In this article I review two contrasting approaches to Muslim women’s rights: those that want Muslims to secularize the Qur’an as the precondition for getting rights and those that emphasize the importance of a liberatory Qur’anic hermeneutics to Muslim women’s struggles for rights and equality. As examples of the former, I take the works of Nasr Abu Zayd and Raja Rhouni and, of the latter, my own. In addition to joining the debates on Muslim women’s rights, this exercise is meant (...) to illustrate that secular attempts to undermine Islam also undermine the prospects for rights and democracy in Muslim societies. In fact, I see the secular project in Muslim societies as a form of self-harm. Lastly, I revisit Antonio Gramsci’s critique of democracy as a way to query the title of the İstanbul Seminars, ‘The Promises of Democracy’. (shrink)

Situated within the framework of the conceptual metaphor theory, this article examines universal versus language-specific patterns in metaphorical motion event descriptions, comparing English and Turkish. The analysis focused on the crosslinguistic similarities and differences in the target domains and the types of metaphorical mappings that are structured by spatial motion. The data included written texts in English and Turkish. Results indicated strong crosslinguistic similarity in the target domains and the types of metaphorical mappings. Crosslinguistic variation, on the other hand, became (...) evident in the specification of the source domain structure, particularly in describing the manner component of a metaphorical motion event. English writers paid greater linguistic attention to the way one moves from point A to point B metaphorically, using a greater amount and variety of motion verbs that encoded manner. Overall, the analysis revealed the source domain structure to be the best candidate for systematic language-based variation in a metaphorical event. (shrink)

Earlier work on literal motion has shown that English and Turkish belong to typologically distinct classes of languages, with English speakers paying greater linguistic attention to the manner dimension of motion events (e.g., Özçalişkan and Slobin 1999a, 2003). As a further step, this article investigates whether typological differences hold true for the metaphorical extensions of motion events. Thus, the article compares two types of languages with regard to their lexicalization patterns in encoding metaphorical motion events: (1) verb-framed languages (or V-languages, (...) represented by Turkish), in which the preferred pattern for framing motion events is the use of a path verb with an optional manner adjunct (e.g., enter running), and (2) satellite-framed languages (S-languages, represented by English), in which path is lexicalized in an element associated with the verb, leaving the verb free to encode manner (e.g., run in). The analysis of written texts and elicited responses in the two languages shows clear typological contrast, with English speakers encoding manner of motion in their metaphorical descriptions more frequently and extensively than Turkish speakers, using a variety of linguistic devices (e.g., verbs, adverbials). Overall, the results indicate that the degree of codability of a semantic dimension in a lexical item (i.e., motion verb) has a spillover effect on the choice of other lexical items in a sentence, suggesting the conceptual salience of this dimension for its speakers. This effect is observable in both the literal and the metaphorical uses of the lexicon. (shrink)

Expression of physical motion (e.g.,man runs by) shows systematic variability not only between language types (i.e., inter-typological) but also within a language type (i.e., intra-typological). In this study, we asked whether the patterns of variability extend to metaphorical motion events (e.g.,time runs by). Our analysis of randomly selected 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical motion (150/language) event descriptions from written texts originally produced by German, Polish, and Spanish authors showed strong inter-typological differences in the expression of both event types. (...) German and Polish speakers differed from Spanish speakers in how they packaged manner and path components of a motion event; they also differed in how extensively they expressed each component in their lexicalization of motion. The strong inter-typological differences were accompanied by more modest intra-typological variability: Polish and German writers differed in their packaging and lexicalization of manner and path components of metaphorical—butnotphysical—motion events. Our results provide evidence for robust inter-typological differences evident in the expression of both physical and metaphorical motion, along with less robust intra-typological differences, largely evident in the expression of metaphorical motion. Our study thus highlights event type as an important factor in determining crosslinguistic variation in motion expression. (shrink)

Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence how semantic elements are organized in gesture, but only when those gestures are produced with speech, not without speech. We ask whether the cross-linguistic similarity in silent gesture is driven by the visuospatial structure of the event. We compared 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English or Turkish to 80 sighted adult speakers as they described three-dimensional (...) motion scenes. We found an effect of language on co-speech gesture, not on silent gesture—blind speakers of both languages organized their silent gestures as sighted speakers do. Humans may have a natural semantic organization that they impose on events when conveying them in gesture without language—an organization that relies on neither visuospatial cues nor language structure. (shrink)

Media portrayal has a huge impact on young fashion and style preferences, driving both social and personal trends. This study investigates whether media portrayals, such as social media, television, and fashion businesses, influence young adults' fashion choices and self-image. The study investigates the influence of exposure to media on fashion preference formation through the analysis of collected datasets. The key findings show that fashion personalities and media channels have a significant impact on style acceptance. The study focuses on how brand (...) reputation and the variety of media content impact consumer behavior. It employs SPSS software to conduct statistical methods, such as Chi-Square tests, to examine the link between demographic factors and media influence. The findings underscore the dynamic nature of fashion trends influenced by media and emphasize the need to understand how media shapes the fashion choices of today's youth. (shrink)

Museums are essential for improving cultural understanding and instruction. Exhibitions showcasing ethnic cultures provide insightful perspectives on many cultures and civilizations. These educational opportunities can be made as effective as possible by assessing their influence on visitor satisfaction.Investigation into the impact of ethnic culture exhibitions on audience pleasure, participation, and comprehension is lacking, despite their significance. By investigating how these displays affect visitors' knowledge acquisition and participation, the study seeks to close this disparity.Utilizing a combined methods technique that integrated quantitative (...) surveys with qualitative comments, the study polled 62 museum visitors who had attended ethnic cultural exhibitions. The questionnaire evaluated knowledge of culture, instructional impact, involvement, and tourist pleasure. Data analysis using the SPSS software was utilized to analyze how different factors affect results and find significant indicators by doing logistic and multinomial logistic regression. This study discovered a substantial correlation between improved knowledge of culture and exhibition participation, as well as a significant improvement in visitor satisfaction and educational results when interactive components and cultural content are included. Through the use of interactive material, ethnic culture exhibitions improve the educational experience and increase visitor happiness. Museums ought to take demographic factors into account while planning different exhibitions for the future. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Im Jahr 2003 gingen Jürgen Baur und Ulrike Burrmann der Frage nach, inwieweit sich Sportengagements von Jugendlichen individualisiert haben. Die meisten Annahmen mussten verworfen werden. Vor dem Hintergrund aktueller gesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen wird im vorliegenden Beitrag anhand von Zeitreihendaten dieser Frage erneut nachgegangen. Hinterfragt wird aber auch, ob sich der Einfluss vertikaler sozialstruktureller Merkmale auf die Beteiligung am Sport seit den 1970er Jahren abgeschwächt hat und ob dieser Zusammenhang in den letzten Jahren wieder enger geworden ist. Die Befunde werden diskutiert, (...) wobei zum einen auf methodische Probleme der Datenbasis und zum anderen auf Unschärfen der Individualisierungsthese eingegangen wird. (shrink)

The expression of physical motion (the spider crawls across the net) and metaphorical motion (the fear crawls across her heart) shows strong inter-typological differences between language types (German, an S-language vs. Spanish, a V-language) and more subtle intra-typological differences within a language type (German vs. Polish, both S-languages). However, we know relatively less about the extension of these patterns to translated texts. In this study, we focused on physical and metaphorical motion descriptions in written texts in original language and their (...) translations to a language that belongs to the same or a different typological group, to determine whether motion expression in translated texts shows the same patterns of inter-typological and intra-typological variability as it does in original texts. We investigated this question by extracting 450 physical motion (150/language) and 450 metaphorical motion (150/language) descriptions from novels originally written in German, Polish, or Spanish and their translations to typologically different (i.e. inter-typological; German to Spanish, Spanish to German) or typologically similar (i.e. intra-typological; German to Polish, Polish to German) languages. Our results provided evidence for similar patterns of strong inter-typological and more subtle intra-typological variability in translations akin to those observed in original texts – with translated texts largely following the patterns of the target language in their expression of physical and metaphorical motion. Our results also highlighted specificity of event expression in a language as an important factor in the attainment of target language patterns in translated texts. (shrink)

With this study we have done on the nawba, which was widely performed until about a century ago, but whose examples we can not find very often in our geography today, new information has emerged about its performance in different places and times. We first became aware of the nevbe record, which was recorded with the personal efforts of Hasan Sevil, in 2018, and as of 2021, we started to work on this record for approximately one hour. We examined the (...) flow of this performance, which was performed with the participation of 14 people, and recorded some of the naşîde and hymns. We talked to the head of the nawba, Sheikh Muhammed Kayali, for detailed information about our deficiencies in the lyrics and the performance of the nawba. The Kayali family has continued the mystical tradition in Haleb since Sheikh İsmail Kayali. In 2013, a part of the family immigrated to Turkey by necessity. In this way, we gained new information about İsmail Kayali, Kayaliya tariq and mystical culture, about which we do not know much. With this study, we aimed to give the general flow of the nevbe form and some examples of naşîde through the example of Kayaliya. Since the notation of all the performances in the recording would be too much for the volume of the article format, we thought it appropriate to consider them in a larger study. (shrink)

Speakers of different languages (e.g., English vs. Turkish) show a binary split in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. In this study, we focused on Mandarin Chinese, a language that does not follow the binary split in its expression of motion in speech, and asked whether adult Chinese speakers would follow the language‐specific speech patterns in co‐speech but not silent gesture, thus showing a pattern akin to (...) Turkish and English adult speakers in their description of animated motion events. Our results provided evidence for this pattern, with Chinese—as well as English and Turkish—speakers following language‐specific patterns in speech and co‐speech gesture but not in silent gesture. Our results provide support for the “thinking‐for‐speaking” account, namely that language influences thought only during online, but not offline, production of speech. (shrink)

Metaphor plays a unique role in cognitive development by structuring abstract concepts and leading to conceptual change. Existing work suggests early emergence of metaphorical abilities, with five-year-olds understanding and explaining metaphors that involve cross-domain comparisons (e.g., SPACE to TIME). Yet relatively little is known about the factors that explain this developmental change. This study focuses on spatial metaphors for time, and asks whether cognitive and/or verbal factors best explain developmental changes in three- to six-year-old children's comprehension and explanation of metaphors. (...) The results show that children's grasp of the time concept—but not verbal ability—predicts their metaphor comprehension. Verbal ability, on the other hand, is a predictor of metaphor explanation, even after controlling for age. The results thus suggest that cognitive and verbal factors selectively predict children's emerging metaphorical abilities. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Islam as a religion and culture on Turkish women’s health. The study included 138 household members residing in the territory of three primary health care centers in Turkey: Güzelbahçe, Fahrettin Altay and Esentepe. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire prepared by a multidisciplinary team that included specialists from the departments of public health, psychiatric nursing and sociology. We found that the women’s health behavior changed from traditional to (...) rational as education levels increased, and that religious and traditional attitudes and behaviors were predominant in the countryside, especially practices related to pregnancy, delivery, the postpartum period, induced abortion and family planning. One of the most important prerequisites for the improvement of women’s health is that nurses should know the religious practices and culture of the society for which they provide care, so that their efforts to protect and improve women’s health will be effective. (shrink)

This study analyses the commentaries of four Muslim intellectuals who have turned to scripture as a liberating text to confront an array of problems, from patriarchy, racism, and empire to poverty and interreligious communal violence. Shadaab Rahemtulla considers the exegeses of the South African Farid Esack (b. 1956), the Indian Asghar Ali Engineer (1939-2013), the African American Amina Wadud (b. 1952), and the Pakistani-American Asma Barlas (b. 1950). The authors considered all proritise the Qur'an over the hadith. Rahemtulla considers (...) this an essential move for a Muslim liberation theology and concludes with proposals with a new construal of what a politically radical Islam might mean, sharply differentitated from Islamism. This work provides a rich analysis of the thought-ways of specific Muslim intellectuals, it substantiates a broadly framed school of thought. Rahemtulla draws out their specific and general importance without displaying an uncritical sympathy. He sheds light on the impact of modern exegetical commentary which is more self-conciously concerned with historical context and present realities. In a mutally reinforcing way, this work thus illuminates both the role of agency and hermeneutical approaches in Modern Islamic thought. (shrink)

Islam and Morality considers how Islam, the Qur'an, and other Islamic texts have approached the ethics of a variety of contemporary and historical issues. Oliver Leaman provides a varied, balanced, and thought-provoking account of how Islamic thinkers discussed medical ethics, wealth, poverty, the environment, and law. He explores the work of a range of Islamic thinkers, including Rumi, Ibn al-'Arabi, al-Ghazali, Mutahhari and Barlas, while taking into consideration the different branches of Islam and Islamic theology and law. The book (...) also considers how Islam understands the concept of free will, the relationship between good and evil, and far less abstract topics like what we should eat and drink. Aimed at upper level undergraduates, postgraduates, and researchers working in Islamic Studies and ethics, this is one of the first books to provide a sustained reading of the importance of ethics within Islam. (shrink)

W styczniu 1919 roku w odrodzonej Rzeczypospolitej odbyły się wybory do Sejmu Ustawodawczego. Efektem prac Sejmu było uchwalenie Konstytucji w marcu 1921 roku, a także wielu uchwał, m.in. w sprawie reformy rolnej. Największą prawicową siłą w Sejmie była Narodowa Demokracja, skupiona w Związku Ludowo-Narodowym, który z klubu parlamentarnego przekształcił się w 1919 roku w partię polityczną. Celem artykułu jest opis i analiza udziału posłów ZLN, wybranych z obszaru województwa kieleckiego, w pracach Sejmu Ustawodawczego. Podstawę źródłową analizy stanowiły przede wszystkim sprawozdania (...) stenograficzne z posiedzeń Sejmu. Omówiono sylwetki czterech parlamentarzystów, byli to: Konstanty Kowalewski, Franciszek Mazur, Witold Poklewski-Koziełł i Zygmunt Seyda. Reprezentowali oni różne klasy społeczne. Ich zaangażowanie w prace Konstytuanty było odmienne, ale wszyscy starali się solidarnie reprezentować klub parlamentarny ZLN. Największą aktywnością wykazywał się Seyda, prawnik pochodzący z Wielkopolski. (shrink)

W styczniu 1919 roku w odrodzonej Rzeczypospolitej odbyły się wybory do Sejmu Ustawodawczego. Efektem prac Sejmu było uchwalenie Konstytucji w marcu 1921 roku, a także wielu uchwał, m.in. w sprawie reformy rolnej. Największą prawicową siłą w Sejmie była Narodowa Demokracja, skupiona w Związku Ludowo-Narodowym, który z klubu parlamentarnego przekształcił się w 1919 roku w partię polityczną. Celem artykułu jest opis i analiza udziału posłów ZLN, wybranych z obszaru województwa kieleckiego, w pracach Sejmu Ustawodawczego. Podstawę źródłową analizy stanowiły przede wszystkim sprawozdania (...) stenograficzne z posiedzeń Sejmu. Omówiono sylwetki czterech parlamentarzystów, byli to: Konstanty Kowalewski, Franciszek Mazur, Witold Poklewski-Koziełł i Zygmunt Seyda. Reprezentowali oni różne klasy społeczne. Ich zaangażowanie w prace Konstytuanty było odmienne, ale wszyscy starali się solidarnie reprezentować klub parlamentarny ZLN. Największą aktywnością wykazywał się Seyda, prawnik pochodzący z Wielkopolski. (shrink)