Maqasid and the Challenges of Modernity

A central feature of public Muslim discourse over the past three decades has been the call to restore the Shari‘a in one form or another. Some reformers have proposed a new theoretical underpinning for this restoration, arguing for the adoption of foundational concepts that bear little, if any, resemblance to  their pre-modern counterparts. A central question that ineluctably emerges in this aporia is: What narrative must be adopted as the representation of the historical Shari‘a, the Shari‘a that prevailed until the early portion of the nineteenth century? If the colonial narrative is ipso facto programmatic and teleological, and if it served and still serves the purposes of all but those of the subaltern majority, then what other narrative must be adopted in the project of creating the new symbiosis? And if the jural voices of the subaltern are to come in for serious consideration, then how are we to represent them, if we can at all? And if we cannot, then into what espistemic predicament, if not a perennial aporia, does this throw both the privileged scholar and the reformer/intellectual? This article does not provide answers to these questions but rather addresses the problematics that these and related questions raise in dealing with the challenge of introducing into the modern Muslim condition one form of Islamic law or another

The Logic of Legal Reasoning in Religious and Non-Religious Cultures: The Case of Islamic Law and the Common Law

It is only reasonable to assume that dissimilar legal systems possess dissimilar patterns of legal reasoning. Inasmuch as two legal systems differ in their structure and function, they also differ in the types of arguments they employ in their service. It may well be argued that law is, in the final analysis, the product of the premises and methods from and through which it is derived. Two such legal systems which display a vast difference in their overall structure and function are Islamic law and the common law. This paper proposes to shed some light on the logic of legal reasoning in both orders as well as to analyze the reasons and background which give rise to differences and similarities in their methods of reasoning. This will be done with the intent of bringing out some of the major factors which operate on the level of the judicial process and which contribute to the creation of differences in legal orders. The focal comparison in such a study must be the relationship between the logic of the law and the amount of emphasis given to social change in secular and religious cultures

Muslim Rage and Islamic Law

In this Lecture, it is argued that a significant factor behind the recent rise of so-called Islamic fundamentalism, in both of its violent and nonviolent forms, is the structural uprooting of the Islamic legal institutions during the middle of the nineteenth century and thereafter (a factor neglected by analysts). When the colonialist powers induced western legal reforms that came to displace traditional and indigenous Islamic law, little did they realize that such a process of aggressive change was in the long run to lead to both brutal military dictatorships (during the past half century) and, more recently, to violent reactions in the heart of western commercial and political power. The current U.S. foreign policies toward the Muslim world, it is furthermore argued, can only nourish these reactions

Foreword

This file includes eight articles stemming from contributions presented during a workshop organized in July 2011 within the framework of a cooperation established between the French Institute of the Near East and the Al-Hussein Bin Talal University in Jordan. The collaboration comes within the scope of a scientific program codirected by W. Abu-Azizeh and M. B. Tarawneh, combining the study of two desert areas (the sector of Al-Thulaythuwat to the south of Al-Jafr Basin and the Eastern Wadi Ba..

Adjustable impedance, force feedback and command language aids for telerobotics (parts 1-4 of an 8-part MIT progress report)

Projects recently completed or in progress at MIT Man-Machine Systems Laboratory are summarized. (1) A 2-part impedance network model of a single degree of freedom remote manipulation system is presented in which a human operator at the master port interacts with a task object at the slave port in a remote location is presented. (2) The extension of the predictor concept to include force feedback and dynamic modeling of the manipulator and the environment is addressed. (3) A system was constructed to infer intent from the operator's commands and the teleoperation context, and generalize this information to interpret future commands. (4) A command language system is being designed that is robust, easy to learn, and has more natural man-machine communication. A general telerobot problem selected as an important command language context is finding a collision-free path for a robot

Caracterización del área de puesta de especies de túnidos en las costas del norte de Túnez

Early life stages of tuna species were investigated along the northern coasts of Tunisia in the summer of 2010, from 7 to 14 July. A total of 74 stations, distributed on a regular grid, were sampled. Larvae of five tuna species were identified: the Atlantic bluefin tuna, the bullet tuna, the Atlantic black skipjack, the Atlantic bonito and the albacore tuna. Larval distribution patterns show that Atlantic bluefin tuna and albacore tuna usually spawn in offshore oligotrophic waters and Atlantic black skipjack larvae on the continental shelf. The widespread distribution of bullet tuna larvae, suggests that it spawns on the entire continental shelf and over the shelf break. The results from the quotient analysis carried out to characterize the spawning habitat of each species, show that the input of recent surface Atlantic water (AW) masses play a key role in the spawning strategy of tuna species, particularly in the case of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, whose larvae were mainly caught in the mixed waters resulting from the interaction between recent AW and resident AW, as demonstrated by their preference for salinity values between 36.9 and 37.4.Se investigaron las fases larvarias tempranas de especies de túnidos a lo largo de las costas del norte de Túnez, durante el verano de 2010, del 7 al 14 de julio. Se muestrearon un total de 74 estaciones, distribuidas en una malla regular. Se identificaron larvas de cinco especies: el atún rojo, la melva, la bacoreta, el bonito y el atún blanco. Los patrones de distri-bución de larvas muestran que el atún rojo y el atún blanco desovan generalmente en aguas oligotróficas alejadas de la costa. Por contra, la localización relativamente más costera de las larvas de bacoreta indica que esta especie se reproduce sobre la plataforma continental, mientras que la amplia distribución de las larvas de melva sugiere que esta especie desova a lo largo de toda la plataforma y el margen continental. Los resultados del análisis de proporcionalidad, llevado a cabo para caracteri-zar el hábitat de puesta de cada especie, muestran que la entrada de masas de agua superficial atlántica (AW) reciente juegan un papel clave en la estrategia de desove de las especies de túnidos, sobre todo en el caso del atún rojo, cuyas larvas fueron capturadas principalmente en las aguas de mezcla, resultantes de la interacción entre el AW reciente y la residente, como lo demuestra su preferencia por los valores de salinidad entre 36.9 y 37.4.Versión del editor1,006

The Effect of Different Irrigant Activation Methods on Postoperative Pain After Endodontic Retreatment

Objective: This study was designed to evaluate the effect of different irrigant activation methods on post operative pain after endodontic retreatment. Materials and Methods : Seventy eight patients need non surgical retreatment in mandibular first molar were involved in the study. The retreatment was performed in two visits ,at first visit cases were randomly divided into three groups according to methods of irrigant activation after root canal retreatment with protaper next rotary Ni-TI system. Group A (n=26) Root canals were irrigated using 2.6% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) with manual dynamic agitation using master cone Group B (n=26) Root canals were irrigated using 2.6% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) using ultrasonic machine (ultra-x) for 60 seconds. Group C (n=26) Root canals were irrigated using 2.6% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) with NaviTip (29-gauge 27 mm) with double side tip. At second visit after one week, obturation was performed using modified single cone technique ans access cavity was filled with coronal restoration. After two visits root canal treatment and a specific method of agitation, depending on each group, the patients were given a questionnaire on which the patient would mark the degree of pain in a scale from 0 to 10 at 6, 12, 24, 48 72 hrs and one week post-obturation. Data were statistically analyzed with a significance level of P ≤0.05. Results: At 6,12,24 hrs, there was significant difference between the groups in pain intensity where control group C (Navitip with side vented needle) showed more pain scores than in the intervention groups (Ultra X and manual dynamic agitation). On the other hand, at 48, 72 hours and 7 days post- operative ,there was no statistically significant difference in pain among tested groups. Conclusion: Agitation of the irrigation is reliable safe to clinican and effective as final step irrigation protocol with successful management of postoperative pain in retreatment cases. The intensity of postoperative pain decreased with time regardless of final irrigation protocol used