Love of life in Kuwaiti and American college students

In samples of 198 Kuwaiti and 158 American college students, the Love of Life Scale appeared to have good reliability. The American students obtained slightly higher scores than the Kuwaiti students.     

The English public space: developing spirituality in English Muslim schools

Developing a language and a context for a spirituality that can speak to children and young people in a post‐modern, secular English society is a challenge for anyone, parent or teacher, who wishes to raise the vision beyond the purely material and the everyday. The challenge is both epistemological and pedagogical. How young people see, know and describe the world in which they find themselves is central to any school curriculum. For English Muslim schools the epistemological and pedagogical interfaces with the cultural and theological in a search for a language and spirituality that is a reflection of a contemporary English Islam.     

Some Results on Amalgamation in Algebraic Logic

We solve some open questions on the amalgamation porperty invarious algebras of logic (like cylindric algebras). Some ofthese problems first appeared in Pigozzi [3].     

Recognising faces seen alone or with others: when two heads are worse than one

There is a large body of work investigating face identification, but most of this addresses recognition of a single person. Here, we examine how recognition is affected by the presence of a second face. In Experiments 1 and 2, we demonstrate that memory for an unfamiliar face is severely reduced if it is seen alongside a second person. Sequential presentation of two target faces further reduces accuracy. In Experiments 3 and 4, we demonstrate the same disadvantage for two‐face targets in a matching task, where subjects have no time limits or memory requirement. In matching, the damaging effect of a second face is greatest when the targets are placed close together. Furthermore, there is a general advantage for faces presented to the left. We suggest that it may not be possible to extrapolate results from single‐face studies to experiments (or realistic situations) involving more than one person. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

OLD TEXTS,NEW MASKS: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF MISREADING EVOLUTION ONTO HISTORICAL ISLAMIC TEXTS

With the increasing interest in Islam and evolution, some Islamic thinkers have vehemently rejected evolution, while others have eagerly embraced it. However, those seeking to embrace evolution sometimes err in their interpretation of historical writings. Indeed, there are texts written by famous historical scholars of Islam who seem to suggest that humans have evolved from lower forms of species. These include Ibn Khaldūn, Jalāl ad‐Dīn Rūmī, al‐Jāhiz, and The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al Safā). Although this may be true, such readings are a mistaken interpretation of the aforementioned authors who are actually referring to some form of the scalae naturae (the Great Chain of Being). This reference to the Great Chain of Being is unknown to some contemporary readers who mistakenly believe these writers to be discussing an evolutionary or a proto‐evolutionary theory. This article demonstrates how and why these historical records do not actually represent any notion of evolution as it is currently understood, in the hope of avoiding any further erroneous claims that seem to be proliferating among modern thinkers.     

On Complete Representations of Reducts of Polyadic Algebras

Following research initiated by Tarski, Craig and Németi, and futher pursued by Sain and others, we show that for certain subsets G of ^ω ω, atomic countable G polyadic algebras are completely representable. G polyadic algebras are obtained by restricting the similarity type and axiomatization of ω-dimensional polyadic algebras to finite quantifiers and substitutions in G. This contrasts the cases of cylindric and relation algebras. Presented by Robert Goldblatt     

Religiosity, health, and well-being among Kuwaiti personnel

In a sample of 424 Kuwaiti personnel (219 men, 205 women; M age = 37.6 yr., SD = 8.9; M age = 33.4 yr., SD = 7.9, respectively), self-ratings of religiosity were significantly and positively correlated with the self-ratings of physical health, mental health, and happiness, as well as the Oxford Happiness Inventory, the Love of Life Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale among men and women. Principal components analysis of the correlation matrix yielded only one salient factor labeled "Well-being, health and religiosity" that explained 52.7% and 56.5% of the variance for men and women, respectively. Religiosity is an important element in the lives of the majority of the present sample of Kuwaiti Muslim employees.     

Research Note: Happiness among Kuwaiti College Students

Happiness was assessed in 140 Kuwaiti students by means of a single item self-report. Its retest reliability after one week was good (r=+0.86). It is argued that single question suffices for measuring states like happiness. Average happiness appeared to be quite low compared to students in other countries. Possible reasons for the low level of happiness among Kuwaiti college students are discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Ijtihad and innovation in neo‐modernist Islamic thought in Indonesia

This article briefly explores three models of ijtihad followed in contemporary Islam: text‐based, eclectic and context‐based ijtihad, and attempts to sketch the features of the environment within which each model functions. The key aim of the article, however, is to examine the context‐based model of ijtihad which is utilized by the neo‐Modernist Muslims in Indonesia, to identify a number of their major concerns and to highlight the nature of the reform agenda the neo‐Modernists are pursuing. Though this agenda may be seen by many Muslims to be problematic and even dangerous, it is gaining ground in Indonesia, particularly within the younger generation who have had the opportunity of combining traditional Islamic scholarship with modern Western education. The article examines these issues of interest on the basis of interviews conducted during 1995 in Jakarta with two leading Muslim intellectuals: Nurcholish Majid, the leading neo‐Modernist thinker, and Abdurrahman Wahid, the leader of the largest Islamic organization in Indonesia, Nahdlatul Ulama.     

Selected organizational outcome correlates of spirituality in the workplace

This study addressed the feasibility, practicality, and effects of a management style defined as "Management-by-Virtues," a management philosophy and practice based on virtues derived from religious beliefs. The study focused on Management-by-Virtues as practiced in Christian firms and assessed the effect that Management-by-Virtues could have on such organizational outcomes as employees' Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and propensity to go beyond the call of duty in carrying out organizational tasks, i.e., Organizational Citizenship Behavior. The study, based on survey responses from 328 employees of 26 business firms, compared overall scores on Organizational Commitment, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in 10 businesses, described by owner/managers as being managed according to Christian beliefs and practices, with the same outcomes in 16 "control" firms that did not explicitly espouse such an orientation. The Management-by-Virtues firms were characterized by more committed, more satisfied employees, and employees' reports of higher incidence of Organizational Citizenship Behavior than the comparison firms. However, a measure of this construct based on employees' perceptions did not sharply differentiate the two groups of firms.