Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī

Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (1914–1999) was one of the most influential Salafi scholars in the 20th century. He sought to reform Islam by requiring Muslims to return a puritanical and literalist approach toward scripture. Albānī moved from Albania to Damascus with his family as a child, and his father became a leading Ḥanafī scholar in the Albanian Muslim community in Syria. From a young age, Albānī disagreed with his father and the Albanian Ḥanafī community. He rejected their allegiance to the Ḥanafī school of law and instead advocated a strict adherence to the Qurʾān and Sunna. His scholarly career was full of tug-of-war battles with traditional jurists over the validity of following a madhhab and particular principles of Islamic legal theory. His legal scholarship contains many unconventional opinions, and he was therefore taken most seriously in the field of ḥadīth, not fiqh. A distinctive aspect of Albānī’s legacy is his constant effort to reevaluate the authenticity of ḥadīth. He sifted through thousands of ḥadīths and reevaluated them using traditional ḥadīth methodology

Islam

Islam, the religion of 1.2 billion people around the world, provides its followers guidance on how to live according to God’s teachings. The word “Islam” means submission, and in this context, refers to voluntary submission to will and teachings of God. The word Islam stems from the same root word as “peace” salām, by submitting to God one finds inner peace in this world and eternal peace and happiness in the next

Qurʾān and Sunna or the Madhhabs?: A Salafi Polemic Against Islamic Legal Tradition

The Albanian scholar Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999) established a unique type of Salafism, a movement whose adherents follow a puritanical model of Muslim creed, exegesis, and conduct that is critical of madhhab Traditionalism. In this article I present an annotated translation of an audio lecture in which Albānī attempted to defend Salafism against its anti-madhhab image. I shed light on the religious and social climate that played a role in triggering Albānī’s disdain for Traditionalism and led him to discredit madhhab Traditionalist fiqh and replace it with his own interpretation of the jurisprudential requirements of Islamic scripture. Among the arguments I make is that Albānī’s claim to follow only the Qurʾān and Sunna is a rhetorical strategy designed to present Salafism as the absolute truth and distinguish it from being categorized as another madhhab or religious movement

The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa By Rudolph Ware III

With the introduction of new educational systems in the Muslim world during the late-eighteenth through the early-twentieth century, many Muslims and non-Muslims became critical of traditional pedagogical methods. In particular, the image of Qur’an schools in West Africa are often criticized for their “backward” forms of education and commonly perceived as places where children simply parrot Qur’anic verses without much understanding. These institutions have largely been abandoned and replaced by modern and secular schooling systems. In his The Walking Qur’an, Rudolph Ware argues that Qur’an schools have survived in places like West Africa. By studying them, he seeks to historicize this once-paradigmatic approach to knowledge. Along with shedding light on Islamic knowledge, Ware attempts to move beyond race by placing Africans at the center of Islamic studies. Such an attempt is welcome, given the rarity of in-depth studies on Islamic history in West Africa. In so doing he makes a welcome contribution to both Islamic and African studies, while simultaneously examining the boundaries between the two

The Role of the ʿUlamā’ in the Thoughts of ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda

Despite his influence and contribution to scholarship in the modern Muslim world, the life and works of ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda are underrepresented in Western academic literature. This article is a first initiative at a broader assessment and contextualization of Abū Ghudda’s life and thoughts. I present a picture of a scholar who sought to represent traditional Islam in its most unpopular moments. In particular, I examine Abū Ghudda’s prevailing thoughts and opinions concerning “proper” scholarship and demonstrate how the role of the ʿulamā’ in the thoughts of Abu Ghudda is primarily a continuation of a scholarly tradition rather than starting anew. I analyze Abū Ghudda’s understanding of the role of the ʿulamā’ in light of his disagreements with his strongest detractor, the Salafi Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī

The Formative Years of an Iconoclastic Salafi Scholar

Despite his great influence on modern Salafism and Islamic studies, relatively few works focus on the life of Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999), a scholar whose life and brand of Salafism are marked by controversy and stand in stark contrast to madhhab Traditionalism. This article provides a translation of one of his autobiographical interviews. I shed light on the biographical details of Albānī’s formative years, namely his sour relationship with his father, quarrels with the Albanian community in Syria, and his controversial professorship at the University of Medina. Among the arguments I make is that Albānī created an image of himself as an unchanging scholar in order to remain consistent in his claim to follow the absolute truth

Solution-processed bismuth halide thin film semiconductors for photovoltaic application

Hybrid organic-inorganic Pb halide perovskite semiconductors have shown excellent promise in a wide variety of optoelectronic applications; the impressive performance can be attributed to their excellent optoelectronic and charge transport properties. Unfortunately, hybrid organic-inorganic Pb halide perovskites suffer from intrinsic instabilities and contain a toxic Pb component. The focus of this PhD dissertation is in the development of alternative semiconductors that are predicted to share these excellent properties without the toxicity and stability concerns. Bi halide semiconductors could have the greatest potential as nontoxic and stable alternatives to hybrid organic-inorganic Pb halide perovskites due to the chemical similarity of Bi(III) and Pb(II). Of interest are BiI3 and A3Bi2I9 (A = FA, MA, Cs, Rb) compounds. The present challenge facing BiI3 and A3Bi2I9 optoelectronic devices are the poor film morphology. Annealing BiI3 thin films in DMF vapor at relatively low temperatures (≤ 100 °C) resulted in increased grain size and crystallographic reorientation within the films. Non-optimized BiI3 solar cells achieved power conversion efficiencies of 1.0%, demonstrating the potential of BiI3 as a non-toxic and air-stable semiconductor for photovoltaic applications. Next, using BiI3 as a model system, we demonstrated that the film morphology and surface coverage are strongly dependent on the Gutmann donor number of Lewis base solvents. We demonstrate that coordinating BiI3 with a combination of solvents with high and low donor numbers results in conformal films that have been difficult to achieve using conventional solution-based deposition techniques. To address the challenges with film morphology with A3Bi2I9 compounds an alternative deposition procedure was developed utilizing a two-step deposition procedure in which optimized BiI3 thin films were converted into A3Bi2I9. Thin films fabricated from the one-step deposition exhibited a preferred crystallographic orientation along the c-axis, while the two-step deposition decreased this preferred orientation. Films deposited from the two-step method exhibited increased homogeneity in the surface coverage and crystal grain sizes. After improving the film morphology, we attempt to tune the bandgap of A3Bi2I9 compounds. The bandgap is too wide for application in a single junction photovoltaic device. To tune the bandgap, we attempted to induce chemical pressure in the crystal structure through cation size mismatch. We determined that the bandgap is insensitive to A-site tuning because A3Bi2I9 compounds predominantly form a 0D structure that limits variations to the bandgap

The Merida Initiative: An Effective Way of Reducing Violence in Mexico?

In October 2007, the United States and Mexico announced the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion proposal for US assistance in Mexico and Central America’s drug war for FY 2008-FY 2010.8 For the 2008 fiscal year, Congress allocated$400 million for Mexico and $65 million for Central America. This marked a shift in US foreign drug policy, as until this time Colombia had been the main recipient of US aid, not Mexico. According to the US Department of State, Colombia received$600 million for FY 2006, while Mexico received approximately $40 million.9 As the US enters its fourth year of Merida Initiative implementation, it is important to assess whether or not it has been a successful policy. The intention of the United States and Mexico was to reduce the drug trafficking problem, cartel influence, and associated violence and corruption, while restoring order to much of Mexico through implementation of the initiative. This paper will address the viability of the Merida Initiative as an effective policy for reducing continued drug-related violence and homicide in Mexico

Intellectual cultivation: Quranic perspective in light of Surat Al-Kahf

This article attempts to explore the Quranic instructions that contribute to intellectual growth. Intellectual cultivation is the process of developing our mental capacity in order to make sense of things and comprehend them on a deeper level. The inductive method and the analytical method will be used to study and categorize the Quranic guidelines found in Surat al-Kahf that if implemented will empower a person’s critical thinking. The study shows that the believer is distinguished with a clear awareness, thought, and vision of the reality of life and its occurrences. The research will also discuss the role of reflection and other spiritual practices such as Dhikr (remembering Allah), khalwa (meditating in solitude), shukr (gratitude) in the enhancement of our intellectuality and spiritual awareness

Performing regression-based methods on viscosity of nano-enhanced PCM - Using ANN and RSM

Abstract Evaluation of the use of linear and nonlinear regression-based methods in estimating the viscosity of MWCNT/liquid paraffin nanofluid was investigated in this study. At temperature range of 5–65 °C, the viscosity of samples containing MWCNT nanoparticles at 0.005–5 wt.% which is measured by a Brookfield apparatus, was first evaluated to determine the response to the shear rate. The decrease in viscosity due to the increase in shear rate indicated that the rheological behavior of the nanofluid was non-Newtonian and therefore, in addition to temperature and mass fraction, the shear rate should be considered as an effective input parameter. Linear regression was performed by response surface methodology (RSM) and it was observed that the R-square for the best polynomial was 0.988. The results of nonlinear regression also showed that the neural network consisting of 3 and 13 neurons in the input and hidden layers was able to estimate the viscosity of the nanofluid more accurately so that the R-square value was calculated to be 0.998