[Book Review]: "Research Handbook on Islamic Law and Society"

Islamic law continues to draw interest all over the world, both East and West, particularly as Muslims spread all over the world outside their traditional homelands. Parallel to this, we observe a growing interest in Islamic legal studies around the world. New centres and departments are opened to serve the interest of wellestablished universities. There has also been a significant increase in the number of publications in the form of journals, books and articles about the Islamic legal perspective on newly emerging issues. Nadirsyah Hosen’s edited volume, Research Handbook on Islamic Law and Society, reflects his persistent interest in shedding fresh light from an Islamic perspective on the latest legal issues..

The Resonance of Resonance: Critical Theory as a Sociology of World-Relations?

The main purpose of this paper is to examine Hartmut Rosa’s account of “resonance.” To this end, the analysis is divided into four parts. The first part focuses on the concept of resonance, including Rosa’s differentiation between horizontal, diagonal, and vertical “axes of resonance” and their role in the construction of different “world-relations.” The second part centers on the concept of alienation, notably the degree to which it constitutes an integral element of modern life forms and, in a larger sense, of the human condition. The third part grapples with the dialectic of resonance and alienation, shedding light on the assumption that they are antithetical to each other, while contending that their in-depth study provides normative parameters to distinguish between “the good life” and “the bad life.” The final part scrutinizes Rosa’s attempt to defend his outline of a sociological theory of resonance against objections raised by his critics and comprises a point-by-point assessment of his plea for a resonance-focused sociology of world-relations. The paper concludes by suggesting that, notwithstanding its limitations, Rosa’s approach represents one of the most promising developments in twenty-first-century critical theory

Wooden Stirrups and Christian Khans. Bar 'Ebroyo's Use of Juwayni's "History of the World Conqueror" as a Source for his "Chronography"

One of the sources used by Bar ‘Ebroyo in his Chronography was a “marvellous work” he consulted in the library of Maragha, in Azerbaijan, where “many volumes of the Syrians, Saracens, and Persians” where preserved. This book may be identified without any doubt as the History of the World Conqueror (Ta’rīkh-i jahān gušā), written in Persian by ‘Alā al-Dīn ‘Aṭā Malik Juwaynī between 1252/1253 and 1260. The paper aims at outlining Bar ‘Ebroyo’s approach to Juwaynī’s work as his main source about the Mongols, through a close comparison of the chapters devoted to the beginning of Mongol history rise and the of Genghis Khan, and desultory parallel readings of other episodes. It must be acknowledged that Bar ‘Ebroyo is essentially true to his source and draws from it what is most relevant to his aims as a chronographer. The two works are in fact different in terms of aims as well as language. A detailed comparison allows for promising developments, shedding considerable light on both

Shedding New Light on a Pennsylvania Painter: Finding R. Fibich and His Graveyard

The painting that would become known as the “York Springs Graveyard” (see cover illustration) was sold to Connecticut folk-art collectors Jean and Howard Lipman in about 1939 by Joe Kindig, an antiques dealer from York, PA. The 18” x 24” oil painting on canvas, of mid-nineteenth-century people and carriages at a cemetery, with cattle in the middle distance, is signed “R. Fibich.” The New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, NY, subsequently acquired the painting from the Lipmans. It was cleaned, documented, studied, and then exhibited at various venues including the Primitives Gallery of Harry Stone (1942); the Union College of Art Gallery, Schenectady (1951); the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas (1956); the M. Knoedler Gallery, NYC (1956); the Roberson Gallery, Binghamton NY (1966-67); the New York State Fair at Syracuse (1970); the DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA (1972); the Whitney Museum, NYC (1974), and Smith College Museum of Art Collection ((1975). In addition to inclusion in The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1976, which was published in conjunction with the 1974 Whitney Bicentennial Exhibit, it also appeared in American Primitive Painting (Metropolitan Miniature Series, 1953) and in Life magazine, where readers were solicited for any information about the artist. The Flowering of American Folk Art: 1776-1976 index of artists’ biographies states “R. Fibich (active c. 1850). Known for a single oil landscape of a York Springs, Pa., graveyard.” [excerpt

Providing Space to the Marginalized: Bertolt Brecht’s Reception of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera

The popularity of John Gay’s political satire play The Beggar’s Opera in the English literary world prompted a German writer, Bertolt Brecht, to respond to the work. The purpose of this study is to describe Bertolt Brecht's reception of Gay’s Play The Beggar’s Opera in Brecht’s Play Die Dreigroschenoper. The data sources in this study are the text of Brecht’s play entitled Die Drei Groschenoper and the text of Gay’s play The Beggar's Opera. This research is based on the theory of Reception Aesthetics by Hans Robert Jauss. The results show that Brecht’s reception was influenced by his horizon of expectations, which plays a central role in determining a writer’s reception of a work of literature. Brecht’s horizon of expectations, which is related to his Marxist view, distinguishes Brecht’s play from that by Gay. Brecht’s intention to make a play that enlightens his audience made him present a more explicit depiction of marginalized people in Die Dreigroschenoper, which was performed in the form of epic theater (episches Theater). By providing space to the marginalized, Brecht aimed to criticize capitalism which began to grow in Germany after the country’s loss in the First World War and divided the German society into two classes, resulting in various social issues. Brecht’s criticisms are different from Gay’s criticisms in shedding some light on the moral degradation in England at the time

Al-Baghdadi and the Art of Terrorist Persuasion

This dissertation examines the rhetoric used by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to persuade thousands of young Muslims around the world to join the organization and defend it until the end. The dissertation concerns the innovative methods used by the organization to reach thousands of young people around the world, and the role of misinterpretations of the Qur\u27an in supporting al-Baghdadi\u27s rhetorical arguments. In order to provide a reasonable explanation for these speeches, the dissertation used Aristotle\u27s rhetorical methodology, Gamal Abdel Nasser\u27s rhetorical concept, Burke\u27s concept of identity and social identity theory. The arguments focused on studying rhetoric within the Isis organization, particularly the rhetorical methods of al-Baghdadi, and analyzing the persuasive elements in the extremist discourse. Four speeches of ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi were selected for analysis. The dissertation included (1) investigating the gap in interpretations of the Qur’an that extremists exploit to persuade Muslim youth; (2) examining Al-Baghdadi\u27s rhetorical methods and the slogans he used in his speeches; and (3) shedding light on extreme appeals to identity problematic in the Islamic world and the Middle East in particular

Chance-Constrained Outage Scheduling using a Machine Learning Proxy

Outage scheduling aims at defining, over a horizon of several months to years, when different components needing maintenance should be taken out of operation. Its objective is to minimize operation-cost expectation while satisfying reliability-related constraints. We propose a distributed scenario-based chance-constrained optimization formulation for this problem. To tackle tractability issues arising in large networks, we use machine learning to build a proxy for predicting outcomes of power system operation processes in this context. On the IEEE-RTS79 and IEEE-RTS96 networks, our solution obtains cheaper and more reliable plans than other candidates