Religion Ebooks
PDF Ebook Interest and the Paradox of Contemporary Islamic Law and Finance
Submitted by antoq on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 07:18Almost all contemporary writings in Islamic Law and/or Islamic finance proclaim that Islamic Law (Shar?#a) forbids interest. This statement is paradoxical in light of the actual practices of Islamic financial providers over the past three decades. In fact, the bulk of Islamic financial practices formally base rates of return or costs of capital on a benchmark interest rate such as LIBOR, and would easily be classified by any MBA student as interest-based debt-finance. Nevertheless, jurists on the payrolls of Islamic financial providers continue to proclaim all forms of interest as rib?, which is subject to the severest Qur"anic prohibition. As quotations later in this article will illustrate, this dual role of jurists (condemning conventional interest-based financing, while supporting and personally profiting from its “Islamic” twin) is supported through excessively formalistic interpretation of the letter of the Law.
Minority opinions permitting modern forms of interest have surfaced from time to time, and they were occasionally championed by holders of highly respectable (though, often politically appointed) religious posts. Perhaps the oldest such pronouncement was made by Ebusuud Efendi, the Mufti of Istanbul between 1545 and 1574 C.E., and holder of the title ”eyhülislam towards the end of his tenure. Ebusuud defended the act of interest-taking, especially by awq?f (pious foundations), as a practical matter of necessity.1 As expected, this minority opinion, while sanctioned by the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman, was rejected by the majority of Muslim scholars around the Arab world, who continued to favor interest-free lending and traditional partnership forms of finance. Consequently, European modes of banking only became commonly practiced in the Islamic world in the eighteenth century. Even then, this widespread adoption of “western” banking practices appears to have been driven by external forces.
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PDF Ebook The Art of Healt Promotion in Islam & The Contemporary Public Healt Challenges
Submitted by antoq on Mon, 12/14/2009 - 08:27Western medicine alone, and for more than two centuries, was deemed worthy of serious consideration. Non-Western systems were viewed as primitive and inferior. The 19th-century British envoy to a big Asian country made himself famous by remarking that he had never felt the need to learn that Asian language because he knew that those people had nothing worthwhile to say [Walsh, 1996]. Westerners’ common assumption is that there is only one system of thinking that is real and describes “the truth”, which is theirs’, while other competing models are false. Western scientists generally have rejected Eastern approaches, for example in health and healing practice, without a fair trial and have regarded them as little more than muddled and fuzzy religious system [Goleman, 1988]. Though complete systems and natural ways of life, exit and had dominated one day, and for extended centuries of unprecedented human civilization, the arena of both political and scientific development, however, only very little is known about them. An orthodox and flagrant example of this sort of cultural elimination, ignorance or even purification to the other is the way the West used to look at the Islamic ideology. What is rather known is the front-page distorted picture the media makes about Islam as a source of tension and terror in the world, despite the real fact that Islam and Muslims are victims and not a cause of terror and tension. It is in this century of global absence and withdrawal of Muslims’ and Islamic political and social governance, hence the absence of the Divinely guidance of such an amazing and problem-solving book like the Holy Qura’n, it is in this terrible and unique century that we have seen more blood shed and suffering than in all and any other in the long and tortous history of the human race. It is the dominating, and not the weak, powers that should be blamed for this injustice, tension and terror that led to these massive blood sheds! It is also the responsibility of this dominating power to look for alternative solutions for its own-hands-made problems.
The predominant feature in the intellectual scene as we approach the end of the 20th century is the increasing conviction that the dualistic-materialistic paradigm that has dominated world through for several centuries is not the solution of the world’s devastating health status, if not contributing to its worsening. This dualistic-materliastic paradigm is, in fact, showing rapid decline -even collapse- [Sing, K., 1996]. Debate is going now at the intellectual health and medical scene: there is need for a conceptual revolution, and there is quest for a holistic vision of human life and human health.
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PDF Ebook Reversion to Islam: A study of racial and spiritual empowerment among African-American Muslims by Shana Slutzky
Submitted by antoq on Sat, 05/09/2009 - 09:02Historically and presently, African Americans represent the main converts to Islam in the United States. Although blacks comprise only 30 percent of the overall Muslim population in the United States, they constitute 64 percent of Muslim converts in the U.S. (Bagby 2001). Why are blacks more likely to convert, and what are the links between race and religion in this case? The beginning of an answer to this question lies in the discourse surrounding the word “conversion” itself. Many Muslims prefer the term “reversion” to describe the choice to practice Islam. “Reversion” refers to the idea that all people are born Muslim, but are led to other practices by their parents and other influences from their environment. When one chooses to practice Islam and accept submission to Allah, this involves “reverting” to the natural state.
But the term “reversion” has further significance for some. Many African-American Muslims 1 consider themselves to have pre-slavery Islamic roots in Africa, ties which were severed by the slave trade and by coercion to practice Christianity. Many consider the practice of Islam to be a return, or reversion, to those pre-slavery roots, believing that they would have been practicing Islam in Africa had it not been for slavery. In interviews that I conducted in Philadelphia, several African-American Muslims have pointed to a return to lost roots as an important aspect of their identities. My research and fieldwork have been focused on the extent of this notion’s influence on African-American “reversion” to Islam, and the relations between racial identity and religious identity in the context of African-American Islam.
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Ebook Love Notes
Submitted by antoq on Mon, 02/09/2009 - 02:13It is natural for people fall in and out of love and romance. It happens all around us. Love is one of the most talked about subjects in the media. A short while ago there was the incident of the female astronaut and the love triangle that ultimately led to murder. Walk the streets of Manhattan and you’ll see people committing suicide just because of lost love.
Muslims and Love Views on love in the Muslim community range from the extremely liberal (love is good and everything related is ok prior to marriage) to the extremely conservative (love is bad or the groom is only allowed to see his bride on the night of the wedding!). Love, however, is a topic that is not really discussed in the masjids and is greatly misunderstood. Love, in reality, is one of the main things provided by Islam. Can you ask your local Imam however: “I’m in love, please help me”?
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Free Ebook Laboratory investigations of earthquake dynamics
Submitted by antoq on Tue, 11/04/2008 - 23:48Earthquake represents one of most destructive geological hazards. In this thesis I will attempt to understand it through controlled laboratory experiments. The earthquake dynamic rupturing process itself is a complicated phenomenon, involving dynamic friction, wave propagation, and heat production. Because controlled experiments can produce results without assumptions needed in theoretical and numerical analysis, the experimental method is thus advantageous over theoretical and numerical methods.
Our laboratory fault is composed of carefully cut photoelastic polymer plates (Homalite-100, Polycarbonate) held together by uniaxial compression. As a unique unit of the experimental design, a controlled exploding wire technique provides the triggering mechanism of laboratory earthquakes. Three important components of real earthquakes (i.e., pre-existing fault, tectonic loading, and triggering mechanism) correspond to and are simulated by frictional contact, uniaxial compression, and the exploding wire technique. Dynamic rupturing processes are visualized using the photoelastic method and are recorded via a high-speed camera. Our experimental methodology, which is full-field, in situ, and non-intrusive, has better control and diagnostic capacity compared to other existing experimental methods.
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