GOD, GOVERNMENT AND GLOBALIZATION:

A Review by: MIRZA IQBAL ASHRAF

This handy-encyclopedic work by S. Akhtar Ehtisham, Abu Talal Naseer Al-Din and Dr. Shahnaz Khan, explores and examines illuminatingly the march of man from his earliest stage to a society of mythical, cultural, religious, political, rational, and modern sensibility of God, Government and Globalization. The book, seemingly divided in three parts, portrayed in a characteristic provocative style, forensic insight and depth of extensive knowledge is a holistic package of thought-provoking presentation which can be readily gleaned from one treatise than to sift through many ponderous works on evolution, religion, history, political science, sociology or philosophy. Now that the West is colliding with the Islamic civilization in which God is very much alive, the Government is un-institutionalized, and Globalization is in confusion, this book is particularly timely.

Section 1, God: It opens with an outline of human evolution remaining mostly focused on mankind’s social evolution that resulted in creation and establishment of ideological, religious, and sociopolitical order. It goes on to discuss the theories of the origin of religion and God, defined as an out of necessity discipline of “speculative nature” and an interconnected order of doctrines, myths, rituals, and beliefs. Discussing the theory of origin of God in terms of man’s fear and curiosity, it moves on to the God of Abraham and the appearance of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths, and reflecting upon Hinduism and Buddhism, this section concludes that religions are not rational. An overview of history of ideology, mainly focusing on the role of Marx and Angels in the development of a godless political theory, information about the term scientific socialism helps to understand the reformist plans that European thinkers offered from time to time. Researching through the courses of enlightenment, modernism, rational ideologies and European Renaissance, it affirms that attempts at explaining religion logically have failed.

Section 2, Government: This section taking up the definition of government as a political system, reflects upon several theories such as modernization, economic and capitalism, Marxism, and world systems. The theory of world systems, as a disarticulation of political and economic world system that has permitted capitalism to survive and prosper, being very important today has been elaborated and critically examined. Throwing light on the origin of capitalism, its development in Britain, and asserting that democracy is a very useful tool of capitalism, a very important commentary reveals how corporations make governments work for them and how the governments play the role of serving the corporations! In the international spectrum, Western powers funding friendly politicians in other countries, would advise and enforce dictators and military generals to take over unfriendly governments. It is interesting to note that imperialism, neo-colonialism, sub-imperial, cultural, post colonial globalization, today are all different facets of Empire. The section ends with the chapter “The Wretched of the USA,” describing America as the richest nation in history, but has the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented number of Americans living in dire state. The first two sections of the book, starting from the germination and conception of faith, the evolution of government through multiple stages of human civilization and coming to the dominance of capitalist corporation, have educated and prepared the reader to proceed further and cope with the final and most important subject of Globalization.

Section 3, Globalization: Starting from colonization, Globalization’s uneven historic development is introduced as a continuation of capitalism. Its economic paradigm constitutes an integration of national economics into international economy through trade, direct investment from foreign countries, short term capital flow, and international flow of workers, students and technology. Arguing the pure capitalist ideology, the market implies freedom guaranteed by supply and demand and chosen freely by people which according to socialist ideology involves commoditization of labor and class exploitation, globalization of the economic system has affected nearly four hundred million indigenous people of the world in the worst way. Another factor affecting the undeveloped or developing countries is the myth of Western aid, which in most cases is actually loan with interest to control and preserve relations. This enables the capitalist democracies of Western countries to reap profits by further exploiting natural and manpower resources of the world beyond West. Helped by the highly paid professionals as Economic Hitmen who cheat countries around the Globe of trillions of dollars, by funneling money from World Bank, US Aid into coffers of huge corporations and into the pockets of few wealthy families, Globalization appears to be neo-colonization instead of a free global-humanity.

Globalization has been discussed from historical to economical point of view, mainly focused on capitalistic and idealistic spectrum. Its application as a set of social processes that appear to transform our present social condition of weakening nationality into one globality, has been scarcely discussed in this section. However, Globalization as a concept referring to people’s growing consciousness of belonging to a global community, mainly an intensification of world-wide social relations which compresses the time and space aspects of people’s relations, has most of the time been depicted as a brain-child of capitalism. Some references to growing forms of political and economic interdependence and technology, that provide a partial explanation for the current wave of Globalization, are not enough to have justified this most important section of the book under review here. However, the book, as one whole treatise, is a very interesting work, intelligently, scholarly and clearly presented, displaying the hard work and depth of knowledge of the authors.

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Mirza Iqbal Ashraf, a retired professor of English Language and Literature, and a scholar of  Philosophy, has taught and lectured on cross-cultural religious and  philosophical issues. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.

He is the published author of following books: (1) Introduction to World Philosophies: A Chronological Progression. (2) Islamic Philosophy of War and Peace. (3) Rumi’s Holistic Humanism, and soon to be published (4) Islamic Civilization’s Religious, Political, and Modern Aspects, and (5) Philosophical Traditions of Muslim Thinkers. He can reached by visiting at https://independent.academia.edu/MirzaAshraf.

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This article appeared in the most recent issue of Aramcpworld Magazine. For the whole article click the link below but for people short of time I am highlighting some parts of the article.    Shoeb

The Medieval Islamic Medicine Cabinet

Medieval Islamic pharmacology was not only extensive but also the strongest empirically based biological science. Like most medieval medicine, the Islamic viewpoint was an outgrowth of Galen’s Humoral Theory and focused on the need to balance the humors, or bodily fluids.

Medieval Islamic pharmacology was not only extensive but also the strongest empirically based biological science. Like most medieval medicine, the Islamic viewpoint was an outgrowth of Galen’s Humoral Theory and focused on the need to balance the humors, or bodily fluids.

Cathartics, purges and laxatives were considered essential to this goal. The most popular herb—an enduring favorite today—was senna, a low bush with small yellow flowers, greenish yellow leaves, and fat seed pods. The leaves have a distinctive smell, and the infusion made from them has a nauseatingly sweet taste; taken alone, the infusion does indeed produce nausea. Both taste and effect were calmed by adding aromatic spices.

The Arabs also introduced manna and tamarind as safe, mild and reliable laxatives. Scammony, a climbing plant of the morning glory family that has thick roots with medicinal value, was a controversial herb in Europe, where some practitioners declared its violent laxative action unsafe to use under any conditions, while others said they could not function without it. Islamic pharmacists responded by devising a reliable preparation to temper the herb’s ferocity but retain its potency. They did this by first boiling the scammony root inside a fruit called a quince; the scammony was then discarded and the quince pulp mixed with the soothing, gooey seeds of psyllium. The preparation was known as “diagridium.”

Formulation developed into an art involving many steps and ingredients. Ar-Razi, Islamic medicine’s greatest clinician and most original thinker, combined bitter almonds with an ounce of raisin rob, or pulp, to treat kidney stones. For the same ailment, a clinician named Haly Abbas recommended boiling jujubes, fruits of sebesten, white maude, and seeds of smallage, fennel, caltrop and thyme.

The Simples

In addition to compounds, the early pharmacists valued hundreds of simple herbal remedies. They used sesame oil to relieve coughs and soften rawness of the throat. Juice from the stalk and leaves of the licorice plant was considered good for respiratory problems, swollen glands, and clearing the throat, whereas the root was used to treat foot ulcers and wounds.

Cardamom was believed to cool the body and aid digestion; it has endured as a principal ingredient in Arabic coffee. Cumin was, and still is, used as an antiflatulent and to relieve stomach cramps. Fennel was used to prevent obesity.

Myrrh was highly valued for its medicinal properties as an astringent and was also used to treat dyspepsia, chronic bronchitis, leukorrhea and as a topical application in gum disease.

Islamic simples also included a variety of analgesics. Ibn Sina’s Canon lists opium poppy, two other varieties of poppy, mandrake, henbane, black nightshade and lettuce seed as effective pain relievers.

Aconite was prescribed for rheumatism, gout, whooping cough, asthma and fever. Cloves were used for toothaches and to control vomiting. The medieval Muslims were the first to use cassia and appreciated its mild laxative action, which made it a popular herbal remedy for young children and the elderly. Caraway oil, which remains a common herbal remedy, was taken to aid digestion. Boiled thyme was prescribed for colds and in its natural form was considered a treatment for indigestion and tooth pain. Baked with bread za’atar remains a common breakfast herb valued for its breath-freshening qualities.

Muslim doctors employed walnut oil for stomach and kidney ailments, “especially for the well fed,” according to Ibn Sina. Abu Mansur described sweet almond oil as “good for opening the bowels and useful for pains affecting the stomach, kidney, liver, chest and lungs.” Infusions of absinthe were used to treat diabetes, African rue was used for headaches, and pomegranate peels were placed on skin ulcers.

These are only a few of the herbs that Arabs valued and recognized for their healing properties and as buffers and vehicles for making medicines more palatable.

http://www.aramcoworld.com/en-US/Articles/May-2016/The-Islamic-Roots-of-Modern-Pharmacy

At our last TF meeting on April 24th Dr. A.S.Amin gave a talk about his recently published book “Conflicts of Interest: Islam, America and Evolutionary Psychology”.  We await a concise summary of his talk for those who could not attend. Somehow, his book got noticed by a Frenchman who writes a blog about evolutionary psychology. He then has written an extensive review of one of the topics in the book. Attaching the link to that blog. Even people who could not attend the TF meeting will find it interesting.  Editor

XXXVI The Evolutionary Roots of the Clash of Civilizations

The relationships between Islam and the West have been hotly discussed for decades. Milestones in this debate have been books such as The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama (1992), Jihad vs McWorld by Benjamin Barber (1995), The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel Huntington (1996). In his work Conflicts of Fitness: Islam, America, and Evolutionary Psychology (2015), Dr A.S. Amin (MD) brings new insights in the discussion by making fruitful use of the findings of evolutionary psychology (EP), and I will review his ideas at some length while broaching the evolutionary roots of the clash of civilizations.

For more of this blog click on the following link:

https://florentboucharel.com/category/english/

Shared by Mirza Iqbal Ashraf!

Is Swearing a Sign of a Limited Vocabulary?

By Piercarlo Valdesolo on April 5, 2016

New research challenges the idea that vulgar words are a sign of failure

Taboo words hold a particular purpose in our lexicon that other words cannot as effectively accomplish: to deliver intense, succinct and directed emotional expression.
Credit: Future Publishing/Getty Images

When words fail us, we curse. At least this is what the “poverty-of-vocabulary” (POV) hypothesis would have us believe. On this account, swearing is the “sign of a weak vocabulary”, a result of a lack of education, laziness or impulsiveness. In line with this idea, we tend to judge vulgarians quite harshly, rating them as lower on socio-intellectual status, less effective at their jobs and less friendly. But this view of the crass does not square with recent research in linguistics. For example, the POV hypothesis would predict that when people struggle to come up with the right words, they are more likely to spew swears left and right. But research shows that people tend to fill the awkward gaps in their language with “ers” and “ums” not “sh*ts” and “godd*mnits.” This research has led to a competing explanation for swearing: fluency with taboo words might be a sign of general verbal fluency. Those who are exceptionally vulgar might also be exceptionally eloquent and intelligent. 　Indeed, taboo words hold a particular purpose in our lexicon that other words cannot as effectively accomplish: to deliver intense, succinct and directed emotional expression. So, those who swear frequently might just be more sophisticated in the linguistic resources they can draw from in order to make their point.

New research by cognitive scientists at Marist College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts attempts to test this possibility, and further debunk the POV hypothesis, by measuring how taboo word fluency relates to general verbal fluency. The POV hypothesis suggests that there should be a negative correlation: the more you swear, the lower your verbal prowess. But the researchers hypothesized just the opposite: the more you swear the more comprehensive your vocabulary would be.

Across three studies, they gave participants a well-known measure of verbal fluency called the Controlled Word Association Test (COWAT). The COWAT asks participants to say as many words as they can that start with a given letter (e.g. F, A or S) during a specified time window. The amount of words that they generate is summed into a fluency score. Then, in what has to be one of the most awkward and hilarious experimental situations in the history of cognitive science, participants had to say, out loud to the experimenter, as many swear words as they could think of in one minute. This was the measure of taboo word fluency.

Results from Study 1 showed that participants generated 400 unique taboo words (see the Results for some of the more colorful entries) and, as the researchers predicted, fluency in generating these words correlated positively with performance on the COWAT. This finding was replicated in Studies 2 and 3, using a written version of the tests as well. The more taboo words participants could generate, the more verbally fluent they were in general.

This finding can serve as a nice empirical middle-finger from vulgarians everywhere, directed at those who had, until now, been unfairly judging them for their linguistic abilities. Swearing, it seems, can be creative, smart, and even downright lyrical. This should also open our eyes to the unique subfield of research that spends its time deconstructing the many and varied ways in which, and reasons why, we swear. For example, did you know that some linguists and philosophers of language draw meaningful distinctions between taboo words that express heightened emotional states (e.g., f*ck), general pejoratives (e.g., f*cker) whose meaning is connotative but person-directed, and slurs (e.g., sl*t), which have both expressive and derogatory descriptive elements? I did not know this.

That said, these results need to be taken with a grain of salt. Knowledge of taboo words and the regular use of those words are two very different things. I might very well have an encyclopedic knowledge of vulgarity, but I might also have the tact necessary to regulate my language in social situations. In other words, just because verbally fluent people have the ability to cuss with the best of them, does not mean that they will do so. This presents a bit of a problem with the current research since the authors do seem to want to make the claim that their results inform what kinds of people actually curse in the real world. This conclusion cannot be drawn from these data. 　The studies tell us nothing about how speakers use taboo words, just what they would be capable of saying if they chose to use them. Swearing regularly and being able to generate a long list of curse words when prompted are very different. Indeed, the POV hypothesis could still survive this criticism. It still might be true that those with greater verbal fluency, even though they also have greater taboo fluency, swear less because they have the lexical database required to actually express themselves in other ways.

In 1977 Norman Mailer confronted Gore Vidal at a party after Vidal poorly reviewed one of Mailer’s books. Mailer’s anger boiled over and he sent Vidal to the ground with a punch. From the floor, Gore Vidal looked up and famously quipped: “Once again, words have failed Norman Mailer.” No doubt, Vidal could have unleashed a string of profanities at his aggressor. He surely had a mastery of taboo language comparable to his mastery of language in general. But his verbal fluency allowed him to craft an even wittier response. And had words not failed Mailer, perhaps he too would have reacted less crassly.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. Gareth, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, is the series editor of Best American Infographics and can be reached at

garethideas@gmail.com or Twitter　@garethideas.