A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation Of Islam and Muslims Following the 9/11 Events As Reported in the New York Times

This study aims to examine and elucidate on how Islam and Muslims are portrayed and represented in the discourses reported in the New York Times (NYT) newspaper in the wake of the September 11 events and in the ensuing two years. The focus of this study was to provide empirical evidence to substantiate claims relating to the representation of Islam and Muslims and in response to these events. Within this focus, the system of representation is grounded in the multi-disciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (see Fowler, 1991; Fairclough, 1995). The former is the Critical linguistic approach and the latter, the Textual Analysis approach. Together the CDA approach is adopted to reveal the ideological themes imbriacted in the language of the NYT. These ideological themes are assumed within this multi-disciplinary approach to be promoted through certain linguistic structures and discursive strategic practices. The data of this study is collected from Thomson Gale's Pro Quest Newsstand which is affiliated to the British council library in Malaysia. Within the Thomson Gale Data Base, the terms 'Islam' and 'Muslim' were keyed in and searched in two separated processes. Choosing the full text option and entering the specific data ring from September 2001 to September 2003, Thomson Gale Newsstand displayed a total number of 1814 articles. This number of articles was refined further by eliminating editorials, letters to the editor, and those articles whose primary concern had no relevance to the main aims of the study. Thus, the number of these articles was reduced into 450 articles. However, a closer inspection revealed that the focus of many of the left articles did not fit into the logical categorization of this thesis. In addition, a critical reading of the data revealed that certain themes and topics were covered frequently and repetitively in many articles throughout the data. Thus, once the articles were examined and refined more critically, their number was systematically reduced to 78. In the light of the theoretical and methodical approaches of this study, the analysis of the discourses in the NYT showed that most of the themes that dominate the representational discourse of Islam and Muslims hover around the concepts of violence, turmoil, threat, jihad, and evilness of Islam and Muslims. It is also revealed that the NYT utilizes some discursive strategies like generalization and selection to promote these ideological themes that are manifested in the representational discourse of Islam and Muslims. In addition, it is found that these themes are reinforced by linguistic tools like transitivity, nominalization and the choice of some lexical items. However, the examination of the whole representational discourse of Islam and Muslims reveals that it would be a distortion to claim that the representation of Islam and Muslims merely hovers around the themes mentioned. In fact, it is found that the representation of Islam and Muslims took a new shift as the NYT creates a thematic dichotomy of two levels of the subjects under analysis. On one level, it creates a dichotomy between moderate Islam and Muslims and extremist Islam and Muslims. On another level, it creates a dichotomy between external and internal Muslims. This dichotomy is the matized and consolidated through the same linguistic structures mentioned above and other discursive strategies. The discursive strategies that are utilized by the NYT to reinforce this thematic dichotomy are classification and essentialization. The differentiation strategy provides the NYT with great flexibility both to denigrate the enemy, as embodied by extremism and external Muslims, and at the same time, to praise moderate and internal Muslims. From another perspective, the NYT utilizes the essentialization strategy to represent any Muslim who operates in Islamic politics as an extremist. In addition, it lumps all Islamic movements together, portraying them as a threat without concern as to whether they are traditional, modern, violent or peaceful. In adopting this strategy, it thus becomes unclear where moderate Islam ends and where extremism or fundamentalism begins. On the whole, this study has shown that there are several ideological themes that are embodied in the representation of Islam and Muslims in the NYT. These ideological themes are projected through various discursive strategies and linguistic structures. Such findings confirm that our theoretical lines that are based on Fowler's (1991) and Fairclough's (1995) view that language reproduces ideology and hence every thing that is reported in the press is reported from an ideological point of view

The Interactive Effect of Communication Satisfaction and Cultural Dimensions on Organizational Commitment: A Case of Four Universities in Yemen

This study investigates the interactive effect of communication satisfaction and cultural dimensions on organizational commitment. The study also aims at identifying the moderating effects of national culture on the communication satisfaction-organizational commitment relationship. To achieve the objectives of the study, quantitative data were collected from academic staff working in four universities in Yemen. Stratified random sampling was employed in the sample selection and a total of 362 academic staff participated in a survey by returning the study questionnaire distributed to them. The study participants were from five different nationalities i.e. Egyptians, Iraqis, Indians, Malaysians, and Yemenis. Statistical analysis used for analyzing the data of the study included descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Pearson Correlation, Multiple Regression, and hierarchical multiple regression. The findings of the study indicated that the academic staff’s level of satisfaction with communication practices has ranged from low to moderate. The academic staff’s organizational commitment was also moderate. The findings also showed many significant differences between Yemeni and non-Yemeni academic staff in the level of communication satisfaction with regard to the nine dimensions of communication satisfaction. Results of correlation analysis indicated significant positive bivariate relationships between communication satisfaction dimensions and the three dimensions of organizational commitment. The multiple regression analysis showed that organizational perspective; personal feedback; media quality; and top management communication are the communication satisfaction dimensions that very much predict the affective commitment, while media quality was the only dimension that predicts both continuance and normative commitment. The results of the hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that national culture dimensions moderate the relationship between communication satisfaction dimensions and organizational commitment dimensions. The study has indicated that the relationship between organizational commitment and communication satisfaction which is significantly positive is affected by national culture. The findings of this study provide a valuable knowledge to universities and organizations which have multinational staff working in them and guide these universities to understand the significance and the importance of communication satisfaction for their staff to be highly committed in order to perform well. The findings also help the management of these universities to develop strategies for elevating their staff’s communication satisfaction level in order to provide a healthy academic environment and to reach a high-quality outcome

The experimental & simulation investigation of engine performance characteristics of conventional diesel and waste plastic fuel

Excessive consumption of fossil fuels has not only resulted in the rapid depletion of their resources, but also aggravated the environmental pollution. Renewable and eco-friendly resources are required for the sustainability of life on this planet. The plastics, in different shapes and forms, are becoming the most needed materials for daily life activities. They are versatile in their applications because they can be shaped in any form for a desired application. However, their excessive use is causing environmental pollution because they are mostly non-biodegradable and pose toxicity on decomposition. Considering this, researchers are trying to develop processes for recycling plastic waste or convert it in valuable products (e.g. fuel). Waste plastic fuel/oil, can be produced from different sources (synthetic or natural), and is a promising carbon neutral alternative for transport fuels. Different types of waste plastic i.e. low density and high density polyethylenes, polypropylenes and mixed plastics can be thermally converted into oil via pyrolysis process. At present, different methods are being used to investigate the characteristics of produced oil such as effect of reaction time, yield, density and specific gravity. In this study, regular petroleum diesel and waste plastic fuels were tested on a 4-stroke, air-cooled diesel engine Yanmar L48N. The results of regular diesel were obtained from the experimental setup and they were compared with the numerical results obtained using waste plastic fuel. Due to time constraints, the waste plastic fuel studies were only limited to simulation analysis. These numerical results were obtained through modelling simulation of a four-stroke diesel test engine in ANSYS 19.2 software

Islam and Muslims in the New York Times: two versions, two camps

This paper discusses the coverage of Islam and Muslims in the New York Times (NYT) in the wake of the 9/11 events and the ensuing two years. The study shows that coverage of Islam and Muslims takes a new trajectory regarding their representation by which the NYT departs from a monolithic representation towards a fragmented perception. It stays away from the previous themes that have been constantly projected about Islam and Muslims in the western media and provides a more diverse picture. As such, it showed Islam to have two versions, moderate and extremist, and portrayed Muslims based on these two versions. A myriad of diverse themes are manifested and projected in relation to the different versions and camps of Islam and Muslims. From another perspective, the NYT utilizes the essentialization strategy to affiliate extremism to all Islamic movements operating in the domain of politics. It lumps all of them together, portraying them as a threat without concern as to whether they seek political means or use violence to achieve their goals. No distinction is made among these movements in regard to whether they are traditional, modern, violent or peaceful. In adopting this strategy, it thus becomes unclear where moderate Islam ends and where extremism or fundamentalism begins. This dichotomy of Islam and Muslims camps and the essentialization of political Islam are revealed in the light of a multi-disciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in which a textual analysis and a critical linguistic approach are adopted

Architectural design of experience based factory model for software development process in cloud computing: integration with workflow and multi-agent system

A model which is based on experience factory approach has been proposed earlier, calledEBF-SD, to overcome the limitations of experience management in software developmentdomain. An application prototype, which is then called SDeX, is developed based on theproposed model. The study on correlation analysis indicates that automation do have positiverelationship with other components: knowledge management, cloud, collaboration and portal.This paper further discusses the high level prototype development with the emphasis on thearchitectural design. Automation features are incorporated in the design in which workflowsystem and intelligent agents are integrated, and the facilitation of cloud environment isempowered to further support the automation.Keywords: architectural design; knowledge management; experience factory; workflow;multi-agent system; cloud automation

Using a Mobile Multimedia System to Improve Information Exchange in EMS.

This research uses multiple research methodologies guided by Information Systems Design Theory (ISDT) to design and evaluate a mobile multimedia information system for Emergency Medical Services (EMS). We examined the impact of multimedia information for EMS information exchange and decision-making. A field study was designed and conducted in the Boise, Idaho region for three months to evaluate the system and validate ISDT design propositions. Findings from qualitative analysis illustrated the value of digital images and audio recordings for improving information exchange and augmenting medical decision-making. This paper describes the problem and justification, presents the system design, the pilot test methodology and findings and overall implications and future research directions

Exploration of instrumental and integrative motivation for reading English as a second language among second year pre-university students of Government MAO College, Lahore (Pakistan)

Since the 1970s work of Gardner and Lambert, studies on language learning motivation have received much consideration in second language research. More recently, studies on reading motivation have also gained much interest. This study was conducted among 40 male second year pre-university students of Government MAO College, Lahore (Pakistan) to investigate the levels of instrumental and integrative motivation for reading English as a Second Language (ESL). Data were collected through an adapted version of Dornyei’s language learning motivation questionnaire, and analyzed by means of descriptive statistics.The findings indicate that the students were more strongly instrumentally motivated for reading English in their context.It was also found that the students have relatively lower levels of integrative motivation for reading English.Based on the findings and implications, recommendations are made for the enhancement of motivation for reading English in the Pakistani context

A hierarchical self-healing SLA for cloud computing

The service level agreement (SLA) is a mutual contract between the service provider and consumer which determines the agreed service level objective (SLO). The common SLA is a plain documental agreement without any relation to other dependent SLAs during the different layers of cloud computing. Hence, the cloud computing environment needs the hierarchical and autonomic SLA. This paper proposes the SH-SLA model to generate a hierarchical self-healing SLA in cloud computing. The self-healing ability contains the SLA monitoring, violation detecting and violation reacting processes. In SH-SLA, the related SLAs communicate with each other hierarchically. The SLA would be able to check its QoS and notify the recent status to dependent SLAs. Furthermore, SH-SLA could prevent or propagate the notified violations by an urgent reaction. Consequently, the service providers have a great chance to prevent the violated SLA before sensing by end users. The SH-SLA model is simulated and the experiment results have presented the violation detection and reaction abilities of the proposed model in cloud computing. Besides, the end users meet the lesser violations in SH-SLA than the common SLA

الإعانة المحرمة وبعض صورها في الفقه الإسلامي

التعاون على الإثم والعدوان محرم في الشرع، ويدخل فيه كل ما كان مؤديا الى المعاصي والآثام، ويهدف هذا البحث إلى معرفة ماهية الإعانة المحرمة شرعا وضبطها، ثم التأصيل لها من أصول الاستدلال من كتاب وسنة وقواعد شرعية، ومن معرفة الصور التي يشملها التعليل الشرعي، وقد اتبع البحث المنهج العام استقرائي مقارن، وقد توصل البحث إلى كثير من الصور الممنوعة شرعا، كالعمل في البنوك الربوية، والتعاون معها، وكذلك عقود الصيانة لأماكن الدعارة والملاهي والبارات، كما تم جمع كثير من الصور المعاصرة والقديمة التي تصب في نفس هذا الاتجاه، كبيع السلاح في الفتنة، والعنب للخمارات، ويشمل هذه الصور الممنوعة شرعا الاعمال الدعائية لمراكز الفحشاء والمنكر سواء كانت دعاية مقروءة أم مسموعة أم في وسائل الاعلام المتعددة. كما قدم البحث تمهيدا إضافيا عن الوسائل وأنواعها وأحكامها لما لها من أهمية متعلقة بالموضوع، وبين معنى القاعدة الشهيرة، الوسائل تأخذ أحكام المقاصد، الى غير هذا من المسائل والفروع في البحث