European Business Environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

European Business Environment - Essay Example The Euro is the first currency that was introduced without the backing of any single country, and rather had a large number of stakeholders with no one really ready to take full responsibility. The single currency posed many challenges to some of the nations whose policies were not flexible enough and those with regulated markets. From the very first day, economists feared that any external adjustment to the Eurozone would transfer financial issues to the inflexible markets through the currency and exchange rates. Any shock would result in changes to the exchange rate which will create problems for nation who had inflexible markets such as a labor market. Another issue is the lack of supervision that was assigned to the banks of the nations in the Eurozone. The Irish bank, for example, gained its finances from the German and French banks but there no check on the limit of the borrowing from the Irish bank. Soon after the Irish bank found itself into trouble, it also affected the Euro pean Central Bank. The situation was sort of similar to the U.S. Federal Reserve where it serves as the central bank of several states. In this case, the European Central Bank served as the central bank of several nations and it had to keep the borrowing of its member nations into check at all points of time. However, there was no such policy present to keep this check and the banks were given permission to borrow, which eventually resulted in over-borrowing of funds of banks from external sources and thus the Eurozone economies faced such financial shocks. The European Central Bank is actually a very weak institution by design since its inception. It has a very limited authority to influence the financial position of the countries under Eurozone. Let alone the powers to influence, the ECB also as a limited set of supervisory roles that any of the central bank would have. The ECB does not have the authority to buy any of the Eurozone country debt which limits its power as a central bank and its role to correct the errors made by individual nations. Not just this, unlike the other central banks of nations throughout the world, the sole mandate of the ECB is inflation. By law, the European Central Bank had no authority to interfere to correct the unemployment issues and could only take measures that corrected the issues related to inflation. (Skaperdas, n.d.) Another issue is that the European Central Bank only has the power of implementing the monetary policies and it could not influence the fiscal policies, which were controlled by the individual nations. In the modern world, most of the financial issues are addressed though fiscal policies which trigger or control the economic growth and inflation levels. Therefore, the different fiscal policies implemented by the numerous member nations resulted in different impacts of the financial crisis in 2008. In order to overcome the differing monetary and fiscal policies in the region, the member nation signed the Sta bility and Growth Pact to have a fiscal discipline and keep the debt levels and budget deficits within acceptable limits. However, the pact failed primarily due to a lack of commitment on part of the member nations and they continued to violate the condition set under the pact. The commission in charge under the pact proposed a one-size-fits-all policy which was inappropriate and unpopular because the member

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Essay Example for Free

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Essay Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tells the story of Victor’s ambition to successfully create a life through the use of science. In the present times, this is closely known as genetic engineering or cloning, wherein a scientist or a doctor dabbles in the works of creating a new life or transforming a life through science and technology. Shelley shows in her work that Victor had successfully created a being, however it stunned him, not in amazement but in hatred and fear of the misshapen creature he has created. The creature that Victor created was adultlike like in its physique but childlike in its mind. Its innocence became its downfall as it slowly learned, the hard way, that it is not a normal human being but a reject of the society because of its appearance. This led to its violent rampage destroying the things that it desires, belongingness in the society, and created an even more fearsome aura that caused people, even its creator, a deeper terror and horror in its existence. This shows that such inventions and discoveries does not necessarily mean success in the world of science as such creatures do not play a significant role in making the lives of people better. This indicates that science and technology has a great power in playing with fate and lives that people tend to question its ethics, morals and values. Shelley successfully presents in her work that science has to consider certain ethics and morals with its inventions, thinking about the purpose and result of the work in the world of humans. Ethics and morals are the basis of how humans live and think. The society strongly against inventions such as cloning and genetic engineering because of these values. Although the value life is a strong motive for dabbling into the arts of creating or transforming human life, the society thinks immoral of such actions because it makes the creator play with life, which in a religious or ethical sense, humans cannot play with. Shelley’s Frankenstein shows that playing with fate and life has its consequences. Something that is created from the pieces of humanity cannot be entirely human on its own. Rejection is always present in society, and it cannot be blamed on the people when a creature, as misshapen as Frankenstein roams the streets without full knowledge of what life is. The lesson the Shelley leaves her readers is the importance of considering how knowledge is to be used for humanity and to improve human life. Another impacting thought that Shelley leaves is the significance of proper teaching of the masters to their students. When Victor showed an uncanny interest in modern science, his teachers dismissed his curiousity without explaining to him why such fascination is dangerous and not worth paying attention to. Victor turned to modern science because of the limitations of alchemy. He combined his knowledge of aggripa, alchemy and the modern science to turn create a new life that he later rejected and loathed. Both the educators and the students have a responsibility in what they do and the results of their actions. Before any scientific invention and discovery is pursued, ethical considerations, moral responsibility and purpose is to be weighed. Educators and students should look at their works with purpose and not just because they wanted to create something new. They have to consider the results of such actions, and if it will result to something that is not beneficial for human life and will endanger the morals and values of the society, then it should be discouraged. Science and technology is something that is to be used to improve human life not destroy it.

Essay --

Hirohito was born in Tokyo, Japan April 29th 1901 and die on 1989 in Tokyo. He was the ruler of Japan from 1926 until he died. He was the longest running monarch in japans history. Hirohito was born in Aoyama Palace in Tokyo and was tought at Peers’ School and at the Crown Prince’s organization. He urbanized an interest in marine biology on which he wrote more than a few books. He visited Europe in 1921 becoming the first Japanese crown prince to travel. Upon his come back he was named prince when his father died his name was he Taisho emperor retired for the reason of his mental illness. 1924 hirohito wedded the princess Nagako Kuni. Hirohito gained emperor of Japan on December 25th 1926 subsequently after the death of his father. Histime in power was designated â€Å"Bright peace† During WWII he nearly attacked all of his nearby neighbors connected his self with the Nazi Germany and launched a awful assault on the U.S naval base at Pearl Harbor. Hirohito later depicted him self as a almost helpless monarch many scholars have come to believe he played an lively role in the war. After Japan surrendered in 1945 he became a figurehead with no political control. He was the eldest son of the Crown Prince Yoshihito was born on April 29Th 1901. According to custom the imperial family members were not raised by their parents. Hirohito attended schools set up for children of nobility. He received rigorous instruction in military matters along with others subjects such as math and physics. He went on a 34 man entourage traveled to Western Europe for a six month tour it was the fist time a Japanese crown prince had gone abroad. Japan hirohito became regent for his chronically ill father and assumed the emperor. September 1923 a earthquake hit t... ...vidual meetings with senior government officials to consider the process of the war and all of the milltary powers. But the ex prime minister Fumimaro konoe advised to prosper in the war. Konoe feared a communist revolution even more than defeat in war and argued about a negotiated surrender. He advised Hirohito to begin negitions to end the war. On june 22nd the leader met with his ministers saying â€Å"I desire that concrete plans to end the was in hampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts be made to implement them.† Emperor Hirohito died when going through surgery on his pancreas after having some digestive problems for several months. Doctors discovered that he had duodenal cancer. He appeared to make a full recovery but September 1988 he fainted in his palace and his health got worse he began to bleed internally. January 7 he passed away. Essay -- Hirohito was born in Tokyo, Japan April 29th 1901 and die on 1989 in Tokyo. He was the ruler of Japan from 1926 until he died. He was the longest running monarch in japans history. Hirohito was born in Aoyama Palace in Tokyo and was tought at Peers’ School and at the Crown Prince’s organization. He urbanized an interest in marine biology on which he wrote more than a few books. He visited Europe in 1921 becoming the first Japanese crown prince to travel. Upon his come back he was named prince when his father died his name was he Taisho emperor retired for the reason of his mental illness. 1924 hirohito wedded the princess Nagako Kuni. Hirohito gained emperor of Japan on December 25th 1926 subsequently after the death of his father. Histime in power was designated â€Å"Bright peace† During WWII he nearly attacked all of his nearby neighbors connected his self with the Nazi Germany and launched a awful assault on the U.S naval base at Pearl Harbor. Hirohito later depicted him self as a almost helpless monarch many scholars have come to believe he played an lively role in the war. After Japan surrendered in 1945 he became a figurehead with no political control. He was the eldest son of the Crown Prince Yoshihito was born on April 29Th 1901. According to custom the imperial family members were not raised by their parents. Hirohito attended schools set up for children of nobility. He received rigorous instruction in military matters along with others subjects such as math and physics. He went on a 34 man entourage traveled to Western Europe for a six month tour it was the fist time a Japanese crown prince had gone abroad. Japan hirohito became regent for his chronically ill father and assumed the emperor. September 1923 a earthquake hit t... ...vidual meetings with senior government officials to consider the process of the war and all of the milltary powers. But the ex prime minister Fumimaro konoe advised to prosper in the war. Konoe feared a communist revolution even more than defeat in war and argued about a negotiated surrender. He advised Hirohito to begin negitions to end the war. On june 22nd the leader met with his ministers saying â€Å"I desire that concrete plans to end the was in hampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts be made to implement them.† Emperor Hirohito died when going through surgery on his pancreas after having some digestive problems for several months. Doctors discovered that he had duodenal cancer. He appeared to make a full recovery but September 1988 he fainted in his palace and his health got worse he began to bleed internally. January 7 he passed away.

Sprained Ankle

Introduction Ankle sprains are the most common injury in sports1,2,3,4,5. This is how almost all the articles started out. This is an injury I have seen over the past years as a player and coach. A player on my team this year suffered this injury during our basketball season and she was out for a few weeks. This really hurt our team since I only had 7 players on my team this year. This had me wondering if there was anything I could have done differently as a coach to prevent her injury since it was done during a drill. There are several ligaments surrounding the bones to form the ankle, which are the syndesmotic ligament, lateral collateral ligament, and medial collateral ligament.5 Lateral ankle sprains can occur in several different ways when playing sports. Players can step on another player or landing from a jump. From doing this research, I would like to find some different ways to treat ankle injuries and if there are different outcomes from these treatments. Methods To conduct my research, I used the resources from the Southern Utah University Online Library. I used the search engine to find peer reviewed articles. I was searching for articles about ankle sprains and treatment of those injuries. I searched for words such as, ankle injury, prevention, and treatment. I found several peer reviewed articles about ankle sprains and different methods of treatment. There was also an article that was very useful from the National Athletic Trainers' Association that had a lot of different topics of information that very helpful. Discussion Ankle sprains can occur through many different activities. It is the most common sports injury among athletes1,2,3,4,5. This injury happens because of a plantar flexion and inversion. 3 The ligaments that are affected by ankle sprains are the anterior talofibular, calcaneofibular, and posterior talofibular ligament. 2 After an ankle injury occurs it must be determined what kind of sprain has happened. It can be classified as a grade I, grade II, or grade III with grade I being mild and grade III most severe. 2 When an ankle sprain occurs there can be inflammation of the ankle, loss of function, and instability. 1 There are different ways to diagnosis an ankle sprain such as range of motion, special tests, and MRI are just a few ways that an ankle sprain can be diagnosed. 2 There have been many different ways to treat ankle sprains. If not properly treated, ankle sprains can be reoccurring, 10-40% of people who have suffered from ankle sprains will have another sprain occur.6 Several different studies have been conducted to help with the treatment and rehabilitation of ankle sprains. Three different studies were used to help gain a better understanding about the treatment and rehabilitation of ankle injuries. In these studies, ankle taping, isometric testing and physical therapy were used to help with ankle injury recovery. In one study, ankle taping was used to see if it would reduce the â€Å"latency of the perneus longus and increase dynamic stabilization of the ankle† 4 pg. 54 Two groups were used, one group with no previous ankle injuries and another group who had suffered from a pervious ankle injury and the testing occurred over two days. 4 The leg that was being tested would either be taped or not depending on the trial. The foot would be inverted at 25 degrees. This was done for 10 trials and EMG was used to record the data. 4 After this study was conducted it showed that the ankle taping was helpful in providing more stability to the ankle compared to the ankle not being taped. 4 This shows that ankle taping can be a useful tool when trying to prevent the ankle from inversion. It also showed that it could be helpful for people who have had an ankle sprain and also for those who have not had an ankle injury. When thinking about injury prevention, someone who has not suffered from an ankle sprain might not think it is important to have his or her ankle taped. This was a good study to look at and see how this could be a beneficial tool to use for ankle injuries and how isometric training can be used help with rehabilitation after an injury. Treatment of ankle sprains is an important part of recovery so an athlete or any other person can go back to normal physical activities, whether it is sports or other activities. In another study, the rehabilitation after an ankle sprain was looked at using isometric testing. Two groups were used for this study and both groups had at home protocol that they completed.1 Each group had exercises to complete at home, an ankle brace to wear and cryotherapry to use after exercises. 1 Cryotherpary was used this treatment method 3-4 times a day for 15-20 minutes, this was done to help with pain and swelling and to reduce inflammation. 1 The use of isometric testing is used to help show how much inversion and eversion is affected. 1 The use of isometric training can be used to monitor the progress during treatment for ankle sprains and can also be used to help make programs for individualized for each athlete. 1 This study had patients completing a program where they completed different exercises at home and tests were also completed to check the progress of each person during their rehabilitation. Several different outcomes were measured such as pain, ankle circumference, lower extremity functional scale, square hop test, and isometric ankle testing. 1 These test are helpful when people are trying to recover from an ankle injury. The use of isometric testing is a good way to track progress and could possibility help with the recovery process to go quickly. Physical therapy can be a tool used to help with the recovery process of an ankle injury. The final study looked at physical therapy being a good way to help treat ankle injuries. Two groups were used in this study one group who received physical therapy and another group who did not. 5 The group who participation in the physical therapy program had improved results in pain reduction, dorsal and plantar flexion improved, and muscles were strengthen. 5 The use of physical therapy can be a beneficial way help someone who has suffered from an ankle injury recover more quickly. After reading these three studies about different ways to help the recovery and monitor progress of ankle injuries, there were some beneficial ideas. The main one is that physical therapy or at home exercises can help with the healing process. Also, each athlete or patient should have an individualized program for recovery. This can help aid in the recovery of an athlete from their injury and return to play more quickly. There are a few limitations from these studies as well and more research should be conducted. In the study with physical therapy used the sample size for each group was very small with only three patients in each group. 5 Facilities or equipment used should also be looked at. Isometric testing is a great way test patients and come up with individualized programs but could be very expensive or obtain this type of testing depending on what is available to each program. Prevention of injuries is important for keeping athletes playing and taking time away from their sports season. In the article from the National Athletic Trainers' Association, three different ideas were given for the prevention of ankle injuries. The first suggestion is a prevention program for athletes for three months. 2 This type of program would include exercises that would help balance and neuromuscular control. 2 For athletes who have suffered an ankle injury previously might feel better if they train to help prevent their injury. They might even feel a sense of security by training. Another prevention measure is increasing strength in the leg and hips. 2 Finally, dorsiflexion range of motion could also be trained, if it is limited. 2 Knowing if an athlete has suffered from an ankle injury and ways to help strengthen the ankle and leg could prevent another injury. An athlete should take any preventive measure decrease their chances of suffering from an injury. Once an athlete has recovered from an injury, there is always a question of when they should return to play. There is a physical and mental part of returning to play. For an athlete, there is mental part of coming back from an injury. They might have feelings of nervousness to play because of risk of getting injured again. Before an athlete can return to play there should be a physical examination done by the athletic trainer. The trainer could complete different tests to check for the readiness of a player to return to games or practices. According to the National Athletic Trainers' Association Position Statement, tests such as single-legged hop and Star Excursion Balance Test could be used to measure an athletes' injured leg.2 The athlete should be at 80% functional performance. 2 Athletes should also consider wearing ankle braces or taping for extra support during practices and games. 2 Each athlete should be looked at individually when returning to play and should be ready both physically and mentally to come back. One controversy that one mentioned for ankle sprains was the use of different types of shoes. According to one article,2 there have been studies conducted about low-top and high-top shoes. In basketball, players might wear high-top shoes but in sports like football low-top shoes could be worn. There have been studies done with conflicting results if you wear low-top or high-top shoes with ankle stabilizers could help prevent ankle sprains.2 Some studies showed that high-top shoes and ankle taping was more helpful in preventing ankle injuries.2 While another study showed that wearing low-top shoes with ankle braces was more helpful in preventing ankle injuries.2 I found this interesting that shoes could make a difference if they were low-top or high-top. Future research results on this topic would be interesting to see if there is a certain type of footwear that could help prevent ankle injuries and if there could be one consensus about this topic. Conclusion In conclusion, athletes in all sports see this injury too often. From conducting this research, I learned a lot about ankle injuries, which I have also seen during my time as a coach and player. I have learned about the different methods to treat this injury and the use of different techniques and exercises. I hope to take away some ideas about prevention of this injury with the use of different exercises that can be used. Ankle taping and ankle braces could also be a good way to help support the ankle after an injury. It is important for coaches and players to learn about this injury and the different ways to prevent and recovery from this injury if it does occur. References Gediminas T, Aleksandras K, Lankaite D. Isometric eversion and inversion testing after acute ankle sprains. Annals of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine. 2014;57. doi:10.1016/j.rehab.2014.03.978.Kaminski TW, Hertel J, Amendola N, et al. National Athletic Trainers Association Position Statement: Conservative Management and Prevention of Ankle Sprains in Athletes. Journal of Athletic Training. 2013;48(4):528-545. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-48.4.02.Kernozek T, Durall CJ, Friske A, Mussallem M. Ankle Bracing, Plantar-Flexion Angle, and Ankle Muscle Latencies During Inversion Stress in Healthy Participants. Journal of Athletic Training. 2008;43(1):37-43. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-43.1.37.Knight AC, Weimar WH. Effects of previous lateral ankle sprain and taping on the latency of the peroneus longus. Sports Biomechanics. 2012;11(1):48-56. doi:10.1080/14763141.2011.637121.Popa C-E. The Effectiveness of Physical Therapy Methods and Techniques in Treating Post-Immobilization Ankle Sprains. Gymnasium. 2017;XVIII(2):19. doi:10.29081/gsjesh.2017.18.2.02.Vries JSD, Kingma I, Blankevoort L, Dijk CNV. Difference in balance measures between patients with chronic ankle instability and patients after an acute ankle inversion trauma. Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy. 2010;18(5):601-606. doi:10.1007/s00167-010-1097-1.

Filipino People and North Borneo Company Essay

1. Rizal and the Propaganda Movement To prove his point and refute the accusations of prejudiced Spanish writers against his race, Rizal annotated the book, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, written by the Spaniard Antonio Morga. The book was an unbiased presentation of 16th century Filipino culture. Rizal through his annotation showed that Filipinos had developed culture even before the coming of the Spaniards. While annotating Morga’s book, he began writing the sequel to the Noli, the El Filibusterismo. He completed the Fili in July 1891 while he was in Brussels, Belgium. As in the printing of the Noli, Rizal could not published the sequel for the lack of finances. Fortunately, Valentin Ventura gave him financial assistance and the Fili came out of the printing press on September 1891. The El Filibusterismo indicated Spanish colonial policies and attacked the Filipino collaborators of such system. The novel pictured a society on the brink of a revolution. To buttress his defense of the native’s pride and dignity as people, Rizal wrote three significant essays while abroad: The Philippines a Century hence, the Indolence of the Filipinos and the Letter to the Women of Malolos. These writings were his brilliant responses to the vicious attacks against the Indio and his culture. While in Hongkong, Rizal planned the founding of the Liga Filipina, a civil organization and the establishment of a Filipino colony in Borneo. The colony was to be under the protectorate of the North Borneo Company, he was granted permission by the British Governor to establish a settlement on a 190,000 acre property in North Borneo. The colony was to be under the protectorate of the North Borneo Company, with the â€Å"same privileges and conditions at those given in the treaty with local Bornean rulers†. Governor Eulogio Despujol disapproved the project for obvious and self-serving reasons. He considered the plan impractical and improper that Filipinos would settle and develop foreign territories while the colony itself badly needed such developments.

Ticks, Suborder Ixodida

Ticks, Suborder Ixodida The parasitic arachnids we call ticks all belong to the suborder Ixodida. The name Ixodida derives from the Greek word ixÃ… dÄ“s, meaning sticky. All feed on blood, and many are vectors of diseases. Description: Most adult ticks are quite small, the largest reaching about 3mm in length at maturity. But when engorged with blood, an adult tick can easily expand to 10 times its normal size. As adults and nymphs, ticks have four pairs of legs, like all arachnids. Tick larvae have only three pairs of legs. The tick life cycle has four stages: egg, larva, nymph, and adult. The female lays her eggs where the emerging larva is likely to encounter a host for its first blood meal. Once fed, it molts into the nymph stage. The nymph also requires a blood meal, and may go through several instars before reaching adulthood. The adult must feed on blood a final time before producing eggs. Most ticks have a three-host life cycle, with each stage (larva, nymph, and adult) finding and feeding on a different host animal. Some ticks, however, remain on a single host animal for their entire life cycle, feeding repeatedly, and others require two hosts. Classification: Kingdom – Animalia Phylum – ArthropodaClass – ArachnidaOrder – AcariGroup - ParasitiformesSuborder - Ixodida Habitat and Distribution: Worldwide, there are nearly 900 species of ticks known and described. The vast majority (about 700) of these are hard ticks in the family Ixodidae. Approximately 90 species occur in the continental U.S. and Canada. Major Families in the Order: Ixodidae – hard ticks Argasidae – soft ticks Genera and Species of Interest: Both the blacklegged or deer tick (Ixodes scapularis) and the western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus) can transmit the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.Proteins in the saliva of the Rocky Mountain wood tick, Dermacentor andersoni, can cause paralysis in its hosts, which include cattle, horses, dogs, sheep, and humans. Boophilus ticks are parasites of large hoofed mammals, and complete their life cycle on a single host. Amblyomma nuttali holds the record for the largest clutch of eggs produced by a single tick – over 22,000! Sources: Borror and DeLongs Introduction to the Study of Insects, 7th edition, by Charles A. Triplehorn and Norman F. Johnson.Synopsis Of The Described Arachnida Of The World, Texas AM University Entomology Dept. Accessed online December 31, 2013.The Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd edition, edited by John L. Capinera.The Distribution of Ticks, Centers for Disease Control. Accessed online December 31, 2013.Order Ixodida – Ticks, Bugguide.net. Accessed online December 31, 2013.Tick Biology, the Tick App, Texas AM University Entomology Dept. Accessed online December 31, 2013.

Islam and Postmodernism Essays

Islam and Postmodernism Essays Islam and Postmodernism Essay Islam and Postmodernism Essay p. 119. 19. Personal interview via e-mail, 23 October 2001. 20. Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair, Grey Seal, London, 1990. 21. Malise Ruthven, A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Wrath of Islam, The Hogarth Press, London, 1990; revised edition, p. 186. 22. Postmodernism and the Other, Pluto Press, London, 1998. 23. Sardar with Merryl Wyn Davies and Ashis Nandy, Barbaric Others: A Manifesto on Western Racism, Pluto Press, London, 1993; Westview Press, Boulder, Colo. 1993, p. 3. 24. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘On Serpents, Inevitability and the South Asian Imagination’, Futures, 24 (9), pp. 942–9 (November 1992). 25. ‘When the Pendulum Comes to Rest’, in Sheila M. Moorcroft (editor), Visions for the 21st Century, Adamantine Press, London, 1992, p. 101. 26. Distorted Imagination, p. 276. 27. See Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Development and the Location of Eurocentism’, in Ronaldo Munck and Denis O’Hearn (editors) Critical Devel opment Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm, Zed Books, London, 1999. 28. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘alt. civilisation. aq: cyberspace as the darker side of the West’, in Ziauddin Sardar and Jerome R. Ravetz (editors), Cyberfutures: Culture and Politics on the Information Superhighway, Pluto Press, London, 1996; also David Bell and Barbara M. Kennedy (editors), The Cyberspace Reader, Routledge, London, 2000, pp. 723–52. 29. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Asian Cultures: Between Programmed and Desired Futures’, in Eleonora Masini and Yogesh Atal (editors), The Futures of Asian Cultures, Unesco, Bangkok, 1993; and Unesco, The Futures of Cultures, Unesco, Paris, 1994. 30. Personal interview via e-mail, 23 October 2001. 31. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Paper, Printing and Compact Discs: The Making and Unmaking of Islamic Culture’, Media, Culture, Society, 15, pp. 43–59 (1992); see also Chapter 6 of this book. 32. Ibid. , p. 46. 33. ‘Currying Favour With Tradition’, Herald (Glasgow), 29 April 1998, p. 27. 34. Postmodernism and the Other, p. 281. 35. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘What Makes a University Islamic? ’, in Sardar (editor) How We Know: Ilm and the Revival of Knowledge, Grey Seal, London, 1991. 36. Ziauddin Sardar, ‘Waiting for Rain’, New Scientist, 15 December 2001. 37. Originally published in Arts and the Islamic World, 21, pp. 5–7 (Spring 1992); a revised version appeared in New Renaissance, 8 (1), pp. 14–16, 1998. 38. ‘Currying Favour With Tradition’. Islam 1 Rethinking Islam Serious rethinking within Islam is long overdue. Muslims have been comfortably relying, or rather falling back, on age-old interpretations for much too long . This is why we feel so painful in the contemporary world, so uncomfortable with modernity. Scholars and thinkers have been suggesting for well over a century that we need to make a serious attempt at ijtihad, at reasoned struggle and rethinking, to reform Islam. At the beginning of the last century, Jamaluddin Afghani and Muhammad Abduh led the call for a new ijtihad; and along the way many notable intellectuals, academics and sages have added to this plea – not least Muhammad Iqbal, Malik bin Nabbi and Abdul Qadir Audah. Yet, ijtihad is one thing Muslim societies have singularly failed to undertake. Why? The ‘why’ has acquired an added urgency after 11 September. What the fateful events of that day reveal, more than anything else, is the distance we have travelled away from the spirit and import of Islam. Far from being a liberating force, a kinetic social, cultural and intellectual dynamic for equality, justice and humane values, Islam seems to have acquired a pathological strain. Indeed, it seems to me that we have internalised all those historic and contemporary western representations of Islam and Muslims that have been demonising us for centuries. We now actually wear the garb, I have to confess, of the very demons that the west has been projecting on our collective personality. But to blame the west, or a notion of instrumental modernity that is all but alien to us, would be a lazy option. True, the west, and particularly America, has a great deal to answer for. And Muslims are quick to point a finger at the injustices committed by American and European foreign policies and hegemonic tendencies. However, that is only a part, and in my opinion not an insurmountable part, of the malaise. Hegemony is not always imposed; sometimes, it is invited. The internal situation within Islam is an open invitation. We have failed to respond to the summons to ijtihad for some very profound reasons. Prime amongst these is the fact that the context of our sacred texts – the Qur’an and the examples of the Prophet Muhammad, our absolute frame of reference – has been frozen in history. One can only have an interpretative relationship with a text 27 28 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures – even more so if the text is perceived to be eternal. But if the interpretative context of the text is never our context, not our own time, then its interpretation can hardly have any real meaning or significance for us as we are now. Historic interpretations constantly drag us back to history, to frozen and ossified contexts of long ago; worse, to perceived and romanticised contexts that have not even existed in history. This is why, while Muslims have a strong emotional attachment to Islam, Islam per se, as a worldview and system of ethics, has little or no direct relevance to their daily lives apart from the obvious concerns of rituals and worship. Ijtihad and fresh thinking have not been possible because there is no context within which they can actually take place. The freezing of interpretation, the closure of ‘the gates of ijtihad’, has had a devastating effect on Muslim thought and action. In particular, it has produced what I can only describe as three metaphysical catastrophes: the elevation of the Shari’ah to the level of the Divine, with the consequent removal of agency from the believers, and the equation of Islam with the state. Let me elaborate. Most Muslims consider the Shari’ah, commonly translated as ‘Islamic law’, to be divine. Yet, there is nothing divine about the Shari’ah. The only thing that can legitimately be described as divine in Islam is the Qur’an. The Shari’ah is a human construction; an attempt to understand the divine will in a particular context. This is why the bulk of the Shari’ah actually consists of fiqh or jurisprudence, which is nothing more than legal opinion of classical jurists. The very term fiqh was not in vogue before the Abbasid period when it was actually formulated and codified. But when fiqh assumed its systematic legal form, it incorporated three vital aspects of Muslim society of the Abbasid period. At that juncture, Muslim history was in its expansionist phase, and fiqh ncorporated the logic of Muslim imperialism of that time. The fiqh rulings on apostasy, for example, derive not from the Qur’an but from this logic. Moreover, the world was simple and could easily be divided into black and white: hence, the division of the world into dar al-Islam and dar al-harb. Furthermore, as the framers of law were not by this stage managers of society, the law became merely theory which could not be modified – the framers of the law were unable to see where the faults lay and what aspect of the law needed fresh thinking and reformulation. Thus fiqh, as we know it today, evolved on the basis of a division between those who were governing and set themselves apart from society and those who were framing the law; the epistemological Rethinking Islam 29 assumptions of a ‘golden’ phase of Muslim history also came into play. When we describe the Shari’ah as divine, we actually provide divine sanctions for the rulings of bygone fiqh. What this means in reality is that when Muslim countries apply or impose the Shari’ah – which is what Muslims from Indonesia to Nigeria demand – the contradictions that were inherent in the formulation and evolution of fiqh come to the fore. That is why wherever the Shari’ah is imposed – that is, fiqhi legislation is applied, out of context from the time when it was formulated and out of step with ours – Muslim societies acquire a medieval feel. We can see that in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and the Taliban Afghanistan. When narrow adherence to fiqh, to the dictates of this or that school of thought, whether it has any relevance to real world or not, becomes the norm, ossification sets in. The Shari’ah will solve all our problems’ becomes the common sentiment; and it becomes necessary for a group with vested interests in this notion of the Shari’ah to preserve its territory, the source of its power and prestige, at all costs. An outmoded body of law is thus equated with the Shari’ah, and criticism is shunned and outlawed by appealing to its divine nature. The elevation of the Shari’ah to the divine level also means the believers themselves have no agency: since the law is a priori given, people themselves have nothing to do except to follow it. Believers thus become passive receivers rather than active seekers of truth. In reality, the Shari’ah is nothing more than a set of principles, a framework of values, that provide Muslim societies with guidance. But these sets of principles and values are not a static given but are dynamically derived within changing contexts. As such, the Shari’ah is a problem-solving methodology rather than law. 1 It requires the believers to exert themselves and constantly reinterpret the Qur’an and look at the life of the Prophet Muhammad with ever changing fresh eyes. Indeed, the Qur’an has to be reinterpreted from epoch to epoch – which means that the Shari’ah, and by extension Islam itself, has to be reformulated with changing contexts. 2 The only thing that remains constant in Islam is the text of the Qur’an itself – its concepts providing the anchor for ever changing interpretations. Islam is not so much a religion as an integrative worldview: that is to say, it integrates all aspects of reality by providing a moral perspective on every aspect of human endeavour. Islam does not provide ready-made answers to all human problems; it provides a moral and just perspective within which Muslims must endeavour to 30 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures find answers to all human problems. But if everything is a priori given, in the shape of a divine Shari’ah, then Islam is reduced to a totalistic ideology. Indeed, this is exactly what the Islamic movements – in particularly Jamaat-e-Islami (both Pakistani and Indian varieties) and the Muslim Brotherhood – have reduced Islam to. Which brings me to the third metaphysical catastrophe. Place this ideology within a nation-state, with divinely attributed Shari’ah at its centre, and you have an ‘Islamic state’. All contemporary ‘Islamic states’, from Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan to aspiring Pakistan, are based on this ridiculous assumption. But once Islam, as an ideology, becomes a programme of action of a vested group, it looses its humanity and becomes a battlefield where morality, reason and justice are readily sacrificed at the altar of emotions. Moreover, the step from a totalistic ideology to a totalitarian order where every human situation is open to state arbitration is a small one. The transformation of Islam into a state-based political ideology not only deprives it of all its moral and ethical content, it also debunks most of Muslim history as un-Islamic. Invariably, when Islamists rediscover a ‘golden’ past, they do so only in order to disdain the present and mock the future. All we are left with is messianic chaos, as we saw so vividly in the Taliban regime, where all politics as the domain of action is paralysed and meaningless pieties become the foundational truth of the state. The totalitarian vision of Islam as a state thus transforms Muslim politics into a metaphysics: in such an enterprise, every action can be justified as ‘Islamic’ by the dictates of political expediency as we witnessed in revolutionary Iran. The three metaphysical catastrophes are accentuated by an overall process of reduction that has become the norm in Muslim societies. The reductive process itself is also not new; but now it has reached such an absurd state that the very ideas that are supposed to take Muslim societies towards humane values now actually take them in the opposite direction. From the subtle beauty of a perennial challenge to construct justice through mercy and compassion, we get mechanistic formulae fixated with the extremes repeated by people convinced they have no duty to think for themselves because all questions have been answered for them by the classical ulema, far better men long dead. And because everything carries the brand name of Islam, to question it, or argue against it, is tantamount to voting for sin. The process of reduction started with the very notion of alim (scholar) itself. Just who is an alim? hat makes him an authority? Rethinking Islam 31 In early Islam, an alim was anyone who acquired ilm, or knowledge, which was itself described in a broad sense. We can see that in the early classifications of knowledge by such scholars as al-Kindi, alFarabi, ibn Sina, al-Ghazzali and ibn Khauldun. Indeed, both the definition of knowledge and its classification was a major intellectual activity in classical Islam. 3 So all learned men, scientist s as well as philosophers, scholars as well as theologians, constituted the ulema. But after the ‘gates of ijtihad’ were closed during the Abbasid era, ilm was increasing reduced to religious knowledge and the ulema came to constitute only religious scholars. Similarly, the idea of ijma, the central notion of communal life in Islam, has been reduced to the consensus of a select few. Ijma literally means consensus of the people. The concept dates back to the practice of Prophet Muhammad himself as leader of the original polity of Muslims. When the Prophet Muhammad wanted to reach a decision, he would call the whole Muslim community – then, admittedly not very large – to the mosque. A discussion would ensue; arguments for and against would be presented. Finally, the entire gathering would reach a consensus. Thus, a democratic spirit was central to communal and political life in early Islam. But over time the clerics and religious scholars have removed the people from the equation – and reduced ijma to ‘the consensus of the religious scholars’. Not surprisingly, authoritarianism, theocracy and despotism reign supreme in the Muslim world. The political domain finds its model in what has become the accepted practice and metier of the authoritatively ‘religious’ adepts, those who claim the monopoly of the exposition of Islam. Obscurantist mullahs, in the guise of the ulema, dominate Muslim societies and circumscribe them with fanaticism and absurdly reductive logic. Numerous other concepts have gone through a similar process of reduction. The concept of ummah, the global spiritual community of Muslims, has been reduced to the ideals of a nation state: ‘my country right or wrong’ has been transposed to read ‘my ummah right or wrong’. So even despots like Saddam Hussein are now defended on the basis of ‘ummah consciousness’ and ‘unity of the ummah’. Jihad has now been reduced to the single meaning of ‘Holy War’. This translation is perverse not only because the concept’s spiritual, intellectual and social components have been stripped away, but because it has been reduced to war by any means, including terrorism. So anyone can now declare jihad on anyone, without any ethical or moral rhyme or reason. Nothing could be 32 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures more perverted, or pathologically more distant from the initial meaning of jihad. Its other connotations, including personal struggle, intellectual endeavour, and social construction have all but evaporated. Istislah, normally rendered as ‘public interest’ and a major source of Islamic law, has all but disappeared from Muslim consciousness. And ijtihad, as I have suggested, has now been reduced to little more than a pious desire. But the violence performed to sacred Muslim concepts is insignificant compared to the reductive way the Qur’an and the sayings and examples of the Prophet Muhammad are bandied about. What the late Muslim scholar Fazlur Rahman called the ‘atomistic’ treatment of the Qur’an is now the norm: almost anything and everything is justified by quoting individual bits of verses out of context. 4 After the September 11 event, for example, a number of Taliban supporters, including a few in Britain, justified their actions by quoting the following verse: ‘We will put terror into the hearts of the unbelievers. They serve other gods for whom no sanction has been revealed. Hell shall be their home’ (3:149). Yet, the apparent meaning attributed to this verse could not be further from the true spirit of the Qur’an. In this particular verse, the Qur’an is addressing the Prophet Muhammad himself. It was revealed during the battle of Uhad, when the small and ill-equipped army of the Prophet faced a much larger and better-equipped enemy. He was concerned about the outcome of the battle. The Qur’an reassures him and promises that the enemy will be terrified by the Prophet’s unprofessional army. Seen in its context, it is not a general instruction to all Muslims; it is a commentary on what was happening at that time. Similarly hadith are quoted to justify the most extreme behaviours. And the Prophet’s own appearance, his beard and clothes, have been turned into a fetish: so now it is not just obligatory for a ‘good Muslim’ to have a beard, but its length and shape must also conform to dictates! The Prophet has been reduced to signs and symbols – the spirit of his behaviour, the moral and ethical dimensions of his actions, his humility and compassion, the general principles he advocated, have all been subsumed by the logic of absurd reduction. The accumulative effect of the metaphysical catastrophes and endless reduction has transformed the cherished tenets of Islam into instruments of militant expediency and moral bankruptcy. For over two decades, I have been arguing that Muslim civilisation is now so fragmented and shattered that we have to rebuild it, ‘brick by brick’. It is now obvious that Islam itself has to be rethought, idea by idea. Rethinking Islam 33 We need to begin with the simple fact that Muslims have no monopoly on truth, on what is right, on what is good, on justice, nor on the intellectual and moral reflexes that promote these necessities. Like the rest of humanity, we have to struggle to achieve them using our own sacred notions and con cepts as tools for understanding and reshaping contemporary reality. The way to a fresh, contemporary appreciation of Islam requires confronting the metaphysical catastrophes and moving away from reduction to synthesis. Primarily, this requires Muslims, as individuals and communities, to reclaim agency: to insist on their right and duty, as believers and knowledgeable people, to interpret and reinterpret the basic sources of Islam: to question what now goes under the general rubric of Shari’ah, to declare that much of fiqh is now dangerously obsolete, to stand up to the absurd notion of an Islam confined by a geographically bound state. We cannot, if we really value our faith, leave its exposition in the hands of undereducated elites, religious scholars whose lack of comprehension of the contemporary world is usually matched only by their disdain and contempt for all its ideas and cultural products. Islam has been permitted to languish as the professional domain of people more familiar with the world of the eleventh century than that of the twenty-first century we now inhabit. And we cannot allow this class to bury the noble idea of ijtihad in frozen and distant history. Ordinary Muslims around the world who have concerns, questions and considerable moral dilemmas about the current state of affairs of Islam must reclaim the basic concepts of Islam and reframe them in a broader context. Ijma must mean consensus of all citizens leading to participatory and accountable governance. Jihad must be understood in its complete spiritual meaning as the struggle for peace and justice as a lived reality for all people everywhere. And the notion of the ummah must be refined so it becomes something more than a mere reductive abstraction. As Anwar Ibrahim has argued, the ummah is not ‘merely the community of all those who profess to be Muslims’; rather, it is a ‘moral conception of how Muslims should become a community in relation to each other, other communities and the natural world’. Which means ummah incorporates not just the Muslims, but justice-seeking and oppressed people everywhere. 6 In a sense, the movement towards synthesis is an advance towards the primary meaning and message of Islam – as a moral and ethical way of looking at and shaping the world, as a 4 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures domain of peaceful civic culture, a participatory endeavour, and a holistic mode of knowing, being and doing. If the events of 11 September unleash the best intentions, the essential values of Islam, the phoenix will truly have arisen from the ashes of the twin towers. Notes 1. For a more elaborate exposition, see ‘The Shari’ah as Problem-Solving Methodology’, Cha pter 5 of Ziauddin Sardar, Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come, Mansell, London, 1985. 2. I first argued this thesis in The Future of Muslim Civilisation, Croom Helm, London, 1979; second edition, Mansell, London, 1987. 3. See Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant, Brill, Leiden, 1970. 4. Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an, Biblioteca Islamica, Chicago, 1980. 5. Ziuaddin Sardar, The Future of Muslim Civilisation. 6. Anwar Ibrahim, ‘The Ummah and Tomorrow’s World’, Futures, 23 (3), pp. 302–10 (April 1991). Source: Originally published in Seminar, 509, January 2002, pp. 48–51. 2 Reconstructing Muslim Civilisation When thinking and writing about Islam, most Muslim intellectuals, both modernists and traditionalists, work within a very narrow and confining canvas. Islam is often presented as a religious outlook: the modernists are happy to confine Islam to the boundaries of personal piety, belief and rituals: while the traditionalists always describe Islam as ‘a complete way of life’. What is meant by the phrase is that Islam touches all aspects of human living – particularly the social, economic, educational and political behaviour of man. However, while these approaches to the study of Islam are extremely useful, they are restrictive. Each approach itself determines the boundary of exposition: note that in their monumental output, both Maulana Maududi and Syed Qutb find no space for discussing epistemology and science, technology and environment, urbanisation and development – all burning, indeed pressing, issues for contemporary Muslim societies as well as for the dominant west. Moreover, the picture of the ‘Islamic way of life’ that emerges from these authors is a very atomised and segregated one. While Islam is presented as a complete way of life, the various aspects of human living, economic activity, political behaviour, educational development, are treated in isolation from each other as though each had no real bearing on the others. There is no integrated, interdisciplinary methodology in action in Maulana Maududi’s or Syed Qutb’s work. The result is that while it is repeatedly emphasised that Islam is a ‘complete way of life’, nowhere is it really represented as an integrated, holistic worldview. More recently, Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and Sheikh Murtada Mutahhari showed much promise in developing an interdisciplinary methodology from within the realms of traditional scholars. Sayyid Baqir al-Sadr did much work on an integrated Islamic political economy. Sheikh Mutahhari, with his strong background in philosophy and irfan (gnosis) tried to apply these to contemporary sociopolitical realities. Both these scholars were martyred in their forties, cutting short their promising initiatives. In a different vein, this time from the ranks of modern scholars, Ali 35 36 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures Shariati devoted much effort to developing a multidisciplinary base for an Islamic worldview. His hectic schedule and early death did not allow him to systematise his thoughts into a theory and his ideas remain scattered in numerous articles and lectures. The more avant-garde Muslim intellectuals have sought to project Islam as an ethical system. For example, in his essay ‘Islam, the concept of religion and the foundation of ethics and morality’, Naqib al-Attas argues that din of Islam can be reduced to four primary significations: indebtedness, submissiveness, judicial power and natural inclination. He then proceeds to present Islam as a ‘natural’ social and ethical system. Parvez Manzoor equates the Shari’ah to an ethical system and has used his analysis to develop a contemporary Islamic theory of the environment. 2 The exposition of Islam as an ethical system takes us a step further. An underlying ethical system can permeate all human endeavours an d questions of ethics can be raised in all contemporary situations whether they involve the impact of science on Muslim societies or of technology on the natural environment or of planning on the built environment. And, because everything is examined from the perspective of a total ethical system, a more integrated and coherent exposition of Islam comes to the fore. However, reducing Islam to one denominator, namely ethics, is still very confining. The excessive concern with ethics generates an illusion of moral superiority and ignorance of power realities. In Islam, ethics is a pragmatic concern: it must shape individual and social behaviour. But methodologically, discussion and analysis of ethical criteria – what is right and wrong, what are our duties and obligations – produces a strange mirage. It leads to the erroneous belief that by doing right, by being righteous, by fulfilling our duty, Muslim societies, and hence Islam, will triumph and become dominant. Ethical analysis substitutes piety for pragmatic policy, morality for power, and righteousness for bold and imaginative planning. Piety, morality, righteousness are the beginning of Islam: they are not an end in themselves. Ethics is our navigational equipment: it is not the end of our journey. Ethics ensures that we tread the right path, avoiding pitfalls and quicksand, and reach our intended destination. But within the ethical geography, there are no limitations to where we take ourselves and our societies. We can only give our imagination and intellect full reign, something that is demanded of us by God, if we think, conceive and study Islam as a living, dynamic civilisation of the future. Only by Reconstructing Muslim Civilisation 37 approaching Islam as a civilisation can we really do full justice to the din of Islam. It is worth noting that when Naquib al-Attas discusses the many manifestations of din, he stops short of noting that one connotation of din is medina, the city state which marked the beginning of Islamic civilisation. From Medina onwards, Islam ceased to be just a religion or an ethical system or even a political institution – it became a civilisation. And it has continued to be a civilisation since: Islam was a civilisation as much in its ‘Golden Age’ as during its nadir under colonialism; and, it continues to be a civilisation now that the Muslim world has been divided into 50 or so Muslim ‘nation-states’. However, whenever Muslim writers and intellectuals have discussed Islam as a civilisation, it has always been as a historic civilisation; never as a contemporary or a future civilisation. By limiting the civilisational aspects of Islam to history, they have neglected its future. Moreover, they have concentrated discussion on either the self-evident aspects of Islam such as ethics and belief or further increased the fossilisation of the already stagnant body of jurisprudence, legal thought and scholastic philosophy. Unless we break this suffocating mould, Muslim societies are doomed to a marginalised existence. Furthermore, only by presenting Islam as a living, dynamic civilisation, with all that that entails, can we really meet the challenge that comes to us from the west. Encounters in the arena of religion and theology, philosophy and ethics, may generate good intellectual writings, but, essentially, they are marginal. But an encounter of two civilisations, seeking rapprochement as well as asserting their own identities, is a completely different phenomenon. Only such an engagement can produce a beneficial dialogue and mutual respect between two equals. At this juncture of our history, however, we are not in a position to present Islam as a total civilisation. Having failed to do our homework in this area, we find ourselves as a rather truncated and limping civilisation. Many of our essential civilisational features, having been neglected for over four centuries, are dormant and in urgent need of serious surgery. Islam and Muslim societies are like a magnificent but old building on which time, and years of neglect, have taken their toll. The foundations are very solid, but the brickwork needs urgent attention. We need to reconstruct the Muslim civilisation; almost brick by brick, rebuilding the House of Islam from the foundations upwards. 38 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures The reconstruction of Muslim civilisation is essentially a process of elaborating the worldview of Islam. The ‘complete way of life’ group of scholars are content with restating the classical and traditional positions as if the old jurists and scholars had solved all the problems of humanity for all time! The avant-garde seems to believe that casting contemporary concerns in ethical moulds is enough. We need to go beyond all this and produce distinctively Islamic alternatives and solutions to the vast array of problems faced by our societies. We need to do this by producing a whole array of theoretical alternatives and by demonstrating these alternatives practically. I am talking not of abstract, metaphysical theories: we have enough of these. I am talking about a pragmatic theoretical edifice that gives contemporary meaning to the eternal guidelines laid down in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. I am talking about a body of theory that can be translated into policy statements and produce practical models that can guide us towards a complete state of Islam. The reconstruction of Muslim civilisation is both a theoretical and a practical process, each feeding on the other; theory shaping practice and behaviour and practice polishing the theory. But even before we take the initial steps towards reconstruction of our civilisation, we must begin to think, individually and collectively, like a civilisation. Our commitment and aspirations should be directed not towards some parochial objectives, but towards a civilisational plane. We, the Muslim ummah, are a holistic aggregate – despite the fact that we at present live in different polities, come from a kaleidoscope of ethnic backgrounds, hold and express a complex array of opinions and ideas, are united by a ingle worldview, the hallmark of our civilisation. That means that our political differences are only temporary; and we should behave as though they are temporary. It also means that the old differences of opinion and expression between us should be placed on the lowest rung of history. While history should always be with us, we should not live in it. In general, civilisations have been studied in terms of large historic units. For example, in his A Study of History, A. J. Toynbee3 points to 21 civilisations in the known history of the world, each with distinctive characteristics, but all sharing certain features or qualities which enable them to be distinguished as members of the same category. Sociologists speak of ‘modern civilisation’, by which is meant contemporary urban and industrialised societies. These approaches to the study of civilisation ‘fix’ them to a particular Reconstructing Muslim Civilisation 39 historic epoch. Thus, by definition, civilisation becomes a historic entity with a finite lifetime. Ibn Khaldun spoke of the rise and fall of civilisations thus presenting a cyclic view of history. 4 But Muslim civilisation is no more fixed to a particular historic epoch or geographical space than the teachings of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The Muslim civilisation is a historic continuum; it has existed in the past, it exists today and it will exist in the future. Each step towards the future requires a further elaboration of the worldview of Islam, an invocation of the dynamic principle of ijtihad which enables the Muslim civilisation to tune in to the changing circumstances. Whether it is rising or declining, or indeed purely static, depends on the effort exerted by the Muslim ummah to understand and elaborate the teachings of Islam to meet the new challenges. There are essentially seven major challenges before us. However, none of these can be tackled in isolation. If we were to describe the Muslim civilisation as a flower-shaped schema, then we can identify the seven areas which need contemporary elaboration. The centre of the flower, the core, represents the Islamic worldview: it produces seeds for future growth and evelopment. The core is surrounded by two concentric circles representing the major manifestations of the Islamic worldview: epistemology and the Shari’ah or law. The four primary petals represent the major external expressions of the Weltanschauung: political and social structures; economic enterprise; science and technology; and environment. The flower also has a number of secondary petals representing such areas as architecture, art, education, community development, social behaviour and so on, but here we will limit our discussion to the primary petals. A detailed elaboration of the ‘flower’ and hence the development of a theoretical edifice, practical models and distinctive methodologies is an essential prerequisite for the reconstruction of Muslim civilisation. For example, the worldview of Islam needs to be continuously elaborated so that we can understand new developments vis-a-vis Islam. Essentially, the worldview of Islam consists of a few principles and a matrix of concepts to be found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The principles outline the general rules of behaviour and development and chalk out the general boundaries within which the Muslim civilisation has to grow and flourish. The conceptual matrix performs two basic functions: it acts as a standard of measure, a barometer if you like, of the ‘Islamicness’ of a particular situation, and it serves as a basis for the elaboration of the worldview of Islam. 40 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures Figure 2. 1 The challenges before us The principles of the Islamic worldview, largely related to social, economic and political behaviour, have been well discussed in Islamic literature. For example, the principle forbidding riba (all forms of usury) has been written about extensively. However, to turn it into a fully-fledged theory, and develop working models from it, we need to operationalise and develop a contemporary understanding of the relevant concepts from the conceptual matrix. For example, we need to have a detailed and analytical understanding of such concepts as shura (co-operating for the good), zakah (alms), and zulm (tyranny). Each one of these and many other concepts needs to be elaborated so that it becomes a fully developed body of knowledge from which further theoretical understanding can be derived and practical models developed. The most interesting feature of the worldview of Islam is that it presents an interactive and integrated outlook. Therefore, a contemporary understanding of one concept, say istislah (public Reconstructing Muslim Civilisation 41 interest), may lead to a theoretical understanding of economics, science, technology, environment and politics. Similarly, lack of understanding of a key concept may thwart developments in all these fields. A primary task, without which all future work will be hampered, is the development of a contemporary theory of Islamic epistemology. Epistemology, or theory of knowledge, is in fact nothing more than an expression of a worldview. All great Muslim scholars of the ‘Golden Age’ devoted their talents and time to this task: for epistemology permeates all aspects of individual, societal and civilisational behaviour. 5 Without a distinct epistemology, a unique civilisation is impossible. Without a way of knowing that is identifiably Islamic we can neither elaborate the worldview of Islam nor put an Islamic stamp on contemporary issues. For the Muslim scholars of the past, an Islamic civilisation was inconceivable without a fully-fledged epistemology; hence their preoccupation with the classification of knowledge. Without the same concern amongst contemporary Muslim scholars and intellectuals, there is little hope of a Muslim civilisation of the future. Why is epistemology so important? Epistemology is vital because it is the major operator which transforms the vision of a worldview into a reality. When we think about the nature of knowledge, what we are doing is indirectly reflecting on the principles according to which society is organised. Epistemology and societal structures feed on each other: when we manipulate images of society, when we develop and erect social, economic, political, scientific and technological structures, we are taking a cue from our conception of knowledge. This is why the Islamic concept of knowledge, ilm, is so central to the Muslim civilisation. However, for some reason, thinking about the nature of knowledge in western societies has been an abstract and obscure endeavour; it has led the western philosophers to a paralysis of mind. But as the history of Islam demonstrates so clearly, issues of Islamic epistemology are pragmatic issues; and we need to develop a highly pragmatic, contemporary epistemology of Islam. Classical scholars like al-Ghazzali, al-Baruni, al-Farabi, al-Khawarizmi, and others, have laid a solid foundation for a practical epistemology of Islam. Their work has to be dragged from history and given a dynamic, modern form. It is one of the most urgent tasks awaiting the attention of Muslim scholars. 42 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures The Shari’ah, or Islamic law, too is a pragmatic concern. Shari’ah, rather than theology, has been the primary contribution of Muslim civilisation to human development. Like epistemology, the Shari’ah touches every aspect of Muslim society. It is law and ethics rolled into one. As Parvez Manzoor says, all contradictions of internalised ethics and externalised law, of concealed intentions and revealed actions are resolved in the allembracing actionalism of the Shari’ah because it is both a doctrine and a path. It is simultaneously a manifestation of divine will and that of human resolve to be an agent of that will. It is eternal (anchored in God’s revelation) and temporal (enacted in human history); stable (Qur’an and Sunnah ) and dynamic (ijma and ijtihad); din (religion) and muamalah (social interaction); divine gift and human prayer all at once. It is the vary basis of the religion itself: to be Muslim is to accept the injunction of the Shari’ah. 6 Yet, we have allowed such a paramount and all-pervasive manifestation of the Islamic worldview to become nothing more than an ossified body of dos and don’ts. Without a deep and detailed contemporary and futuristic understanding of the Shari’ah, Muslim societies cannot hope to solve their local, national and international problems. The belief that the classical Schools of Islamic Thought have solved all societal problems is dangerously naive. We need to go beyond the classical schools and build a contemporary structure on the foundations laid down by earlier jurists. What is needed is not a reworking of the classical works in the realm of prayer and ritual, personal and social relations, marriage and divorce, dietary laws and rules of fasting: these have been taken care of admirably. What is needed is the extension of the Shari’ah into contemporary domains such as environment and urban planning, science policy and technology assessment, community participation and rural development. In many instances this amounts to reactivating hitherto dormant Shari’ah concepts and institutions and giving them a contemporary life. For example, the Shari’ah injunctions about water laws need to be studied from the perspective of modern environmental problems, and such Shari’ah institutions as harem (inviolate zones of easement), hima (public reserves), and hisbah (office of public inspection) have to be given a living form. Moreover, the Shari’ah needs to be extended beyond law and turned into a dynamic problem-solving methodology. Most jurists Reconstructing Muslim Civilisation 43 would agree that the chief sources of the Shari’ah are the Qur’an; the Sunnah, or the authentic traditions of the Prophet Muhammad; ijma, or the consensus of opinion; qiyas, or judgement upon juristic analogy and ijtihad, or independent reasoning by jurists. The supplementary sources of the Shari’ah are said to be istihsan, that is prohibiting or permitting a thing because it serves or does not serve a ‘useful purpose’; istislah, or public interest; and urf or custom and practice of a society. Classical jurists used ijma, qiyas, ijtihad, istihsan, istislah and urf as methods of solving practical problems. It is indeed tragic that their followers have abandoned the methods and stuck to the actual juristic rulings despite that fact their benefits were obviously limited to a particular historic situation. The blind following of these rulings has not only turned the body of the Shari’ah into a fossilised canon but now threatens to suffocate the very civilisation of Islam. Relegating the pronouncements of classical jurists into eternal principles and rules is not only belittling the Shari’ah, it is detrimental to Muslim societies as well. The reconstruction of Muslim civilisation begins by setting the Shari’ah free from this suffocating hold and giving it the status it truly deserves in the Muslim civilisation; a dynamic problem-solving methodology which touches every aspect of human endeavour. We now come to the four external expressions of the Islamic Weltanschauung. All four areas have received attention in modern Islamic literature: political theory and economics have received extensive attention for almost 30 years now; science, technology and the environment have only recently begun to be studied from the Islamic perspective. Thus, there is plenty of original scholarship here to build upon and to streamline within a civilisational framework. Islamic economics, in particular, has developed considerably in the last decade. However, much of modern work in Islamic economics has been descriptive; and most of it has been trapped in western epistemological concerns and economic frameworks. Indeed, with the sole exception of Nawab Haider Naqvi’s Ethics and Economics: An Islamic Synthesis,7 works on Islamic economics have used description (excessive in the work of Nejatullah Siddiqui) and reduction (overdone in the writing of Monzar Kahf). Moreover, Islamic economics has been developed as a ‘discipline’ (a shadow of western economics perhaps? ) and not as an integrated field destined to become a pillar of the Muslim civilisation. Note that Nejatullah Siddiqui’s Muslim Economic Thinking: A Survey of Contemporary 44 Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures Literature8 does not contain a single citation linking economics to political theory, science and technology or the environment. Considering that technology is the backbone of modern economics, information a prime commodity, environmental degradation a major outcome, it is indeed surprising that the advocates of Islamic economics are silent on these issues. The atomised development of Islamic economics as a unitary discipline, and an obsessive concern with western epistemology, have elegated it to a marginalised existence. Perhaps this is an unfair criticism. But the fact remains that any major advances in Islamic economics can only be made if it becomes a truly interdisciplinary field of endeavour pursued within a civilisational framework. Much the same criticism can be made of the recent works on Islamic political structures and social organisations. M ost of the writings here are trapped in the mould cast by the nation-state and such concepts of western political theory as nationalism, democracy, socialism, bureaucracy and the like. Such works as The Nature of the Islamic State by M. Hadi Hussain and A. H. Kamali9 beg the obvious question: Is Islam a state? Is the nation-state the only expression of an Islamic polity? When it comes to the issue of governance, Muslim political scientists reveal themselves to be true victims of history; only monarchy or Caliphate, best exemplified by Maulana Maududi’s (as yet not translated into English) controversial Urdu treatise, Caliphate or Mulukiat (Caliphate or Kingship? )10 appear to be the viable options to most authors! In the vast universe of ideas that is Islam, is there no other method of governance? Apart from political theory, social structures have also received little interdisciplinary attention. Syed Qutb and Ali Shariati are among the very few who seem to have realised that social exploitation is a dominant theme in Muslim society (an excellent treatment of which is to be found in Syed Qutb’s Social Justice in Islam). 11 The related issues of population and urban decay, the blatant exploitation of women, community development and cultural awareness are conspicuously absent from the social analysis of modern Muslim writers. Both in the fields of political and social structures and of economics, we need interdisciplinary theories, models and methodologies which synthesise these fields with Islamic epistemology and the Shari’ah as well as with the other main external expressions of the worldview of Islam: science and technology and the environment. Very little has been written about the environmental perspective of Islam. However, the few works on the subject are of exceptionally Reconstructing Muslim Civilisation 45 good quality and concentrate on conceptual analysis. For example, various papers of Othman Llewellyn on ‘Desert Reclamation and Islamic Law’12 and Parvez Manzoor’s ‘Environment and Values: The Islamic Perspective’13 provide good indications that a totally contemporary, conceptual as well as pragmatic Islamic theory of the environment can be developed relatively easily and translated into pragmatic policy statements. Similarly, Waqar Ahmad Husaini’s attempt to develop a modern theory of Islamic Environmental Systems Engineering,14 although requiring much elaboration, demonstrates that the conceptual matrix of the worldview of Islam can be fruitfully used for analytical purposes. Science and technology, on the other hand, have not fared so well. In this field, the hold of western epistemology and social models on the minds of Muslim scientists and technologists is almost total. The link between what purports to be a scientific ‘fact’ and epistemology is not easy to grasp. The point that ‘scientific facts’ are not something we can take for granted or think of as solid rocks upon which knowledge is built is, to a modern scientist working in western paradigms, slightly mind-boggling. The epistemological and methodological point is that facts, like cows, have been domesticated to deal with run-of-the-mill events. Hence, the connection between facts and values is not always obvious; and the notion that knowledge is manufactured and not discovered is not appreciated by many Muslim scientists. Thus, the bulk of the literature of ‘Islam and science’ is pretty naive; and some works like Maurice Bucailles’s The Bible, the Qur’an and Science15 are highly dangerous (what can be proved by science can also be disproved by the same science; where does that leave the Qur’an? ) The process of reconstruction of the Muslim civilisation amounts to meeting the seven challenges outlined above. Muslim societies have to think about and study their future not in terms of a resurgence, but as a planned and a continuous process of reconstruction of their civilisation. This process involves, not ‘Islamising’ this or that discipline, but casting the external expressions of Muslim civilisation in the epistemological mode of Islam and the methodology of the Shari’ah. It involves elaborating the worldview of Islam and using the conceptual matrix that is at the heart of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. The mental outlook of this process is based on synthesis and interdisciplinarity. What is the

Recycling Old Paper to Make Beautiful Handmade Paper

Recycling Old Paper to Make Beautiful Handmade Paper You can make paper from recycled scraps of just about any paper  you can find. By adding decorative items, such as petals, you can create beautiful personalized stationary. This is a fun craft that teaches about recycling while making a useful handmade product. Types of Paper You Can Recycle You can use pretty much any type of paper product for this project, but steer clear of waxed cardboard.   Construction paperPrinter paperMagazinesToilet paperPaper towelsPaper bagsNewspapers (will produce a grayish paper)CardstockNon-waxed cardboardNapkins Decorations There are many materials you can add to the paper for a decorative effect. You may wish to add flower or vegetable seeds to the paper, which can be planted. Flower petalsSeedsFine leaves or grassFoilString or yarnDryer lintFood coloring (for dyeing your paper)Liquid starch (to make your paper less-absorbent so that you can write on it with ink) Build a Frame While you can pulp your paper and make a rough product just by pouring it out and allowing it to dry, you can also form your paper into a rectangular sheet if you use a frame. You can make a frame by duct-taping an old piece of window screen onto a small rectangular picture frame. You could also staple the screening onto the frame to make the mold. Another option is to bend a wire coat hanger into a shape and slip old pantyhose around it to act as a screen. Make Your Own Paper You are going to pulp the old paper together with water, spread it out, and allow it to dry. Its that simple! Tear the paper (feel free to mix different types) into small bits and put it into a blender.Fill the blender about 2/3 full with warm water.Pulse the blender until the pulp is smooth. If you are going to write on the paper, blend in 2 teaspoons of liquid starch.Set your mold in a shallow basin or pan. You can  use a cookie sheet or a sink. Pour the blended mixture into the mold. Sprinkle in your mix-ins (thread, flower petals, etc.). Shake the mold from side to side, keeping it in the liquid, to level out your paper pulp mixture.You have few different options to absorb the excess water. You could remove the mold from the liquid, let the paper dry in the mold, without absorbing the liquid. You can also flip the paper  paper out onto your countertop and use a sponge to wick away excess water or you could press a cookie sheet onto the paper to squeeze out the excess liquid.

Social Learning Theory Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Social Learning Theory - Research Paper Example The punishment and reward systems established by society greatly influence the behaviors of individuals. â€Å"A leading proponent of social learning theory, Albert Bandura, helped to shape the conjecture by incorporating aspects of cognitive and behavioral learning† (Willhite). Owing to its huge significance to the society, SLT is frequently employed to gain an understanding of the underlying factors that convince people to land in the world of crime (Akers and Jensen 1). In terms of crime investigation, SLT asserts that â€Å"adolescents learn the techniques and attitudes of crime from close and intimate relationships with delinquent peers† (Siegel and Welsh 136). Here, delinquency is essentially considered as a learned behavior. The company an individual keeps and the people he/she spends time with influence his/her mentality and hence, the personality as a whole. Therefore, behaviors that convince individuals to commit crime can be traced back to the environment the y come from. People strive to achieve results that they deem positive while being aware of the evils associated with their actions. Works Cited: Akers, Ronald L., and Jensen, Gary F. Social Learning Theory and the Explanation of Crime. NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003. Print.

Marketing Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Marketing - Research Proposal Example f data from fifteen respondents randomly selected to present their views on the issue and in relation to Burger King and their attitudes towards the company and its products and services before and after the scandal. The respondents were selected randomly from the general population, and all were aged above 18 years. The research was conducted through qualitative collection of data using questionnaires. The results of this study showed that the Horse meat Scandal had a significant impact on the marketing strategy of Burger King as a company. Many of its previously loyal customers lost trust, and some indicated an onset of worry. Of all the 15 respondents from whom the data was collected, only 4 (27%) indicated having not changed their attitude towards the company. The rest 73% of the respondents were angry with the revelation of the scandal and would not recommend the company to anyone in the future. This attitude was present even among 2 respondents who had not eaten at Burger King before. These results indicate that must companies to observe business ethics and ensure that they do not lose customers out of such scandals. It, therefore, recommends that Burger King should be open and admit the flaws in the suppliers’ scrutiny and accreditation and assure the consumer of vigilance and seek apology. In early 2013, a wave of consumer uproar was experienced in the food industry in Western Europe. The outrage was in regards to companies unethical practice claims. I had been reported through several media that horse meat was being added to beef products from several main producers of burgers and other foods in the industry. Among the companies who were indicated to be involved in this scandal were Burger King and Tesco, the two giants in the industry. This issue of meat adulteration came to be referred by many the â€Å"Horse Meat Scandal† (HMS). The scandal did not only have immediate effect on the meat business, but also the idea of shopper trust in items offered

What makes a difference in bereavement and grief Research Paper

What makes a difference in bereavement and grief - Research Paper Example C. A. Corr and D. A. Corr (2012, p. 244) identify five critical variables that influence experiences of bereavement and grief, namely: nature of the prior attachment or the perceived value, the way in which the loss occurred, coping strategies, developmental situation of the bereaved person, and the nature of the support that is available to the bereaved person after the loss. Of the five principles stated, the author believed that the nature of the prior attachment or the perceived value, the way in which the loss occurred, and the coping strategies appear to make a difference in the ways in which bereavement and grief are experienced. First, prior attachments refer to the relationship one has built with the person who has died. The depth of that relationship cannot be appreciated unless that person has gone or died. Another way to look at this is the perceived value of the relationship; that is, the more important a person to the bereaving individual, the greater is the expression of grief. For instance, if someone who died belongs to a member of our family, it will represent a loss that will need to be mourned as I have attachment to the person involved and he/she is also important or of value to me. In addition, relationships are multidimensional and may also affect difficultly grieving and bereavement if it is associated with the loss of the person w ho inflicted abuse or violence. The second principle which appeared to make a difference in the ways in which bereavement and grief are experienced is the way in which the loss takes place and the circumstances of the bereaved person. From my perspective, grieving becomes difficult and loss is hard to accept if the person died in a tragic and traumatic way (e.g., suicide, violence, and natural disasters). Time also matters in the grieving and bereavement process. It would be harder to accept a sudden and an unexpected death than a foreseen one like in the case of terminal cancer patients. Similarly,

CASE STUDY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 5

CASE STUDY - Essay Example The organization has expansive plans to increase the state coverage as well as the concentration of its services in the seven states. In this regard, the organization has set up new hospitals in the states and also has plans to set up more health facilities. An example is a proposal to construct a modern health facility at Fort Collins. The move is aimed at increasing Banner Health presence and also bringing quality healthcare closer to the people. Banner Health has partnered with institutions of higher learning to expand its services on cancer treatment (Banner Health, n.d). Specifically, Banner has engaged University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to increase accessibility to cancer treatment for its patient. Under this partnership, Banner has built its cancer treatment center in Arizona. The organization has plans to increase its cancer treatment centers across the states where it has operations. The growth plan of Banner Health also includes opening of new health clinics in the country. The ANA anticipates that the demand for health care will increase significantly in the next decade. As such, bigger health institutions are likely to be overstretched. As such, clinics that are closer to the population are will be ideal for early detection and commencement of treatment. Also, clinics are important in primary care. The efforts to consider and address future needs makes Banner Health more prepared for future health needs. The American Nursing Organization has stipulated that the country will experience nurse shortage by 2020. The reason for the shortage includes lack of admission slots for new nursing students and nurse turnover. Banner health is cognizant of this issue. As a result, the Banner Center for Health Careers provides a long-term strategy of gathering details of qualified nurses and other medical professionals. The organization can then replace nurses from the pool or recruit new nurses

Business Project Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Business Project Management - Essay Example However, with increased competition, widespread use of project management theories and processes in day to day functioning of businesses and blurring departmental and functional boundaries, projects are now considered no less than strategic processes underpinning theories and concepts of leadership, strategy, culture, communication, integration and appropriate know-how of relevant systems. This report aims at delving deep into this transformed outlook towards project management approach and how these management functions are shaping the traditional structure of project management into an amalgamation of project, change and process management. With the inclusion of relationship management, risk management, people satisfaction and motivation, empowerment and creativity; project management in itself is turning into a specialised body of knowledge comprising of the vital elements of management, strategy, human resources and operations. To demonstrate this tectonic shift, examples of vari ous projects ranging from big construction to IT ones have been taken so that theories and concepts can be understood in real life terms. ... Projects are time-bound, focus on a single time process and are usually complex in nature because of mingling of several distinct and unrelated functions. Limitation of time, cost and resources add to the characteristics of projects. On the contrary, processes are repeatable and do not suffer from limitations which are present in project management. Homogeneity is also more dominant in process management than do in project management. Traditional approach to project management Traditionally, projects used to be differentiated from that of processes because of superficial differences identified between the two. Their scope, extent of penetration in organization’s philosophy and strategy, resource allocation, level of inter-dependence of different functions and activities within the management of two and results achieved thereof lead to the misconception that projects cannot assume the status of processes and vice-versa. Typical project management cycle includes stereotypic phas es defined as requirements analysis, resource management, project methodology, risk management and project closure. These phases are technical in nature with clear specifications of roles, duty, inputs and respective outputs. They do not recognize the evolving nature of business place and components of business management like planning, controlling, decision making and more contemporary functions of management namely leadership, strategy, cultural ramifications, knowledge of systems and overall congruence with the components of process management. This makes the traditional approach to project management short of fulfilling the current needs of business and unique propositions. Evolved components of project management Prosci (2011) specifically highlights the tripartite nature of project

CASE STUDY Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 5

CASE STUDY - Essay Example The organization has expansive plans to increase the state coverage as well as the concentration of its services in the seven states. In this regard, the organization has set up new hospitals in the states and also has plans to set up more health facilities. An example is a proposal to construct a modern health facility at Fort Collins. The move is aimed at increasing Banner Health presence and also bringing quality healthcare closer to the people. Banner Health has partnered with institutions of higher learning to expand its services on cancer treatment (Banner Health, n.d). Specifically, Banner has engaged University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to increase accessibility to cancer treatment for its patient. Under this partnership, Banner has built its cancer treatment center in Arizona. The organization has plans to increase its cancer treatment centers across the states where it has operations. The growth plan of Banner Health also includes opening of new health clinics in the country. The ANA anticipates that the demand for health care will increase significantly in the next decade. As such, bigger health institutions are likely to be overstretched. As such, clinics that are closer to the population are will be ideal for early detection and commencement of treatment. Also, clinics are important in primary care. The efforts to consider and address future needs makes Banner Health more prepared for future health needs. The American Nursing Organization has stipulated that the country will experience nurse shortage by 2020. The reason for the shortage includes lack of admission slots for new nursing students and nurse turnover. Banner health is cognizant of this issue. As a result, the Banner Center for Health Careers provides a long-term strategy of gathering details of qualified nurses and other medical professionals. The organization can then replace nurses from the pool or recruit new nurses

Outline and assess the different explanations of poverty in society Essay

Outline and assess the different explanations of poverty in society - Essay Example Moving further ahead, we need to outline and assess the exact manner as to why poverty exists in the society and what are the reasons for the same being within it as well. Poverty exists because there is a general feeling of helplessness within the society and more so, on those people who are at the helm of it. This means that poverty exists due to a certain reason – helplessness caused by greed and selfishness of other individuals who can bring about a change within the society but prefer to keep themselves at ease and in the process earn more and more with each passing day. Thus selfishness within the elites is surely one problem that brings to light the issue of poverty in front of one and all. Poverty can be minimized but not really finished since one catastrophe or the other on the face of the earth brings misery for the people under discussion and hence this leads to poverty which is basically fed upon them. However there are other reasons for poverty to exist within the society as well. Another point that is of significance here includes exploitation at all possible levels. It means that people who know work but do not have authority to properly market it are exploited upon and basically they get ‘used’ by others who are most definitely the people sitting at the top, at least on them. The hierarchy is thus set from top to bottom, where the top most man or woman is doing certain things which are asking for favors, though in the rightful sense for a cheap cost. It means that no matter how properly the job is done by the skillful labor, he would not be paid for his work which is in accordance with the natural justice. In fact he will be told to accept at a price which would be way below the mark in order to win future assignments of a similar nature. This entices the laborer to give in his best, but for a

Australian Aboriginal Dot Art Essay Example for Free

Australian Aboriginal Dot Art Essay Aboriginal art has been overshadowed by the idea that it is primarily presented in dots. It has got to the point where people believe that certain Aboriginal people own the dot and artists both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal are hesitant to use consecutive dots within artwork. Explain how the above has evolved and where dot art has come from Dot paintings today are recognised globally as unique and integral to Australian Aboriginal art. On the surface the dot is simply a style of Aboriginal painting, like the use of cross-hatching or stencil art. Exploring deeper into the history of the Aboriginal dot painting a world of camouflage, secrecy and ritual is discovered. The term ‘dot painting’ stems from what the Western eye sees when faced with contemporary Aboriginal acrylic paintings. This painting style arose from the Papunya art movement in the 1970s. Papunya Tula artists used a process which originally mirrored traditional spiritual ceremonies. In such rituals the soil would be cleared and smoothed over as a canvas (much like the dark, earthy boards used by the Papunya Tala) for the inscription of sacred designs, replicating movements of ancestral beings upon earth. These Dreaming designs were outlined with dancing circles and often surrounded with a mass of dots. Afterward the imprinted earth would be smoothed over, painted bodies rubbed away, masking the sacred-secrets which had taken place. This ritual was shifted from ground to canvas by the Papunya Tula who eventually added an array of naturally produced colours to the restricted palette of red, yellow, black and white produced from ochre, charcoal and pipe clay. Such pieces reveal a map of circles, spirals, lines, dashes and dots, the traditional visual language of the Western Desert Aboriginal People. However these marks were permanent and due to arising interest made public, creating internal political uproar. Consequently representations of sacred objects were forbidden or concealed through the dotting technique. Now that the collecting of pieces of Aboriginal art has become so popular world-wide, a common, mistaken belief is that the Dot Painting Style of Central Australia is a recent development. This belief arises because it was in the 1960s that a Central Australian school teacher encouraged the old men of the tribe to record their art on European sheets of board, using acrylic paints. This use of acrylic paints on flat board dates from that time. However, the art style itself, with geometric designs, is seen in the petroglyphs (rock engravings) dating back thousands of years. Ancient petroglyphs showing concentric circles (non-naturalistic art style), inland South Australia The use of dots was once Australia-wide, particularly seen on body decoration when people are painted for ceremonies, and paintings in the remote Kimberley region where dots are clearly seen on the body decoration of some of the earliest human figures, likely to be older than 20,000 years. See accompanying photo. ) Dot decoration on the body of an ancient human figure, Kimberley Aboriginal Art: Traditional to Contemporary The resurgence of Australian Indigenous art has become one of the most brilliant and exciting new eras of modern art. It has grown with such amazing diversity and enthusiasm that art critic, Robert Hughes, has described it as the last great art movement. For indigenous Austr alians art has been a part of their culture and tradition for thousands of years and is recognised as one of the oldest living art traditions. Though, over the past 30 years it has progressed from being confined primarily to the tourist industry, to become a richly, evolving international art movement. Since the Renaissance of Aboriginal art during the early 1970s, Aboriginal artists have been encouraged to find new, innovative ways of incorporating cultural traditions into their imagery. This encouragement first began through an art teacher, Geoffrey Bardon, who became the catalyst for contemporary Aboriginal art. Fascinated by the traditional sand designs created by Indigenous children in Papunya, Bardon encouraged the Aboriginal community to re-create their Dreamtime stories through paintings. He introduced them to acrylic paint and from there Aboriginal art gained a more permanent form and the style, popularly known as dot art, emerged as the most recognisable form of Aboriginal art. It was a new form of art which also allowed Aborigines to, for the first time, express to the rest of Australia and the world, the ancient traditions of their culture. Many Aboriginal artists have chosen to continue practicing traditional art as a means of conserving the conventional method of creating, inherited from their tribal ancestors. Their content, which is explicitly aboriginal, is usually derived from their history and culture, as a continuation of the spiritual link they possess with their country. Research When The emergence of dot paintings by Indigenous men from the western deserts of Central Australia in the early 1970s has been called the greatest art movement of the twentieth century. Prior to this, most cultural material by Indigenous Australians was collected by anthropologists. Consequently, collections were found in university departments or natural history museums worldwide, not art galleries. Where That all changed at a place called Papunya. Papunya was a sit-down place established in the early 1960s, 240 kilometres northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory (NT). The settlement brought together people from several western desert language groups: the Pintupi, Warlpiri, Arrernte (Aranda), Luritja, and the Anmatyerr, who were unaccustomed to living in close proximity to each other. Dot Painting or Aboriginal Dot Art originated in the desert using natural substances on the ground in the sand. Those pictures in the sand are not unlike the paintings we see today produced using acrylic paints. The acrylic paintings are usually done using acrylic paint and it is applied to canvas or art board with various diameter sticks dipped into paint and then applied one dot at a time. The Australian Aborigine of the western desert constructed their stories using ochre, sand, blood, coal from their fires and plant material placed together on the ground clump by clump for various ceremonial occasions. If you look at the desert landscape from the height of any small bluff or hill what you see looking down are clumps of growth scattered about a red landscape. The spinifix grass, desert hardwood bush and occasional rocks or rock outcrops make up the myriad of dots that seem to cover the landscape. Because everything in the desert has meaning to the Australian Aborigine these seemingly unimportant arrays of pattern in the desert have special meaning to the Dot painters of the western desert. If you were to ever fly over the desert low enough to see what was on the ground you would see what he dot painting has replicated for you to see. These dots are a myriad of clumps of natural splendour which might go unnoticed had you not seen a dot painting and looked to see what it was about. The arrangement of the plants, rocks and water are all part of the spirit of creation and it is because of this placement that Aboriginal people have traversed the deserts safely without printed maps for th ousands of years. The placement and arrangement of all of these natural things are in songs and these songs are often sung while the painting is being created. Nearly every painting has a song and the songs often disclose important ceremonial facts about a particular region or area. These important ceremonial places are often in the paintings but because they are sacred to Aboriginal people they are camouflaged in some way, visible to the initiated person but invisible to others who do not know what to look for. Many paintings contain these special hidden meanings and the new owners of these paintings will never know what the whole story of their purchased painting is about. Only over time may some insight be gained from looking at the painting. This is a point of pride among the Australian Aboriginal artists because they see the purchase of their art or for them the sale of their art, as a validation of their race and culture by others. This is because a value has been placed on the art. Since the Australian Aboriginal culture is depicted in all traditional paintings they are passing down their knowledge in the only way they are able, to those who have yet to understand it. The Aboriginal people do not have a written language so these painting of their stories and ceremonies are all they have to save this culture for future generations. The colour and the placement of the dots are important to depicting the visible message and camouflaging the hidden message in Aboriginal dot art. Even the over painting of an area of the work has special significance and may convey different messages. Some people gifted with a since of tactile feeling are able to feel a special vibrancy emanating from their painting. Who Many of the significant early artists at Papunya were senior men who had vivid memories of their first contact with white people. Typically, they came out of the desert as adults during the 1950s drought and their connection to ritual law was strong. The first artists collective, Papunya Tula Artists, was set up in 1972 by men from this settlement. Papunya Tula Artists was the inspiration and model for many other Indigenous artists collectives. In 2009 there are 42 desert Indigenous art communities represented by Desert. The artwork was seen as a way to keep the culture alive, and carry Indigenous stories to the world. The movement was seen as being about recollection and cultural memories linked to Dreaming’s or story types. Why the modern aboriginal â€Å"dot art† movement started? Geoffrey Bardon AM (1940–2003) Geoffrey Bardon began working as an art teacher at Papunya Special School in 1971. Concerned that the schools curriculum, appearance and ethos seemed out of step with Aboriginal culture, Bardon attempted unsuccessfully to involve his class in painting a series of murals on the school walls. Thereupon Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri and others created the Honey Ant Mural, which inspired many senior men to ask Bardon for painting materials and eventually begin painting in the Mens Painting Room. The Mens Painting Room, Papunya Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula can be seen in the middle ground painting a Kalinypa Water Dreaming. His two boomerangs are placed in front of the board as percussion instruments, ready to be used to accompany the verses of the Water Dreaming, sung at intervals during the painting process, June-August 1971 Photo: Michael Jensen Convinced of the groundbreaking importance of what he was witnessing, Bardon made comprehensive photographic, moving film and written records of the artists and the paintings that they produced while he was at Papunya. From his primary research, Bardon wrote three books and made three films that initiated public interest in Western Desert art. In 1988 Bardon was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his unique contribution to the Western Desert art movement. The Honey Ant Mural, July 1971 Geoffrey Bardon and his Arerrnte assistant, Obed Raggett, had noticed people drawing designs in the sand at Papunya. Following this precedent, they drew circles and spirals on the blackboard in an unsuccessful attempt to encourage their class of adolescent boys to paint a series of murals on a whitewashed, cement-rendered wall of the Papunya Special School. In late July 1971, after painting a series of smaller practice murals, seven painters collaborated in the painting of a monumental mural representing the Honey Ant Dreaming specific to the site of Papunya. Working under the direction of custodians Mick Wallangkarri Tjakamarra and Tom Onion Tjapangati, the artists included Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, Billy Stockman Tjapaltjarri, Long Jack Phillipus Tjakamarra, Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula and Don Ellis Tjapanangka. The Honey Ant Mural, a bold expression of Aboriginal culture in a government settlement, occasioned great rejoicing at Papunya and inspired immense pride in the community. Geoffrey Bardon in front of the Honey Ant Mural, Papunya, August 1971 Photo: Robert Bardon  © artists and their estates 2011, licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Limited and Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd Pintupi people from the Western Desert Pintupi is the name of a Western Desert language spoken by Aboriginal people who belong to a large stretch of country in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia and the western edge of the Northern Territory. When the Pintupi arrived in the government settlements east of their traditional lands between the 1930s and the 1950s, they adopted the term Pintupi to distinguish themselves from the surrounding Aboriginal inhabitants as the people from the west. They were among the last Aboriginal people in Australia to abandon their nomadic lifestyle, the last family arriving into the newly established community of Kiwirrkura in 1984. In Papunya, the Pintupi, bound to each other by their dominant loyalties of relatedness and kinship, were ostracised due to their lack of conversance with kartiya (non-Aboriginal) customs and their perceived lack of sophistication. Diversity within â€Å"dot art† showing two different artists works. Uta Uta Tjangala Traditional Artist Uta Uta Tjangala, who is an exemplar of the historical cultural tradition, Uta Uta’s painting career and reputation is closely aligned to the artistic renaissance that began at Papunya in 1971. He was a founding member of the mens painting group, inspired other Pintupi tribesmen, and becoming one of the most senior and influential painters amongst the group. Born in Western Australia in Drovers Hills, he made the epic journey to Haasts Bluff with his family during the severe drought of the mid to late 1950’s in the company of Charlie Tarawa. Two years later, after returning to his homelands, he made the journey once more with Timmy Payungka, Pinta Pinta and their families. Uta Uta Tjangala (early years) Employed as a gardener at the Papunya school Uta Uta, then in his 40’s, became one of the original group drawing and painting on composition board with encouragement from art teacher Geoff Bardon. When supplying paints to Uta Uta and his gathering group of enthusiastic friends, Bardon suggested the men use their existing cultural symbols to depict their Dreamings and links to the land. The Pintupi men, having been pushed from their traditional homelands by government policy and European development, painted under a bough shelter behind the camp pouring into their work their acute longing for the places depicted †¦ and chanting the song cycles that told the stories of the designs as they worked . These early works aroused strong protest within Aboriginal communities when first exhibited in Alice Springs in 1974 because of the disclosure of secret and sacred knowledge. A period of experimentation followed, resulting in the development of a symbolic language of classic ideograms and the characteristic dot covered areas that veil sacred elements from the uninitiated. The large, tribally mixed population of Papunya intensified the interaction, but under the influence of artists like Uta Uta, the painting group was able to break through the political and cultural constraints toward a safer stylistic conformity, and prepare the way for personal and distinctive styles to emerge. Uta Uta in particular, with his exciting and charismatic personality as well as his bold and dynamic style, played a vital role in these developments. Bardon recalled many years later, everything that came from him was genuine . Uta Uta’s 1971 and 1972 paintings generally featured major story elements with only the barest dotted in-fill within the iconography and small sections of the background. The aesthetic balance and harmony of these works is derived through colour and weight rather than by a geometric division of the painted surface. The rather crude dotting and line work of these early paintings on board embues them with an energy and power that is less apparent in his later more technically proficient works. His paintings are far stronger and more powerful when the clean unadorned background remains, unlike paintings by his contemporary Kaapa, whose early works became more aesthetically appealing as he began to in-fill the background. In developing a style that censored the more secret and sacred content in his painting, Uta Uta added more dot-work as the years went by. He painted more Tingari sites completely surrounded by neat dots that became less and less detailed. Despite his advancing age during the late 1970’s he continued to paint as he spent increasing time at outstations west of Papunya and, at the beginning of the 1980’s, he completed what was to become one of the most important and revered works of the entire Western Desert art movement. Yumari 1981, possibly his largest and most significant painting, reveals the mythical Tingari ancestors traveling across vast stretches of country as they create sites and institute rituals. Yumari is a rocky outcrop in his home country and the key ceremonial site of the area. Story elements and natural features blend seamlessly into a beautifully balanced geometry of concentric circles and connecting lines that enclose a central, abstracted figure. This body continues rather than interrupts the intense, minutely dotted background configurations, yet still holds the central focus. The work is characterised by the sinuous movement of converging regular and irregular shapes, accentuated by outlining white dots. The predominant use of an earthy red alongside vivid yellow ochre, further emphasizes the assertive quality in this cohesive and powerful statement of Aboriginal tradition. The work was exhibited at the XVIII Bienal de Sao Paulo in 1983 and is now in the collection of the National Museum of Australia. While painting Yumari, important discussions were taking place at Papunya concerning the move back to the Pintupi homelands at Kintore. Land rights legislation during the 1970’s returned ownership of the land to its traditional owners and Uta Uta was a strong advocate for resettlement.