Un grand corpus sur l'oeuvre de Derrida s'est accumulé depuis la parution de ses trois grands livres en 1967. Aujourd'hui, des ouvrages et des articles se focalisent sur des aspects différents de son oeuvre. Néanmoins, les recherches sur la question de la technique chez Derrida sont encore rares. Cet ouvrage vise à penser la question de la technique dans son rapport profond avec l'écriture. La pensée de Derrida ne permet pas la secondarisation de la technique par rapport à une prétendue (...) originarité pré-technique. Elle ouvre une voie à repenser la technique au-delà de l'opposition nature/technique qui s'accompagne des oppositions telles que présence/non-présence, propre/impropre ou original/copie. Il s'agit d'une nouvelle pensée de la technique. (shrink)

Fıkıh literatüründe sünnet önemli bir yere sahiptir. Çünkü fıkhın temeli Hz. Peygamber tarafından atılmış ve fıkhın gayesini en iyi bilen ve uygulayan kendisi olmuştur. Bu sebeple şer’î amelî konularda hüküm istinbatı için müctehid imamlar, Kur’an’dan sonra sünnete başvurmuşlardır. Bununla birlikte müctehid imamlar, Hz. Peygamber’den gelen rivayetlerin bazılarını kabul ve onlarla amel etmede görüş ayrılıkları yaşamışlardır. Görüş ayrılıklarının temelinde ise sünnetin ekseriyetini teşkil eden haber-i vâhid vardır. Çünkü haber-i vâhid yapısal açıdan yalan, yanlışlık ve vehm ihtimali bulundurması yanında doğruluğu zan ile (...) sabit olması sebebiyle özellikle Hanefî usûlcülerine göre bilgi ifade etmez. Bu yönüyle haberi vâhid, mütevâtir haber kadar kuvvetli ve bağlayıcı olmayıp zannî bir bilgi ifade eder. Bu doğrultuda haber-i vâhid, “bilgi gerektirmez, zan gerektirir” şeklinde ifade edilmiştir. Bu ifade bağlamında şöyle bir soru ortaya çıkmaktadır: Haber-i vâhid, bilgi ifade etmediği halde, onunla amel edilmesi mümkün müdür? Bu sorudan hareketle zan ifade eden haber-i vâhidin hücceti ve onunla amel edilmesinin mümkün olup olmadığını, mezheplerin haber-i vâhide yaklaşımlarının nasıl olduğunu ve bu durumun cenaze bahsine ilişkin hükümlere nasıl yansıdığını ortaya koymak amacıyla bu çalışma ele alınmıştır. Dolayısıyla bu çalışmanın konusu, haber-i vâhidin hücceti için mezheplerin ileri sürdüğü farklı şartlar ve bu şartların hükümlere -cenaze namazı özelinde- etkisi ile sınırlıdır. Yöntem olarak öncelikle kavramsal çerçevede haber-i vâhidi tanımlamak, bilgi değerini ortaya koymak ve mezheplerin onunla hücceti noktasında benimsedikleri şartları tespit etmek amacıyla ilgili mezheplerin usûl eserleri incelenmiştir. Daha sonra mezheplerin benimsediği bu usûlî yöntem, cenaze bahsindeki yerini belirlemek üzere ilgili mezheplerin fürû kitapları taranmıştır. Bu metottan hareketle mezheplerin usûlde benimsediği ilkenin fürû meselelerine nasıl yansıdığı, haber-î vâhidin zannî bilgi ifade etmesine rağmen onunla amel etmenin gerekçesi ve cenazeye ilişkin bazı hükümlerde mezheplerin farklı hüküm benimsemelerinin nedeni ortaya konulacaktır. (shrink)

This book discusses Asian medicine, which puts enormous emphasis on prevention and preservation of health, and examines how, in recent decades, medical schools in Asia have been increasingly shifting toward a curative approach. It offers an ethnographic investigation of the scenarios in China and India and finds that modern students and graduates in these countries perceive Asian medicine to be as important as Western medicine. There is a growing tendency to integrate Asian medicine with Western medical thought in the academic (...) curriculum that has led to a gradual decline of Asian medical thought and practices. At the same time, there has been a massive rise in patent drugs, health products and cosmetics being sold under the brand names of Asian medicine or herbal medicine. Most of these drugs and health products do not follow the classical formulas found in the Asian medical texts. The book analyses these texts and concludes that contemporary Asian medicine rarely follows the classical texts, and in fact uses Asian medicine brands to sell Western health products and practices. With a particular focus on the formal and professional sector of Chinese herbal medicine and Indian ayurvedic medicine in urban areas, this book appeals to a broad readership, including undergraduate students and academics as well as non-experts. Md. Nazrul Islam is an Associate Professor in the General Education Office, United International College, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor in the School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia (2015-16) during which time he completed this book manuscript. (shrink)

It is difficult to identify nature with an exact meaning. Depending on circumstances and perspectives the term “nature” has various meanings ranging from spiritual participatory to mechanistic understanding. Having these complexities and ambiguous connotations the current research tries to investigate into some conceptual understanding of nature regarding traditional ideas and modern scientific views. There will also be an endeavor to see nature from a short historical survey. The paper aims to examine these conceptions in the light of environmental sustainability: which (...) understanding of nature seems better to reform the dominating attitudes of humans toward the natural environment? Being critical of conventional and secular meanings of nature, the current paper proceeds to show how an understanding of a different kind can allow humans to behave with their surroundings. In so doing, the present study wants to shed more lights on natural environment, and to add more knowledge to the present discussions of ecological equilibrium. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#69-70; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2021 P 173-188. (shrink)

Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have been practiced in Islamic societies within married couples since their introduction. However, there are divergent views over the issue of third-party donation among Sunni and Shia scholars. This paper illustrates the different perspectives of Shia Muslims surrounding, sperm, egg, and embryo donation and ethical aspects thereof. The study reveals that there are different views regarding sperm, egg, and embryo donation among the Shia religious leaders around the world. Many Shia religious scholars, including the Iranian supreme (...) religious leader Ali Hussein Khamenei allow sperm, egg, and embryo donation with certain conditions. However, the conditions stipulated by Shia religious scholars contradict the ethical and legal practices of sperm, egg, and embryo donation. Regarding sperm and egg donation, they declared that the donor child would inherit from a third-party donor and the commissioning parents would be adoptive parents. Thus, according to them, donor anonymity is impossible. Moreover, the Iranian act on embryo donation did not stipulate the right and responsibilities of the donor child and recipient couples and did not clarify the nature and number of embryos that can be donated and implanted. The paper argues that the lack of laws and guidelines on sperm, egg, and embryo donation raises many ethical problems. Based only on religious rulings, third-party donation has been practiced without foreseeing the well-being and safety of donor children, donors, and recipient couples. (shrink)

Organ transplantation from living related donors in Bangladesh first began in October 1982, and became commonplace in 1988. Cornea transplantation from posthumous donors began in 1984 and living related liver and bone marrow donor transplantation began in 2010 and 2014 respectively. The Human Organ Transplantation Act officially came into effect in Bangladesh on 13th April 1999, allowing organ donation from both brain-dead and related living donors for transplantation. Before the legislation, religious leaders issued fatwa, or religious rulings, in favor of (...) organ transplantation. The Act was amended by the Parliament on 8th January, 2018 with the changes coming into effect shortly afterwards on 28th January. However, aside from a few posthumous corneal donations, transplantation of vital organs, such as the kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, and other body parts or organs from deceased donors, has remained absent in Bangladesh. The major question addressed in this article is why the transplantation of vital organs from deceased donors is absent in Bangladesh. In addition to the collection of secondary documents, interviews were conducted with senior transplant physicians, patients and their relatives, and the public, to learn about posthumous organ donation for transplantation. Interviews were also conducted with a medical student and two grief counselors to understand the process of counseling the families and obtaining consent to obtain posthumous cornea donations from brain-dead patients. An interview was conducted with a professional anatomist to understand the processes behind body donation for the purposes of medical study and research. Their narrative reveals that transplant physicians may be reticent to declare brain death as the stipulations of the 1999 act were unclear and vague. This study finds that Bangladeshis have strong family ties and experience anxiety around permitting separating body parts of dead relatives for organ donation for transplantation, or donating the dead body for medical study and research purposes. Posthumous organ donation for transplantation is commonly viewed as a wrong deed from a religious point of view. Religious scholars who have been consulted by the government have approved posthumous organ donation for transplantation on the grounds of necessity to save lives even though violating the human body is generally forbidden in Islam. An assessment of the dynamics of biomedicine, religion and culture leads to the conclusion that barriers to posthumous organ donation for transplantation that are perceived to be religious may actually stem from cultural attitudes. The interplay of faith, belief, religion, social norms, rituals and wider cultural attitudes with biomedicine and posthumous organ donation and transplantation is very complex. Although overcoming the barriers to organ donation for transplantation is challenging, initiation of transplantation of vital organs from deceased donors is necessary within Bangladesh. This will ensure improved healthcare outcomes, prevent poor people from being coerced into selling their organs to rich recipients, and protect the solidarity and progeny of Bangladeshi families. (shrink)

Hate speech has spread more rapidly through the daily use of technology and, most notably, by sharing your opinions or feelings on social media in a negative aspect. Although numerous works have been carried out in detecting hate speeches in English, German, and other languages, very few works have been carried out in the context of the Bengali language. In contrast, millions of people communicate on social media in Bengali. The few existing works that have been carried out need improvements (...) in both accuracy and interpretability. This article proposed encoder–decoder-based machine learning model, a popular tool in NLP, to classify user’s Bengali comments from Facebook pages. A dataset of 7,425 Bengali comments, consisting of seven distinct categories of hate speeches, was used to train and evaluate our model. For extracting and encoding local features from the comments, 1D convolutional layers were used. Finally, the attention mechanism, LSTM, and GRU-based decoders have been used for predicting hate speech categories. Among the three encoder–decoder algorithms, attention-based decoder obtained the best accuracy (77%). (shrink)

GREAT EMPIRES may come and go, but, like the tides, they leave behind a tangled assortment of treasures and trash. In the case of the British Empire, this included much that one might admire, but also a British Protestant morality that was codified in laws that persist to this day. Section 377 of the colonial Penal Code is a striking example. It classed consensual oral and anal sex as “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” and made it a crime (...) punishable with imprisonment for life. When the British administrators withdrew, they took their soldiers, but left their law books behind. Section 377 was recently repealed in India, but it is still very much on the books in Bangladesh. (shrink)

The impact of culture and religion on sexual and reproductive health and behavior has been a developing area of study in contemporary time. Therefore, it is crucial for people using reproductive procedures to understand the religious and theological perspectives on issues relating to reproductive health. This paper compares different perspectives of three Abrahamic faiths, i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on ARTs. Procreation, family formation, and childbirth within the context of marriage have all been advocated by these three major religions of (...) the world. Judaism permits the use of all assisted reproductive technologies when the oocyte and sperm come from the husband and wife, respectively. The different denominations of Christianity have diverse views on reproductive practices. Although the Vatican does not approve of assisted reproduction, Protestant, Anglican, and other religious groups are free to use it. ARTs are acceptable in Sunni Islam, although they can only be carried out if the couples are married. Shia Islam, however, permits third-party donations to married couples under specific restrictions. This comparison reveals that while the three major world religions utilize assisted reproduction in distinct ways, there are also many comparable aspects of each religion. (shrink)

There is a substantial shortage of organs available for transplantation in Bangladesh. This has resulted in the commodification of organs. This study analyzes the religious, cultural, and legal barriers to organ donation in Bangladesh. It is based on the examination of available literature and primary sources i.e. religious decrees and opinions of religious leaders of faith traditions, and the Bangladesh Organ Donation Act, 1999. The literature was retrieved from databases, such as PubMed, BioMed, and Google Scholar using the key words: (...) organ donation in Islam, organ donation in Bangladesh, organ donation and religions. The study found that although many Islamic scholars accept organ donation, both living and cadaveric, under some conditions, some Bangladeshi Muslim clerics oppose donation. They argue that organ retrieval violates the sanctity of the human body and retrieval of organs may harm a living donor or lead to death, and organ donation may encourage the commercialization of body parts. Both commercialization and harming oneself are considered sins. Thus, the divergent views of Muslim clerics are a major barrier to organ donation among the Bangladeshi Muslims. Cultural and social factors also have a negative impact. Most people desire to be buried with their bodies intact. Although the Bangladesh government promulgated the Bangladesh Organ Donation Act, 1999, and amended it in 2018, it restricted donors and recipients to members of the extended family, which also reduced the donor pool. This study argues that the Muslim Orthodox clerics’ stand against organ donation and other cultural and legal issues are the major obstacles to organ donation in Bangladesh. (shrink)

The theory of rough sets starts with the notion of an approximation space , which is a pair ( U , R ), U being the domain of discourse, and R an equivalence relation on U . R is taken to represent the knowledge base of an agent, and the induced partition reflects a granularity of U that is the result of a lack of complete information about the objects in U . The focus then is on approximations of concepts (...) on the domain, in the context of the granularity. The present article studies the theory in the situation where information is obtained from different sources. The notion of approximation space is extended to define a multiple-source approximation system with distributed knowledge base , which is a tuple , where N is a set of sources and P ranges over all finite subsets of N . Each R P is an equivalence relation on U satisfying some additional conditions, representing the knowledge base of the group P of sources. Thus each finite group of sources and hence individual source perceives the same domain differently (depending on what information the group/individual source has about the domain), and the same concept may then have approximations that differ with the groups. In order to express the notions and properties related with rough set theory in this multiple-source situation, a quantified modal logic LMSAS D is proposed. In LMSAS D , quantification ranges over modalities, making it different from modal predicate logic and modal logic with propositional quantifiers. Some fragments of LMSAS D are discussed and it is shown that the modal system KTB is embedded in LMSAS D . The epistemic logic is also embedded in LMSAS D , and cannot replace the latter to serve our purpose. The relationship of LMSAS D with first and second-order logics is presented. Issues of expressibility, axiomatization and decidability are addressed. (shrink)

The Human Organ Transplantation Act came into officially force in Bangladesh on April 13, 1999, allowing organ donations from both living and brain-dead donors. The Act was amended by the Parliament on January 8, 2018, with the changes coming into effect shortly afterwards on January 28. The Act was revised to extend a living donor pool from close relatives to include certain other relatives such as grandparents, grandchildren, and first cousins. The Act was also revised to allow individuals to prioritize (...) family members in receiving their organs after their death. The aim of this paper is not to carry out an ethical analysis of the Act as a whole but only to focus on aspects relating to priority access for family members to organs. Despite Islam encouraging Muslims to be sympathetic, and to save the life of any member of humankind, saving the life of a relative through organ donation is even more highly valued. The collective and extended structure of the family impacts on the provisions of the Act that only allows Bangladeshis to legally donate their organs to save the lives of relatives and allows individuals to prioritize family members. Recent progress in the practice of organ transplantation raises a number of ethical dilemmas around the allocation of available organs in the context of organ scarcity. A key purpose of introducing incentive into the system of organ allocation is to increase the number of donations from living relatives and initiation of vital organ donations from brain-dead donors. However, allocation criteria based on a living organ donation incentive system would appear to be unethical because there is no provision in the Act with regard to financial compensation for a distant relative donor’s post-operative care in the absence of healthcare coverage. Receiving organs from a distant relative without giving financial compensation for post-operative care places them in a grave health condition and violates the biomedical principle of non-maleficence. An incentive system around brain-dead donors would appear to be ethical as the amended Act allows individuals to prioritize relatives in receiving their organs after death. This provision is intended to initiate the transplantation of vital organs from brain-dead donors as families might bear the cost of keeping the organs alive for transplantation. Regular reassessment of the impact of the Act is necessary to maximize the donation rate of transplantable organs using ethical means. (shrink)

Animals have encountered cruelty and suffering throughout the ages. It is something perpetrated up till this day, particularly, in factory farms, animal laboratories, and even in the name of sports or amusement. However, since the second half of the twentieth century, there has been growing concerns for animal welfare and the protection of animal rights within the discourse of environmentalism, developed mainly in the West. Nevertheless, a recently developed Islamic Ecological Paradigm rooted in the classical Islamic traditions contests the ‘Western’ (...) monopoly of modern environmentalism, sug­gesting that there is much in Islamic traditions dealing with environmental issues in­cluding non-human animal species. IEP asserts that several centuries ago Islamic traditions significantly focused on and strongly advocated for animal welfare and animal rights. This paper explores and examines animal rights within the broader spectrum of Islamic environmentalism or Islamic eco-ethic. While the philosophical roots of IEP concerning animal rights date far back in seventh century, it can potentially make both ethical and educational contributions to the twenty-first century environmentalism and animal rights movements. (shrink)

The Infectious Diseases Act entered into force officially on 14 November 2018 in Bangladesh. The Act is designed to raise awareness of, prevent, control, and eradicate infectious or communicable diseases to address public health emergencies and reduce health risks. A novel coronavirus disease was first identified in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a gazette on 23 March, listing COVID-19 as an infectious disease and addressing COVID-19 as a public health emergency. The (...) gazette empowers the government to monitor the spread of infection. Despite there being an infrastructure of research ethics committees in almost all hospitals in Bangladesh, a lack of such committees in the clinical setting often forces healthcare professionals to allocate scarce healthcare resources to the task. These personnel are often either influenced by materialistic matters or guided by the emergency policies, without reaching a consensus on how to allocate scarce resources in times of need, especially in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical dilemmas often arise when a number of patients with COVID-19, especially in poor and middle-class areas, are denied care while elites are prioritized to receive such scarce resources. Resource allocation in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh appears to be unethical and in direct conflict with the biomedical principles of non-maleficence and procedural justice. The findings of this study suggest that the Act needs substantive changes in the stipulation of policy directing hospitals in the provision of resource allocation framework. Furthermore, parliament should produce guidance outlining how to successfully implement the law with the aim of protecting public health in times of emergency, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

The stipulation of living organ transplantation policy and practice in Bangladesh is family-oriented, with relatives being the only people legally eligible to donate organs. There have been very few transplantations of bone marrows, liver lobes, and kidneys from related-living donors in Bangladesh. The major question addressed in this study is why Bangladesh is not getting adequate organs for transplantation. In this study, I examin the stipulations of the policy and practice of living organ donation through the lens of 32 key (...) stakeholders including physicians and nurses, a health administrator, organ donors and recipients, and their family members, as they can shed light on the realities and problems of organ donation for transplantation in Bangladesh. My ethnography reveals that the family members are always encouraged to donate organs for transplantation, and saving the lives of relatives through organ donation is seen as a moral obligation. Many view saving the life of a relative by donating one’s organs as equivalent to saving one’s own life. An assessment of the dynamics of biomedicine, religion, and culture leads to the conclusion that the family-oriented organ donation policy and practice have been widely endorsed and accepted in Bangladesh, and Islamic ethical principles and collective family ethos undergird that policy and practice. However, the unavailability of medical resources, lack of post-operative coverage for organ donors, religious misconceptions and unawareness of the general public, and the absence of posthumously donated vital organs for transplantation are perceived to be the most common barriers to a successful living donor-recipient pair organ transplantation. By overcoming these obstacles, Bangladesh can develop a successful living donor-recipient pair organ transplantation program that will ensure improved healthcare outcomes, promote altruism and solidarity among Bangladeshi families, and protect the poor from having their organs sold to wealthy patients. (shrink)

The present study aims to examine the context of academic dishonesty of research students in a public university setting in Bangladesh. In this regard, the researchers conducted interviews with the concerned authorities of the university, i.e., Chairpersons of the Departments, Deans of the Faculties, Proctor of the University, and Director of Students Guidance and Counselling Cell in order to get an impression about the current practice of academic dishonesty by the students of that university; factors influencing these activities and recommendations (...) to uphold academic integrity among the students. The results showed that though there were several instances of academic integrity violation, negligible actions were taken against them due to the absence of an established policy on academic dishonesty. At the same time, the nonexistence of a course on academic integrity and research ethics in the curriculum is also responsible for this scenario. To mitigate this issue, all the concerned authorities strongly recommended formulating a central policy on academic dishonesty for promoting academic integrity and achieving university ranking success in global competitiveness. (shrink)

Collecting data using an appropriate sampling technique is a challenging task for a researcher to do. The researchers will be unable to collect data from all possible situations, which will preclude them from answering the study’s research questions in their current form. In light of the enormous number and variety of sampling techniques/methods available, the researcher must be knowledgeable about the differences to select the most appropriate sampling technique/method for the specific study under consideration. In this context, this study also (...) looks into the basic concepts in probability sampling, kinds of probability sampling techniques with their advantages and disadvantages. Social science researchers will benefit from this study since it will assist them in choosing the most suitable probability sampling technique for completing their research smoothly and successfully. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to highlight the very recent cases of internet shutdown during the creation of Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir and enactment of Citizenship Amendment Act and the detention under Section 66 (A) of Information Technology Act 2000.Design/methodology/approachThis study takes up a broad explorative discussion of the challenges posed to the consolidation of democracy in India due to frequent internet shutdowns for online communication and social media usages.FindingsAs findings, it is narrated that due to politically motivated reasons, India (...) compromises its commitment to the pluralism and diversity in views, in particular, individual rights to freedom of expression and opinion, enshrined in the constitution.Originality/valueRight to freedom of speech and expression has now taken a new shape due to the emergence and availability of the internet that enriches the quality of democracy. (shrink)

This study examines the role of the principle of Sikh liberalism in promoting communal harmony in today’s world. Communal harmony has been under threat in almost all countries for decades, and bigotry, distrust, and animosity prevail among the followers of diverse faithbased communities. Individuals need to be whole-hearted, liberal in approach, and tolerant toward the followers of other communities to reduce such inconsistencies in our society. The paper explores that the ideology of Sikh liberalism can be a role model for (...) establishing peace in today’s world of communal violence. This work is a sincere effort to deal with several issues, e.g., humanism, tolerance, fraternity, equality, freedom, secularism, religious pluralism, and accessibility to and honor for contrasting opinions, based on the principle of Sikh liberalism, which are the root of Sikh liberalism. The qualitative research evaluates the all-embracing aspects of Sikhism, where the liberal notion of Guru Granth Sahib and the liberal attitudes of the Sikh Gurus, especially Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the founder of Sikhism, have mainly been highlighted. It discovers the role of Sikhism in promoting communal harmony by analyzing the idea of Sikh liberalism. Thus, the study aims to make the states, governments, and the general people aware of their responsibilities and duties towards promoting communal harmony through comprehending the Sikh approaches to liberalism. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#69-70; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2021 P 189-209. (shrink)

This article is a transcription of a dialogue between Mohammad Abu Sayem and John Cobb that took place on June 24, 2019. The major topic covered in the dialogue is the relationship between Cobb's environmental thought and theology.

One of the challenging problems in large scale cyber-argumentation platforms is that users often engage and focus only on a few issues and leave other issues under-discussed and under-acknowledged. This kind of non-uniform participation obstructs the argumentation analysis models to retrieve collective intelligence from the underlying discussion. To resolve this problem, we developed an innovative opinion prediction model for a multi-issue cyber-argumentation environment. Our model predicts users’ opinions on the non-participated issues from similar users’ opinions on related issues using intelligent (...) argumentation techniques and a collaborative filtering method. Based on our detailed experimental results on an empirical dataset collected using our cyber-argumentation platform, our model is 21.7% more accurate, handles data sparsity better than other popular opinion prediction methods. Our model can also predict opinions on multiple issues simultaneously with reasonable accuracy. Contrary to existing opinion prediction models, which only predict whether a user agrees on an issue, our model predicts how much a user agrees on the issue. To our knowledge, this is the first research to attempt multi-issue opinion prediction with the partial agreement in the cyber-argumentation platform. With additional data on non-participated issues, our opinion prediction model can help the collective intelligence analysis models to analyze social phenomena more effectively and accurately in the cyber argumentation platform. (shrink)

The most prominent form of human communication and interaction is speech. It plays an indispensable role for expressing emotions, motivating, guiding, and cheering. An ill-intentioned speech can mislead people, societies, and even a nation. A misguided speech can trigger social controversy and can result in violent activities. Every day, there are a lot of speeches being delivered around the world, which are quite impractical to inspect manually. In order to prevent any vicious action resulting from any misguided speech, the development (...) of an automatic system that can efficiently detect suspicious speech has become imperative. In this study, we have presented a framework for acquisition of speech along with the location of the speaker, converting the speeches into texts and, finally, we have proposed a system based on long short-term memory which is a variant of recurrent neural network to classify speeches into suspicious and nonsuspicious. We have considered speeches of Bangla language and developed our own dataset that contains about 5000 suspicious and nonsuspicious samples for training and validating our model. A comparative analysis of accuracy among other machine learning algorithms such as logistic regression, SVM, KNN, Naive Bayes, and decision tree is performed in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. The experimental results show that our proposed deep learning-based model provides the highest accuracy compared to other algorithms. (shrink)

The Cold War has affected the communities around the world. Malaysia was no exception in being affected by the turmoil the international world, particularly after the World War 2, due to ideological conflicts. Based on the domino theory, the ups and downs of particular country in terms of its, strong ideology, brings about network impacts to each country in the world. Thus, a freedom of Malaya and the establishment of Malaysia came from the history of Cold War which influenced the (...) international scene. The establishment of Malaysia is seen as a mechanism to stop the influence of communism. The involvement leaders from Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak as well as Brunei Darussalam in the agenda to ‘build’ Malaysia with the approval from democratic countries showed a very strong cooperation that communism was a threat. This contributed to the creation of a new and bigger country. The wise Malaysian leaders in negotiating and being united in facing the global threats at that time, has shown that Malaysia’s ‘project’ in stopping the communist theory which is also known domino theory, was successfully carried out and maintained till today. Therefore, Malaysia as a case study, on how a country was ‘built’ on the basis of stopping the spread of communism in saving the Southeast Asia from falling into the hands of communists, is unique and its effectiveness should be studied. (shrink)

This paper considers the foundation of self-realization and the sense of morality that could justify Arne Naess’s claim ‘Self-realization is morally neutral,’ by focusing on the recent debate among deep ecologists. Self-realization, the ultimate norm of Naess’s ecosophy T, is the realization of the maxim ‘everything is interrelated.’ This norm seems to be based on two basic principles: the diminishing of narrow ego, and the integrity between the human and non-human worlds. The paper argues that the former is an extension (...) of Plato’s idea of self-development or self-mastery while the latter is implicit in Aristotle’s holism. It defends that Self-realization is morally neutral only if the term ‘moral’ is considered in the Kantian sense. However, Naess reluctantly distinguishes between ethics and morality, which makes his approach less credible. The paper concludes that Aristotle’s notion of eudaimonia supports Self-realization to qualify as a virtue. (shrink)