The Qur'an's Call to Alms. Zakat, the Muslim Tradition of Alms-giving

It is a mass-produced plastic model of the octagonal Dome of the Rock shrine in Jerusalem. Two circular strips of paper glued round it depict the ceramic-faced outer walls. There is a slot for coins to be inserted in the roof, and the dome slides off so that coins can be taken out. Mudar, the organiser of the Islamic Zakat Supporting Committee for the Palestinian People, gave me this collecting mosque in Amman, Jordan. I was there conducting a research project to study Islamic philanthropy and obligatory alms (z a k a t). Well, souvenir models of Christian churches are two a penny all over the world, and it would be incredible if some with slots for coins had not been made somewhere; but I do not remember seeing one. Could it be that my gift from Mudar has something to say about a difference between the two religions

The Overreaction against Islamic Charities

The title of this article may be tempting fate. The British counter-terrorist services have reported that the financial trail leading to the 7 July 2005 attacks on London included direct or indirect links to eight unspecified charities. A single major terrorist outrage anywhere in the world, clearly funded through abuse of an established Muslim charity, would decisively blacken the reputation of the whole sector. However, from the evidence available at the time of writing, one of the repercussions of 9/11 has been hyper scrutinization of Islamic charities by the United States government that uncomfortably recalls the McCarthy period

Biology and management of Japanese beetle

Abstract supplied by cataloger."This publication is partially funded by a USDA NIFA grant in the Crop Protection and Pest Management Program."An informational article about how to identify and manage Japanese beetles.Written by: Kelsey J. Benthall (GRA, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri), Emily R. Althoff (GRA, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri), Kevin B. Rice (Assistant Professor, Division of Plant Sciences, University of Missouri)New 7/2

Agent-Based Modeling as a Legal Theory Tool

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a versatile social scientific research tool that adapts insights from sociology and physics to study complex social systems. Currently, ABM is nearly absent from legal literature that evaluates and proposes laws and regulations to achieve various social goals. Rather, quantitative legal scholarship is currently most characterized by the Law and Economics (L&E) approach, which relies on a more limited modeling framework. The time is ripe for more use of ABM in this scholarship. Recent developments in legal theory have highlighted the complexity of society and law’s structural and systemic effects on it. ABM’s wide adoption as a method in the social sciences, including recently in economics, demonstrates its ability to address precisely these regulatory design issues

News discourses on distant suffering: A critical discourse analysis of the 2003 SARS outbreak

News carries a unique signifying power, a power to represent events in particular ways (Fairclough, 1995). Applying Critical Discourse Analysis and Chouliaraki's theory on the mediation of suffering (2006), this article explores the news representation of the 2003 global SARS outbreak. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have covered the international outbreak of SARS. By looking into the mediation of four selected discursive moments, underlying discourses of power, hierarchy and compassion were unraveled. The analysis further identified the key role of proximity in international news reporting and supports the claim that Western news media mainly reproduce a Euro-American centered world order. This article argues that news coverage of international crises such as SARS constructs and maintains the socio-cultural difference between 'us' and 'them' as well as articulating global power hierarchies and a division of the world in zones of poverty and prosperity, danger and safety

Primordialists and Constructionists: a typology of theories of religion

This article adopts categories from nationalism theory to classify theories of religion. Primordialist explanations are grounded in evolutionary psychology and emphasize the innate human demand for religion. Primordialists predict that religion does not decline in the modern era but will endure in perpetuity. Constructionist theories argue that religious demand is a human construct. Modernity initially energizes religion, but subsequently undermines it. Unpacking these ideal types is necessary in order to describe actual theorists of religion. Three distinctions within primordialism and constructionism are relevant. Namely those distinguishing: a) materialist from symbolist forms of constructionism; b) theories of origins from those pertaining to the reproduction of religion; and c) within reproduction, between theories of religious persistence and secularization. This typology helps to make sense of theories of religion by classifying them on the basis of their causal mechanisms, chronology and effects. In so doing, it opens up new sightlines for theory and research

Cultural otherness and disaster news: the influence of western discourses on Japan in US and UK news coverage of the 2011 Great East Japan Disaster

The Great East Japan Disaster of 2011 provides an important case study to evaluate how western media cover Japan. Employing a critical discourse analysis of coverage in The New York Times, The Guardian and The Observer this article seeks to examine how Japan and the disaster-affected communities of Tohoku were represented through the context of this disaster. The analysis revealed the presence of a cultural framework, enacted during the response phase of the disaster news cycle to explain how people in Japan were coping in the aftermath of the disaster, which was premised on a discourse of cultural otherness. The textual elements that underwrote this discourse included a tendency to draw on stereotypes and in the way culture was employed to provide context to individual stories. The analysis also acknowledges how forms of bias circulated through other discourses, in particular when covering the nuclear crisis at Fukushima. The article argues that this discourse of cultural otherness is, in part, attributable to the features of disaster journalism, rather than a lack of familiarity on the part of journalists with the cultural context

Earthquakes, Volcanoes and God: Comparative Perspectives from Christianity and Islam

This paper asserts that both Christian and Islamic traditions of faith affect the ways in which people both try to make sense of, and respond to, disasters. This contention is supported by the results of empirical research, which demonstrates that differing Islamic and Christian perspectives on human suffering caused by disasters are neither as diverse, nor are they so intractable, as is commonly supposed. Today pastoral convergence between the two traditions may also be discerned, together with a general acceptance of the policies of both State agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) which are concerned with hazard relief and the propagation of policies of disaster risk reduction (DRR). Indeed some important disaster relief NGOs have emerged from Islamic and Christian faith communities and are supported by charitable donations