Islamic World and Near East History Commons^™

Marta, Marta, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Marta is a member of the support community for Central American refugees arriving in the southwest US. In this interview, Marta shares her own story of crossing the border at a young age with her daughter and her life in the US. Marta was self-employed for many years and later went on to serve in the US Army in Iraq. For the last 9 months, she and her husband Israel and son Josue have worked tirelessly to help make sure the current refugees arriving are cared for after they are released from detention centers and begin their lives in the …

Quality Assessment Of Conventional And Electric Vehicles In Terms Of Fuel Economy, Annual Fuel Cost, And Maintenance, Kay Rand Morgan

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, automotive industries and their consumers are demanding more information on electric vehicles in response to the ongoing transportation transition from conventional to electric vehicles (EVs), the problems of greenhouse gas emissions from conventional vehicles (CVs) and fossil fuel usage, and interests in green energy production and the overall environmental health of this world. This study identified four variables - fuel economy (FE), annual fuel cost (AFC), maintenance frequency (f), and maintenance intensity (I) - and used comparative statistical quality assessment and failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), a reliability management tool, for data analysis comparing conventional and electric vehicles. …

God's Sabbath-Keepers: The Sabbatistai Inscription At Catioren, Robert Ogden

Harding School of Theology Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Once Upon A Time...When A Revolution Evolved To A Civil War In Syria, Crystal M. Myers

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

This paper gives an overview of how the conflict in Syria has evolved from a revolution into a sectarian civil war. Power is maintained by the ruling Assad family through promotion of the Alawite minority within the government and military. Methods of persecution on the Sunni majority by the Assad government are discussed as well as a policy of strategic expulsion of the Sunni enclave to Idlib, a city on the outskirts of Syria (bordering Turkey).

Local Perceptions Of Cannabis And Cannabis Laws In Morocco: Unpacking Past Laws, Moroccans' Perceptions, And Exploring Organizational Efforts, Shadae Tingman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In Morocco, cannabis production and consumption are illegal, both medicinally and recreationally. The cultivation of the plant is among the top five in the world. This research will explore many aspects of cannabis in Morocco. There is much literature that exists surrounding the agricultural, economic, and political implications of cannabis, but this research will focus on social perceptions of cannabis and cannabis laws of local Moroccans. This research will explore past government attempts to legalize marijuana and why they did not pass. It will also explore the work of local youth organizations (that focus on cannabis) to understand what they …

Shamshur, Shamshur, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Shamshur has been in Cox’s Bazaar for 8 months and works in Hope Hospital (the camp hospital) as a traditional birth attendant. In addition, she makes house calls to pregnant women throughout the camp who are fearful of hospitals due to past trauma and sexual torture. Shamshur has nine children and a husband who is in prison.

Modina, Modina, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Modina fled Myanmar after experiencing and witnessing extreme violence, including the destruction of her village and the violent murder of her uncle by soldiers. She arrived in Bangladesh by boat after paying smugglers a large sum.

Nidar, Nidar, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Nidar has been in Cox’s Bazaar for 8 months and works in Hope Hospital (the camp hospital) as a traditional birth attendant. In addition, she makes house calls to pregnant women throughout the camp who are fearful of hospitals due to past trauma and sexual torture. Nidar has two children and a husband who fell victim to war.

Asma, Asma, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Asma is a teenager who fled from Myanmar after the army killed her uncle and her village was destroyed. She is now living in Cox’s Bazaar, married, pregnant, and trying to cope in a world where violence and rape are all too common.

Shobika, Shobika, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Shobika escaped Myanmar amid widespread chaos. After being separated from her husband and experiencing the kidnap of her two children, she was raped by soldiers and became pregnant. Her husband now rejects this child.

Januka, Januka, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

After being raped by a soldier in Myanmar, Januka fled to Bangladesh with her father and later found out she was pregnant. She fears no one will want to marry her because she has been raped.

Rohima, Rohima, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Rohima was brutally raped and tortured by soldiers during an attack. After witnessing other women receive the same treatment, she fled Myanmar for Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Once there, she got married while pregnant as a result of the rape.

Neuman, Tamara. Settling Hebron. Jewish Fundamentalism In A Palestinian City. Philadelphia, Pa: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2018., Ilana Maymind

Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Tamara Neuman's Settling Hebron. Jewish Fundamentalism in a Palestinian City.

Steve & Anita, Steve, Anita, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Steve and Anita Canfield helped the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Turkey. They helped send blankets, coats, and washing machines to Syrian refugees. They were assigned to Frankfurt to assess refugee camps, soup kitchens, warehouses, and immigrant communities. The couple visited refugee camps and soup kitchens all over Europe to determine what was needed most by refugees.

The Canfields established the Friendship Center in Rome. The center offers classes in Italian, English, Italian, and a Red Cross course. It also has a gospel choir, a popular activity for primarily African refugees. The LDS Church has plans to …

Re-Playing Maimonides’ Codes: Designing Games To Teach Religious Legal Systems, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Lost & Found is a game series, created at the Initiative for

Religion, Culture, and Policy at the Rochester Institute of

Technology MAGIC Center.1 The series teaches medieval

religious legal systems. This article uses the first two games

of the series as a case study to explore a particular set of

processes to conceive, design, and develop games for learning.

It includes the background leading to the author's work

in games and teaching religion, and the specific context for

the Lost & Found series. It discusses the rationale behind

working to teach religious legal systems more broadly, then

discuss the …

Understanding Muhammad's Interaction With The Church, Devonte Narde

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

My research focuses on understanding Muhammad’s (the Islamic prophet) interaction with what he perceived to be the Christian church to find out why his understanding of Biblical narratives and theology is incorrect. With this information, Christians should reintroduce Christian scripture and theology to Muslims since Muhammad’s rejection of Christian doctrine is based on associating wrong texts as authoritative Christian teaching. The following questions that shape this research are: What possible sources did Muhammad use to learn about biblical narratives and themes? What did the first Muslims think about the canonical gospels of Jesus? How did early Muslims view the teachings …

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

On The (Male) Fringes: How Early Religious Women Remain “Subordinate” In World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

Second Wave feminist researchers identified male-dominated curriculum formats in late twentieth century curriculum materials. This study builds off their work and advances the conversation of women’s inclusion by current United States secondary world history textbook content via a feminist lens to determine the extent of women’s agency in the accounts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The purpose was to determine if textbooks portrayed these patriarchal religions as exclusively male, thereby presenting inaccurate portrayals of the religions and the agents involved, which directly violates NCSS Standards. This study used critical discourse analysis to identify patterns of female marginalization and omission, indicating …

A History Of Slavery In Central Asia: Shī’Ī Muslim Enslavement In 19th Century Bukhara, Robert Dunbar

Verbum

In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph.

Despite more than a century of interest on the part of western scholars and historians in the region of Central Asia, in many respects our knowledge of many topics in Central Asian history remains limited. To date, when compared to the body of historical works treating the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas, or even the history of slavery within the Arab-Muslim world, the history of slavery in Islamic Central Asia has received little attention. Thus, it stands to reason that the history of …

Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

Instructors of Israeli history or literature, like professors in other areas, complain about students’ use of Wikipedia—and with good reason. Unlike peer-reviewed scholarship, many Wikipedia articles contain information that is both incomplete and wrong. Most instructors will warn their students that relying on Wikipedia is a sure recipe for failing assignments. Yet there is a way to mobilize this giant encyclopedia for pedagogical purposes. When students in Israel Studies classes are assigned to edit Wikipedia articles, they achieve multiple goals: they gain critical reading skills, shape public knowledge about Israel, and engage in active learning. This article explains how to …

'Not Cruelty But Piety': Circumscribing European Crusading Violence, Susanna A. Throop

History Faculty Publications

Was there such a thing as “crusading violence”? Traditionally the crusading movement has been sharply distinguished from other forms of Christian violence motivated, or at least justified, by religion. However, we have increasingly come to recognize the difficulties of drawing clear-cut boundaries between crusading and other aspects of western European culture in the Middle Ages. This chapter assesses the ways in which crusader violence was like and unlike other forms of medieval Christian violence.

Rita, Rita, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Rita Alkhaledy grew up in Sadr City, a poor suburb of Baghdad. Her father is an Iraqi Arab and her mother was Kurdish Iranian. Her mother lived in fear that she would be cast out of Baghdad as being an outsider in Iraq was frowned upon. Her father served in the Iraqi army in the 80s and was gone a great deal, leading to a strained relationship. Their relationship was mended when her mother died from cancer.

After the Iraq war, Rita and her brothers realized that their lives were in danger. They had to move from house to house …

Ali, Ali, Twila Bird

TSOS Interview Gallery

At eighteen fate placed Ali and his family in the center of hostilities in northern Afghanistan. Warring militant factions killed hundreds of people in his village. Ali helped identify and bury dozens of his friends and neighbors in a mass grave.

We spent days and nights in the mountains and blocked on the borders. I crossed the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan walking with my handicap. Then it took us another sixteen hours to cross the border between Pakistan and Iran, also in very high mountains of more than 2500 meters. The Iranian police were killing people on the …

Jeanusnat, Jeanusnat, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Jeanusnat’s father, who was chief of a Nigerian community, was murdered by an enemy community. The murderer intended to kill Jeanusnat and his mother as well, but they fled to neighboring Niger. There, Jeanusnat parted ways with his mother, who stayed at the church with a family, and Jeanusnat crossed into Libya in the back of a truck. But once in Libya, danger persisted. He was confronted by some robbers who stabbed him with a knife and beat him, leaving injuries on his legs and shoulder. In Tripoli, a man offered him temporary refuge, where Jeanusnat stayed until he decided …

What Kinds Of Comparison Are Most Useful In The Study Of World Philosophies?, Nathan Sivin, Anna Akasoy, Warwick Anderson, Gérard Colas, Edmond Eh

Publications and Research

Cross-cultural comparisons face several methodological challenges. In an attempt at resolving some such challenges, Nathan Sivin has developed the framework of “cultural manifolds.” This framework includes all the pertinent dimensions of a complex phenomenon and the interactions that make all of these aspects into a single whole. In engaging with this framework, Anna Akasoy illustrates that the phenomena used in comparative approaches to cultural and intellectual history need to be subjected to a continuous change of perspectives. Writing about comparative history, Warwick Anderson directs attention to an articulation between synchronic and diachronic modes of inquiry. In addition, he asks: If …

Locating Palestine’S Summer Residence: Mandate Tourism And National Identity, Andrea L. Stanton

Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

The carving up of the Ottoman Levant into British and French Mandates after World War I introduced new realities for the inhabitants of the region. This article uses Lebanese tourism and the promotion of Lebanon as a tourist destination to Palestinians of all religious backgrounds as a case study to investigate the challenges and potentials of the new Mandate structures. Using Palestinian government archives and newspapers, it examines how Lebanon was marketed to Palestinian vacationers. It concludes by suggesting that tourism, with its mixture of private and government sector interests, serves as a key node for observing the messy process …

Prosocial Religion And Games: Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

In a time when religious legal systems are discussed without an understanding of history or context, it is more important than ever to help widen the understanding and discourse about the prosocial aspects of religious legal systems throughout history. The Lost & Found (www.lostandfoundthegame.com) game series, targeted for an audience of teens through twentysomethings in formal, learning environments, is designed to teach the prosocial aspects of medieval religious systems—specifically collaboration, cooperation, and the balancing of communal and individual/family needs. Set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the 12th century, the first two games in the series address laws in Moses Maimonides’ …

Finding Lost & Found: Designer’S Notes From The Process Of Creating A Jewish Game For Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides context for and examines aspects of the design process of a game for learning. Lost & Found (2017a, 2017b) is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed to teach medieval religious legal systems, beginning with Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1180), a cornerstone work of Jewish legal rabbinic literature. Through design narratives, the article demonstrates the complex design decisions faced by the team as they balance the needs of player engagement with learning goals. In the process the designers confront challenges in developing winstates and in working with complex resource management. The article provides insight into the pathways the team …

Nicole Ludwig, Tsos, Nicole Ludwig

TSOS Interview Gallery

In September 2016, Nicole Ludwig led a group of her neighbors in Germany to assist newly-arrived Syrian and Afghani refugees. The volunteers collected clothing and toys, organized activities and field trips for the refugee children, and taught them German. Later, the volunteers offered homework support and led library reading groups. For the adult refugees, the volunteers provided cultural assimilation instruction and cooking classes. While there were occasional challenges to working together, the volunteers and refugees fostered a collaborative system and even hosted a Christmas party, during which one elderly Syrian man said, “This is one of the best memories I …

Layla, Layla, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Layla left Ethiopia 10 years ago to look for work opportunities. She left behind a father and three brothers. She went to Syria on a three-year work contract. She worked in a house and learned Arabic. She then went to Turkey by boat and then went on to Greece for 5 years. She worked and learned the Greek language. When she became pregnant she had to stop working. She travelled to Serbia to Macedonia to Austria all on foot. Then the Red Cross moved Layla and her daughter to Giessen, Germany where a roommate periodically beat her baby. Seeking safety …