue, “Although Western news media may focus their coverage of Muslim women on the debate over whether and the extent to which the veil may by oppressive to the women who wear it, they have exhibited little interest in the physical oppression of violence against women in Islamic countries.”(13) While it falls outside of the scope of this analysis to arbitrate all of the dimensions of this debate, understanding some of the issues related to female identity and hijab within public space are crucial to this study. As these topics are extraordinarily complex, even and perhaps especially within the Muslim community, it is necessary to provide some context concerning the value, purpose, and meaning of the Islamic veil, which has a rich and arduous history. The Art of the Veil At present, there are only two countries, Iran and Saudi Arabia, that require women to wear hijab , which is a decidedly problematic term and concept whose locus is itself caught within a struggle of sensation. Noting the strategic reterritorialization of the term, Berger explains: The choice of the name, hijab , now widely adopted to designate the “Islamic veil,” it itself interesting, although the semantic shift it operates is not directly commented upon by its users. Although the design (both the cut and the symbolic function) of the hijab and the Iranian chador are indeed the same, as opposed, for instance, to the traditional Algerian haik , the word hijab has come to replace the term chador popularized by the Iranian revolution, as a properly Arabic (hence Koranic) designation. This discursive shift points to the successful reclaiming of the national revolution in Iran by a transnational pan-Islamic movement, whose language of reference can only be Koranic Arabic.(14) While the hijab is certainly a point of contention within various countries dealing with immigrant Islamic populations (of which France has the largest in Europe as part of its colonial legacy in Algeria), it is clear that the veil is a historically contextualized artifact of Muslim identity with a variety of manifestations, even as forces outside of and within Islam seek to codify its actual and symbolic value. Ultimately, the varieties of hijab , including the full-faced burqa and niqab , are complex assemblages of meaning that speak to the multitudinous flows of Islamic identities over time and space. As Gökariksel and McLarney observe, “Wearing a certain style of veil may simultaneously be a disciplinary practice crucial to the cultivation of piety (Mahmood 2005; Gokariksel 2009) and a gendered performance of social distinction in terms of class, taste, and urbanity (White 1999; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Gokariksel and Secor 2009) or of ethnicity and race (Dwyer 1999).”(15) The ideological marketplace from which the varieties of hijab ebb and flow serves both as a reflection of the ever-present materiality and dynamic functionality of spiritual economies, which are derivative of the equally ubiquitous flows of transnational capital driving agency and representationality within our historical moment. Keeping these dual, yet deeply interconnected, capital ecologies as the site of exploration for how the veil is represented within public space, one might begin to sense what lurks behind such veiled agendas. Examining the symbolic and representational nature of the Islamic “veil” in its various forms, this project situates the decidedly political contestations of public space at stake in the French ban alongside recent condemnations of multiculturalism as calculated efforts to re-distribute the sensible so as to valorize national identity within increasingly transnational and globalized socio-economic spaces, which collapse exchange values between distinct, yet interwoven, economies of (cultural/material/spiritual) capital. As the discourses on the veil rely upon representational imag(in)ings, it seems fitting to explore the political economy and art of the veil through the phenomenon of street art, which, much like hijab , is a complex assemblage of meaning of sensation mired in representationality and capital exchange. As street artists have taken up hijab in various forms, the movement offers a lens with which to situate critical responses to the veil debate across both spiritual and material economies. Situating this street art both aesthetically and historically, Lewisohn explains, “'Street art' is a sub-genre of graffiti writing and owes much to its predecessor. Though there is a good deal of crossover between the genres, they are distinct and separate in their own right.”(16) Evolving out of the graffiti explosion of the late 1970's and 1980's, street art broke the unspoken rules of the artistic underground by challenging and re-examining one's sensory experience of art in public space by experimenting with both content and form in ways that harken back to the Situationist International, which as a collective challenged one's experience of urban space through various media and experiential phenomena. Again, Lewisohn observes, “It's important to note street art's break with the tradition of the tag, and its focus on visual symbols that embrace a much wider range of media than graffiti writers would use.”(17) From stencils to prints and murals to one-liners, street artists developed a reputation for critical social and political commentary, and while it is certainly the case that not all street art is intentionally political, in challenging the normative “regime of visibility,” as Rancière puts it, of public space, street artists—even if unconsciously—call into question the common sensory experience of the politics underlying the formation of (nationalist) space.(18) Indeed, Rancière refers to the partisan sensory managers as “police,” who ultimately forge “the rules governing the circulation of appearances, of their visibility and audibility, and the proper distribution of bodies therein.”(19) As such, one can sense that street art's relationship with the police is tenous for a variety of reasons. Writing about his own experience as a street artist, Shepard Fairey observes, “With street art, there's no committee deciding whether I can put my work up on the street, there's no censorship, and I have total freedom of expression, and that concept of freedom is expressed just by using the street as a medium.”(20) As Fairey and other street artists demonstrate, the medium, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, is the most glaring aspect of street art's message, and even as it now finds itself in galleries and usurped by private collectors, the ethos of the movement remains relavent to politics as it is, first and foremost, concerned with the configuration and experience of space. Just as examining the punishments for breaking the veil ban can map the terrain of French politics, a representational genealogy of street artist's deployment of hijab and female Muslim identity can assist in mining the depths of public space as a site of bio-political control and contestation in light of recent events in France and the rising tide of anti-multiculturalist rhetoric across Europe, even though the Islamic presence there is radically heterogenous. Using the work of Shepard Fairey, Princess Hijab, br1, and Banksy, this paper sets out to answer a number of key questions concerning the deployment of hijab, and female Islamic identity in particular, within street art as a movement now integral to and critical of the economies of exchange underlying global capitalism, which as a force of influence cannot be underestimated as a driver in the resurgence of nationalist biopolitical governmentalities. Although there exists a litany of artists to choose from, the aforementioned quartet of designers integrate hijab into their work in a seminal and critical fashion, and all have been working with the veil in some way prior to the French ban, which grants some additional context to their usage of it as a symbol in regards to the breakdown of multiculturalism across Europe, even if unconsciously. Although each artist depicts various amalgamations of hijab in their respective corpus, they share common tropes that raise significant questions concerning the veil debate, namely: what are the conditions of possibility for hijab to become a marker of Islamic identity within public space? How can we make sense of the representational topologies within street art's utilization of the hijab and female Islamic identity in light of the French ban? How might these aesthetic imag(in)ings simultaneously inhabit and combat normative discourses concerning hijab , multiculturalism, female Islamic identity, and public space? With these considerations as a backdrop, it is first necessary to outline more fully the hijab as a representative marker of female Islamic identity. The (Veiled) Writing on the Wall

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This article addresses dilemmas of agency for feminism through reflections on social psychological research on the role of representations in the construction of identity by Muslim women. Engaging first with Saba Mahmood’s account of religious subjectivities in Politics of Piety, the author argues that feminist research requires a social conception of agency that addresses dialogical dynamics of representation and identity. Drawing on research concerning veiling and identity among Muslim women in the UK and Denmark, the author shows how a (...) social conception of agency may be elaborated through the analysis of how competing representations of gender are negotiated in the self–other encounter. The author argues that a dialogical approach to researching identity in context defies blunt political judgement while shedding light on the intersecting socio-cultural forces and relations of power that engage processes of resistance and re-presentation. (shrink)