Comparative discourse on Yorùbá concept of spirit-husband and Muslim exorcists’ belief in intermarriage between jinn and man

Inability to find male suitors and barrenness are among the major challenges women are faced with world-wide. Research has identified varying factors that give rise to the challenges as well as corresponding possible solutions. The Yorùbá people of South-West Nigeria, viewing the challenges through spiritual lens, however, sometimes attribute the challenges to the handiwork of spirit husband-a belief somewhat similar to the belief among Muslim exorcists in marital relationship between man and jinn. This study therefore examines and compares the two concepts. Given the relatively unexplored and complex nature of the phenomena, qualitative methodology which allows for in-depth interviews for women believed to be victims of spirit husband as well as Muslim and Yorùbá exorcists is adopted. The result shows the reality of the phenomenon. It also shows some relatedness between the two concepts even when they differ considerably. The result also shows possibility of partial or total deliverance of victims.Keywords: Exorcists, jinn, ọkọ-ợrun, spirit, Intermarriag

Radon transform-based invariant image recognition

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2720424

Institutionalization of Ḥisbah: A Means to Achieve Peaceful and Credible Elections in Nigeriaa

The important pillar of the so-called democracy, which is an election, has been violent and marked by problems ranging from rigging, vote buying, illegal printing of voters’ cards, illegal possession of ballot boxes, stuffing of ballot boxes, underage voting, and falsification of election results to manipulation of results in Nigeria. Thus, the Nigerian experience with elections since independence has been quite challenging despite that conduct of elections is the only acceptable means through which the citizens of a democratic country can choose their representatives. This paper therefore appraises one of the important institutions introduced by Islam to cater to the promotion of good and prohibition of evil (ḥisbah) in society with a view to underline the importance of its institutionalization to stem the menace of electoral malpractices in Nigeria. The reason is that the institution of ḥisbah was successfully deployed during the classical periods of Islam to arrest cases of cheating in the marketplaces as well as the public dispositions. The study employs a qualitative research methodology based on literature review. Data collected from a variety of books, periodicals, and other sources, were then subjected to analysis. The findings of the study reveal that the electoral malpractices that characterized the past elections will be overcome and credible elections will be achieved if ḥisbah is institutionalized in the country. It concludes that the advocacy for its introduction in Nigeria is not an attempt to Islamize the country but a yearning call for the injection of an efficient institution that can change the narrative of electoral fraud in Nigeria as it was practiced in the Northern part of the country before its colonization.Pilar penting dari apa yang disebut demokrasi, yaitu pemilihan umum, telah diwarnai dengan kekerasan dan ditandai dengan berbagai masalah mulai dari kecurangan, pembelian suara, pencetakan kartu pemilih secara ilegal, kepemilikan kotak suara secara ilegal, pengisian kotak suara, pemungutan suara di bawah umur, dan pemalsuan hasil pemilihan umum hingga manipulasi hasil di Nigeria. Dengan demikian, pengalaman Nigeria dengan pemilu sejak kemerdekaannya cukup menantang meskipun pelaksanaan pemilu adalah satu-satunya cara yang dapat diterima di mana warga negara di negara demokratis dapat memilih perwakilan mereka. Oleh karena itu, makalah ini menilai salah satu lembaga penting yang diperkenalkan oleh Islam untuk melayani promosi kebaikan dan larangan kejahatan (ḥisbah) di masyarakat dengan maksud untuk menggarisbawahi pentingnya pelembagaannya untuk membendung ancaman malpraktek pemilu di Nigeria. Alasannya adalah karena lembaga ḥisbah berhasil digunakan selama periode klasik Islam untuk menangkap kasus-kasus kecurangan di pasar dan juga disposisi publik. Penelitian ini menggunakan metodologi penelitian kualitatif yang didasarkan pada tinjauan literatur. Data yang dikumpulkan dari berbagai buku, majalah, dan sumber-sumber lain, kemudian dianalisis. Temuan dari penelitian ini mengungkapkan bahwa malpraktek pemilu yang menjadi ciri khas pemilu yang lalu akan dapat diatasi dan pemilu yang kredibel akan dapat dicapai jika ḥisbah dilembagakan di negara ini. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan bahwa advokasi untuk memperkenalkan ḥisbah

Manẓūm al-Awjalī (An Apparatus of al-Aujaly)

The entire manuscript is available for download as a single PDF file. Higher-resolution images may be available upon request. For technical assistance, please contact [email protected]. Fieldwork Team: Dr. Mustapha Hashim Kurfi (Principal Investigator), Mohammed Bara’u Musa & Hauwa Usman (Local Project Managers), Adamu Mohammed, Abacha Kachalla, Abdrra’uf Abdullahi & Falmaa Madu Ibrahim (General Field Facilitators), and Haladu Mamman (Photographer). Technical Team: Prof. Fallou Ngom (Director African Studies Center), and Eleni Castro (Technical Lead, BU Libraries). These Collections of Fulfulde & Kanuri Ajami materials are copied as part of the African Studies Center’s African Ajami Library. Access Condition and Copyright: These materials are subject to copyright. All rights reserved to the author. For use, distribution or reproduction contact Professor Fallou Ngom ([email protected]). Citation: Materials in this web edition should be cited as: Kurfi, Mustapha Hashim, Ngom, Fallou, and Castro, Eleni (2019). African Ajami Library: Digital Preservation of Fulfulde & Kanuri Ajami Materials of Northeastern Nigeria. Boston: Boston University Libraries: http://hdl.handle.net/2144/38242. For Inquiries: Please contact Professor Fallou Ngom ([email protected]).Provenance / Custodial history: This manuscript is owned by Alhaji Bashir who was born and raised in Damask in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. He is a graduate of the University of Maiduguri, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Linguistics. He said that his interest in Kanuri Ajami, coupled with his background (being Kanuri himself and a linguist), motivate him to develop a collection of Kanuri Ajami texts. Alhaji Bashir has extensive Islamic knowledge and currently works for the Borno State government.This manuscript is a very short work in Arabic with extensive explicatory glosses in Kanuri Ajami. It has two parts. The first is Shaykh Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ’s work dealing with tawḥīd (oneness of God), the five pillars of Islam, the attributes of Allāh, the articles of faith, and elaborated notes on the characteristics of the Almighty God. The second part of the work deals with anger, anxiety, and depression. It provides words of wisdom on how to manage, control and eradicate these conditions. Both parts (tawḥīd and anger management) are written as poems. It is unclear whether the author of the first part is the same as author of the second part. The manuscript reflects the long history of Islamic scholarship in Kanem-Borno. The manuscript is unbound, complete, easy to read, and has no damaged pages. The total number of pages is only 11.The contents of this collection were developed with support of the Title VI National Resource Center grant # P015A180164 from the U.S. Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government

Approximate kernel reconstruction for time-varying networks

Most existing algorithms for modeling and analyzing molecular networks assume a static or time-invariant network topology. Such view, however, does not render the temporal evolution of the underlying biological process as molecular networks are typically “re-wired” over time in response to cellular development and environmental changes. In our previous work, we formulated the inference of time-varying or dynamic networks as a tracking problem, where the target state is the ensemble of edges in the network. We used the Kalman filter to track the network topology over time. Unfortunately, the output of the Kalman filter does not reflect known properties of molecular networks, such as sparsity