Monotheism the Zoroastrian Way

This article examines seemingly monotheistic, polytheistic and dualistic features of Zoroastrianism from the point of view of the Zoroastrian creation myth. Exploring the personality of the principal deity, Ahura Mazdā, the origin of the spiritual and material worlds and the worship of the Yazatas, it is argued that Zoroastrianism has its own particular form of monotheism

Insufficient antiretroviral therapy in pregnancy: missed opportunities for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Europe

Background: Although mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) rates are at an all-time low in Western Europe, potentially preventable transmissions continue to occur. Duration of antenatal combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) is strongly associated with MTCT risk.Methods: Data on pregnant HIV-infected women enrolled in the Western and Central European sites of the European Collaborative Study between January 2000 and July 2009 were analysed. The proportion of women receiving no antenatal ART or 1-13 days of treatment was investigated, and associated factors explored using logistic regression models.Results: Of 2,148 women, 142 (7%) received no antenatal ART, decreasing from 8% in 2000-2003 to 5% in 2004-2009 (chi(2)=8.73; P= 14 days antenatal ART and 7.4% (10/136) among those with insufficient ART.Conclusions: Over the last 10 years, around one in 11 women in this study received insufficient antenatal ART, accounting for 40% of MTCTs. One-half of these women were diagnosed before conception, suggesting disengagement from care

Literary Gurāni: Koinè or Continuum?

Professor Joyce Blau, to whom this article is dedicated in friendship and admiration, is one of the few scholars to have worked on the rich literature of the Eastern Kurds in a language widely referred to as « Gurani ». Following a usage that has become more or less established, in a publication on the subject, Joyce speaks of Gurani as a « literary koinè ». The term « Gurani » or « Gorani » is used to denote a number of different phenomena. It used as a collective term for a group of dialect..

Kurds and the PKK

Comprising some thirty to forty million people, the Kurds constitute the fourth largest ethnicity in Western Asia. Divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, Kurdistan is located in the northern part of the Middle East. A sense of national belonging among the Kurds emerged during the course of the twentieth century; it was late and weak by comparison to nationalism among the neighboring Turks, Arabs, and Persians. After the disintegration of the Ottoman empire and the establishment of a new state system in the region from which Turkey, Syria, and Iraq emerged, the Kurds living in those states rebelled on many occasions against physical and cultural genocide. The main Kurdish political actors today are the Kurdistan Regional Government in the north of Iraq, a product of a power-sharing agreement between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; the Kurdistan Workers' Party; and the affiliated Democratic Union Party