Poetry is an expression of unfiltered emotions. Zero attempts to capture the multiple yet most simplistic human emotions. In Japanese, Bushido means there is life in every breath. This proverb has intrigued me on numerous levels at various phases of my life. My poetry in Zero, attempts to capture some of my unfiltered emotions.
This is a biography of Maulana Muhammad Ali (d. 1951), the world-famous author of several highly acclaimed books on Islam, including an English translation of the Holy Quran with commentary. Besides being a history of his life and work, and the history of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, it also vividly portrays his burning desire to present to the modern and Western world the pristine Islam based directly on the Holy Quran and the Holy Prophet Muhammad’s teachings — a religion of peace, tolerance, reason and moderation, which seeks to win over people’s hearts and minds. The Mighty Striving with the Quran which the Maulana urged upon Muslims is the only way to restore the dignity of Islam in the light of the misunderstandings between Muslims and the West.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND NPR WINNER OF THE 2023 L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE, ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION “Stunning not only on account of the author’s talent, of which there is clearly plenty, but also in its humanity.” —New York Times Book Review (cover) Sent back to his birthplace—Lahore’s notorious red-light district—to hush up the murder of a girl, a man finds himself in an unexpected reckoning with his past. Not since childhood has Faraz returned to the Mohalla, in Lahore’s walled inner city, where women continue to pass down the art of courtesan from mother to daughter. But he still remembers the day he was abducted from the home he shared with his mother and sister there, at the direction of his powerful father, who wanted to give him a chance at a respectable life. Now Wajid, once more dictating his fate from afar, has sent Faraz back to Lahore, installing him as head of the Mohalla police station and charging him with a mission: to cover up the violent death of a young girl. It should be a simple assignment to carry out in a marginalized community, but for the first time in his career, Faraz finds himself unable to follow orders. As the city assails him with a jumble of memories, he cannot stop asking questions or winding through the walled city’s labyrinthine alleyways chasing the secrets—his family’s and his own—that risk shattering his precariously constructed existence. Profoundly intimate and propulsive, The Return of Faraz Ali is a spellbindingly assured first novel that poses a timeless question: Whom do we choose to protect, and at what price?
This fascinating and important book attempts to investigate the nature of the seven Ahruf in which the Qur’an has been revealed and the reason for the variations in readings among the Qurra’ of the Quran. It studies, examines, and discusses: the revelation of the Qur’an in the seven ahruf concluding that they represent seven linguistical ways of recitation; the compilation of the Quran during the lifetime of the Prophet and the preservation of the Quran in the memories of the Companions as well as in written form, the compilation during the time of Abu Bakr, and the further compilation during the time of Uthman; the problem of naskh to demonstrate the completeness and trustworthiness of the Quran and that no verses are missing or were read and abrogated by naskh al-tilawah either with or without hukm; the Uthmanic masahif and their relation to the seven ahruf; the language of the Quran and whether it includes one, several, or all the dialects of the Arabs; the origin of the qiraat and conditions governing accepted readings; and ikhtiyar (i.e., the selection of one reading rather than another) and the rules governing the Qurra’ who selected a reading.
Sustainable peace in Afghanistan can be achieved only through the establishment of an “end-state” that is acceptable to the Afghan people but does not undermine the legitimate security interests of other actors in the region and beyond. This necessitates addressing legitimate national, regional and international concerns emanating from the Afghanistan situation. The key to achieving this goal is an integrated strategy that combines military strategy with political and developmental strategies. In developing such strategies, Afghan society needs to be mobilized in pursuit of what its population aspires to instead of what a supply-driven assistance program imposes upon it. The success of such a strategy depends on resources, sound Afghan leadership, coordinated international partnership, and – most importantly – time. Given local and regional political and security dynamics, the transition process will be multi-dimensional, complex, and nonlinear. Given the complexities of the regional environment, there is no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. Sustainable peace should come through a political settlement; and yet, the conflict can be lost militarily. Without military gains in the field, no elements of a political strategy can succeed: the insurgents will have little incentive to enter meaningful peace talks; the government will be unable to hold contested areas to establish effective local government and win over the population; regional actors will continue to hedge their bets. Furthermore, lack of military progress will give way to doubts in troop-providing nations about the sagacity of the mission. A successful transition is contingent on progress in reconciliation with, and reintegration of insurgents. Security arrangements for the process need to accompany peace talks. In this context, the military strategy should play a supporting role creating the space for effective prosecution of the political strategy. The gradual drawdown of US forces should be balanced with shifting the security responsibility to Afghan security forces as they progressively become more capable of doing the job. The pace of the drawdown must be “condition-based.” A fast-paced drawdown creates a security vacuum and reduces the chances of drawing the insurgents toward a negotiated political settlement. Finally, there is a need to emphasize the development of good governance and the rule of law, and to address the key grievances that fuel insurgency. In concrete terms, government reform requires a series of short-term and long-term corrective measures, including: improvement in the center–peripheries relationship; establishing checks and balances on executive power; improving government service-delivery capacity; enforcing the rule of law; and fighting corruption.
Pakistan has recently reformed its arbitration laws and laws on the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitration agreements and awards. These reforms relate to both international commercial and investment arbitration. This book highlights the changes brought about by the recent enactments and explains the relationships between the old and new legislation. It provides a detailed and up-to-date analysis of Pakistani case law on foreign arbitration agreements and awards. Part I describes the background of arbitration laws in Pakistan. Part II explains the applicable substantive and procedural rules for the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitration agreements and awards and other important issues, such as the severability of arbitration clauses from main agreements, questions of public policy, and interim measures supporting foreign arbitration. Part III analyses the recent enactments that implement the New York and the ICSID Conventions in Pakistan.
This book is one of the many Islamic publications distributed by Talee throughout the world in different languages with the aim of conveying the message of Islam to the people of the world. Talee (www.talee.org) is a registered Organization that operates and is sustained through collaborative efforts of volunteers in many countries around the world, and it welcomes your involvement and support. Its objectives are numerous, yet its main goal is to spread the truth about the Islamic faith in general and the Shi`a School of Thought in particular due to the latter being misrepresented, misunderstood and its tenets often assaulted by many ignorant folks, Muslims and non-Muslims.Organization's purpose is to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge through a global medium, the Internet, to locations where such resources are not commonly or easily accessible or are resented, resisted and fought! In addition, Talee aims at encouraging scholarship, research and enquiry through the use of technological facilitates. For a complete list of our published books please refer to our website (www.talee.org) or send us an email to info@talee.org
Schistosomiasis is a severe parasitic disease, endemic in 74 developing countries with up to 600 million people, including many children, infected and 800 million at risk of contracting the disease following infection with Schistosoma mansoni, S. haematobium or S. japonicum. Disease burden is estimated to exceed 70 million disability-adjusted life-years, and leads to remarkably high YLD (years lived with disability) rates. Even more importantly, people with schistosomiasis are highly susceptible to malaria, tuberculosis and hepatic and acquired immunodeficiency viruses. There is only one drug, praziquantel, currently available for treatment and it has high efficacy, low cost, and limited side effects. However, only 13% of the target population has received the drug, and those treated are at continuous risk of reinfection necessitating repeated drug administration and the emergence of drug resistant parasites is a constant threat. There currently is no vaccine. While the target of >40% protection has been achieved with some molecules such as excretory-secretory proteins including calpain, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase, and cysteine peptidases, very recent articles reiterate the findings published during the last 2 decades of the last century, contradicting the established data of the pioneers of schistosome biology. A consensus should be reached without delay, in order to propose collaborative independent experiments and proceed ahead to pre- and clinical trials with efficacious candidate vaccine molecules. The proposed plan aims to finally reach an objective and fruitful agreement , via inviting established and young researchers from the United States, Brazil, China, Australia, and Europe who are working with different vaccine antigens, adjuvants, and approaches for immunization against S. mansoni, S. haematobium, and S. japonicum. It is hoped that the forum will end with a very few candidate antigens and a consensus approach regarding target immune responses, thus leading to encouraging the World Health Organization and other international foundations to sponsor the development and implementation of the urgently required, yet still elusive, vaccine for preventing and eliminating the transmission of schistosomiasis.
In this book, the authors discuss the recent developments in computational techniques for automated non-invasive facial emotion detection and analysis with particular focus on the smile. By way of applications, they discuss how genuine and non-genuine smiles can be inferred, how gender is encoded in a smile and how it is possible to use the dynamics of a smile itself as a biometric feature. It is often said that the face is a window to the soul. Bearing a metaphor of this nature in mind, one might find it intriguing to understand, if any, how the physical, behavioural as well as emotional characteristics of a person could be decoded from the face itself. With the increasing deductive power of machine learning techniques, it is becoming plausible to address such questions through the development of appropriate computational frameworks. Though there are as many as over twenty five categories of emotions one could express, regardless of the ethnicity, gender or social class, across humanity, there exist six common emotions – namely happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger and disgust - all of which can be inferred from facial expressions. Of these facial expressions, the smile is the most prominent in social interactions. The smile bears important ramifications with beliefs such as it makes one more attractive, less stressful in upsetting situations and employers tending to promote people who smile often. Even pockets of scientific research appear to be forthcoming to validate such beliefs and claims, e.g. the smile intensity observed in photographs positively correlates with longevity, the ability to win a fight and whether a couple would stay married. Thus, it appears that many important personality traits are encoded in the smile itself. Therefore, the deployment of computer based algorithms for studying the human smiles in greater detail is a plausible avenue for which the authors have dedicated the discussions in this book.
This fascinating and important book attempts to investigate the nature of the seven Ahruf in which the Qur'an has been revealed and the reason for the variations in readings among the Qurraa of the Quran. It studies, examines, and discusses: the revelation of the Qur'an in the seven ahruf concluding that they represent seven linguistical ways of recitation; the compilation of the Quran during the lifetime of the Prophet and the preservation of the Quran in the memories of the Companions as well as in written form, the compilation during the time of Abu Bakr, and the further compilation during the time of Uthman; the problem of naskh to demonstrate the completeness and trustworthiness of the Quran and that no verses are missing or were read and abrogated by naskh al-tilawah either with or without hukm; the Uthmanic masahif and their relation to the seven ahruf; the language of the Quran and whether it includes one, several, or all the dialects of the Arabs; the origin of the qiraat and conditions governing accepted readings; and ikhtiyar (i.e., the selection of one reading rather than another) and the rules governing the Qurraa' who selected a reading.
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