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In recent years, there has been a resurgence in debates on the ethics of child genital cutting practices, both female and male, including within a Muslim context. Opponents of female genital cutting sometimes assert that the practice is not mentioned explicitly in the Qur’an as a way of implying that it does not have any religious standing within Islam. However, neither is male genital cutting mentioned explicitly in the Qur’an, and yet most people accept that it is a Muslim religious practice. Both practices, however, are mentioned in secondary sources of Islamic jurisprudence, with disagreement among religious authorities about the status or authenticity of some of these sources. This paper considers the religious status of both female and male genital cutting practices within Islam and employs a philosophical argument based on “peer disagreement” to ask whether either practice is necessary (i.e., religiously required) for a devout Muslim to endorse.

This paper provides a perspective on where contemporary Muslim responses to biomedical-ethical issues stand to date. There are several ways in which Muslim responses to biomedical ethics can and have been studied in academia. The responses are commonly divided along denominational lines or under the schools of jurisprudence. All such efforts classify the responses along the lines of communities of interpretation rather than the methods of interpretation. This research is interested in the latter. Thus, our criterion for classification is the underlying methodology behind the responses. The proposed classification divides Muslim biomedical-ethical reasoning into three methodological categories: 1) textual, 2) contextual, and 3) para-textual.

Investigating the reliability of moral intuitions is not only one of the hot topics in moral psychology but also of high importance for philosophical questions. In a recent study, the influence of ...

We argue that sport in general, and association football in particular, are activities that invite spectators and players alike to talk about them. Using a Wittgensteinian approach, we argued more ...

War is evil, yet it brings about works of art and literature. Even so, is it ethically acceptable to wage a war in spite of all its bloody consequences, just because it may inspire some artistic ma...

Abdolkarim Soroush’s theory of ‘The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religious Knowledge’ is arguably one of the most controversial theories of religion in post-revolutionary Iran. Soroush’s theory paves the way for recognising a pluralist interpretation of religion (Islam) by merging the epistemological and hermeneutical theory of religion. However, he later adds another approach to his reformist framework to explain the phenomenon of revelation. In this paper, after carefully laying out Soroush’s contraction and expansion theory, I will discuss his three approaches, that is, epistemological, hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches to religion, through presenting Kantian and Quinian interpretations of contraction and expansion of religious knowledge, addressing the epistemology of contraction and expansion and the phenomenology of revelation, and pointing out some issues about error recognition within contraction and expansion of religious knowledge. I argue that the role of error recognition is crucial in understanding Soroush’s reformist project since it links his epistemology and hermeneutics of religious knowledge to the way he theorises about revelation phenomenologically.

This paper raises a moral issue for contemporary post-revolutionary Muslim intellectuals in Iran. According to traditional Islamic teachings, ethics enables people to transcend from this mundane world and offers guidance on ways to improve virtues. Most contemporary Iranian Muslim intellectuals have attempted to pave the way for accomplishing this goal. After clarifying the ways in which Iranian Muslim intellectuals have faith in virtue ethics as a best possible moral normative theory, we claim that virtue ethics fails to support some of our modern problems in the realm of politics such as human rights and democracy. Also, we argue that virtue ethics is not a good theory for ordinary average people who have weakness of will. A preliminary conclusion of the paper will be that utilitarianism, generally, and principle of utility, specifically, is a better solution to the modern problems. This, we believe, has been overlooked from the eyes of post-revolutionary Muslim intellectuals. Yet, we suggest that among different versions of utilitarianism, rule-utilitarianism is more justified to do this job., Bu yazıda, İran’daki çağdaş devrim sonrası Müslüman entelektüellerin ahlaki bir sorunu ele alınmaktadır. Geleneksel İslami öğretilere göre, ahlak, insanların bu dünyevi dünyayı aşmalarını sağlar ve erdemlerini geliştirme yollarını gösterir. Çağdaş İranlı Müslüman entelektüellerin çoğu bu amaca ulaşmanın yolunu açmaya çalıştı. Öncelikle İranlı Müslüman entelektüellerin, erdem ahlakını mümkün olan en iyi ahlaki normatif teori olarak ele aldıklarını ifade ettikten sonra, erdem ahlakının insan hakları ve demokrasi gibi politik alandaki modern sorunlarımızı çözmede başarısız olduğunu iddia ediyoruz. Ayrıca, erdem ahlakının, zayıf iradeli ortalama insanlar için iyi bir teori olmadığını savunuyoruz. Makalenin en önemli sonuçlarından biri, genel olarak faydacılığın ve özel olarak fayda prensibinin, modern sorunlara daha iyi bir çözüm olacağıdır. Biz şuna inanıyoruz ki bu mesele devrim sonrası Müslüman entelektüellerin gözünden kaçmaktadır. Bununla birlikte, bu amaca ulaşmak için faydacılığın farklı versiyonları arasında kural-faydacılığının daha uygun olduğunu ileri sürmekteyiz.

Physicians in Islamic countries might be requested to participate in the Islamic legal code of qiṣāṣ, in which the victim or family has the right to an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. Qiṣāṣ is only used as a punishment in the case of murder or intentional physical injury. In situations such as throwing acid, the national legal system of some Islamic countries asks for assistance from physicians, because the punishment should be identical to the crime. The perpetrator could not be punished without a physician's participation, because there is no way to guarantee that the sentence would be carried out without inflicting more injury than the initial victim had suffered. By examining two cases of acid throwing, this paper discusses issues related to physicians' participation in qiṣāṣ from the perspective of medical ethics and Islamic Shari'a law. From the standpoint of medical ethics, physicians' participation in qiṣāṣ is not appropriate. First, qiṣāṣ is in sharp contrast to the Hippocratic Oath and other codes of medical ethics. Second, by physicians' participation in qiṣāṣ, medical practices are being used improperly to carry out government mandates. Third, physician participation in activities that cause intentional harm to people destroys the trust between patients and physicians and may adversely affect the patient-physician relationship more generally. From the standpoint of Shari'a, there is no consensus among Muslim scholars whether qiṣāṣ should be performed on every occasion. We argue that disallowing physician involvement in qiṣāṣ is necessary from the perspectives of both medical ethics and Shari'a law.

The synthesis of new azoic-dyes containing aryloxytetrazole functional group is reported. The 5-(4′-aminophenoxy)tetrazole was diazotized and coupled with the electron rich aromatic rings. All dyes were characterized by 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, IR, and UV–vis spectroscopies. They all decomposed above 174 °C except dye derived from 4-nitrophenol, which released nitrogen at 86 °C to produce tar. These dyes are yellow, brown, or red in color. All dyes are soluble in basic media. The imidoyl azide derivative of dye derived from β-naphthol produced unexpected hydroxylamine derivative in refluxing 1,4-dioxane.

Kinetics of the reactions of 1,2,3-triphenyl-2-propanol (1), 1,2-diphenyl-2-propanol (2) and 3,3,3-trideuterio-1,2-diphenyl-2-propanol (3) with triphenylphosphine–carbon tetrachloride in the temperature range of 25–78°C in several solvents are investigated. In a non-polar solvent (CCl4), the reaction of (2) proceeds via intermolecular anti E2 elimination and/or intermolecular SN2 nucleophilic substitution (28% substitution, ratio of 2-alkene/1-alkene=1.06, E/Z≥49). In a polar solvent (CH3CN) reaction proceeds via E1 and/or SN1 (24% substitution, 2-alkene/1-alkene=1.9, E/Z≥6. At equilibrium, the ratio of 2-alkene/1-alkene is equal to 99 with E/Z≥4.21. The primary kinetic isotope effect (kH/kD) for the elimination pathway in the non-polar solvent is equal to 4.90 and 3.90 at temperatures of 25 and 60°C, respectively. A small secondary β-isotope effect of 1.10 was observed for substitution reaction at both temperatures. Direction of substitution (SN2 vs. E2) depends on temperature and polarity of the solvent. The energetics (ΔS‡, ΔG‡, ΔH‡), the rate orders, and optimization of molecular geometry of intermediates by semiempirical methods (AM1 and CNDO) all agree with intermolecular E2 and SN2 mechanisms. New rules for stereoselectivity and Hofmann–Saytzeff eliminations are considered.

Researchers have attempted to integrate the fields of management and ethics for the past 50 years. Although the moral aspects of knowledge management have been studied, its philosophical attitude has been overshadowed. This work designs a philosophical background—in moral philosophy—for public knowledge management. To achieve the research goal, the relationships between human critical success factors of knowledge management and moral duties are discussed. These moral duties are based on the Rossian ethical framework. The authors recommend moral duties to public organizations that try to manage knowledge successfully. The results show that “beneficence” is the most significant to knowledge management success in the public sector. In this paper, the authors integrate knowledge management with the Rossian ethical framework to increase successful knowledge management in public organizations.

A facile and efficient synthesis is introduced for the new aryloxyimidoyl azides in a quantitative yield.