Exploring orthographic neighborhood size effects in a computational model of Chinese character naming

Orthographic neighborhood (N) size effects have been extensively studied in English consistently producing a facilitatory effect in word naming tasks. In contrast, several recent studies on Chinese character naming have demonstrated an inhibitory effect of neighborhood size. Response latencies tend to be inhibited by inconsistent characters with large neighborhoods relative to small neighborhoods. These differences in neighborhood effects between languages may depend on the characteristics (depth) of the mapping between orthography and phonology. To explore this, we first conducted a behavioral experiment to investigate the relationship between neighborhood size, consistency and reading response. The results showed an inhibitory effect of neighborhood size for inconsistent characters but a facilitatory effect for consistent characters. We then developed two computational models based on parallel distributed processing principles to try and capture the nature of the processing that leads to these results in Chinese character naming. Simulations using models based on the triangle model of reading indicated that consistency and neighborhood size interact with the division of labor between semantics and phonology to produce these effects.     

Between the Christ of Deep Incarnation and The African Jesus of Tinyiko Maluleke: An Improvised Dialogue

All differences considered, the Christ of deep incarnation and the African Jesus of Tinyiko Maluleke share at least one fundamental dimension: they both stand out as signs of God's radical embodiment in the world of creation/of African culture(s). Put crudely, while the deep incarnation theologians extend Jesus’ body into social and cosmic bodies, Maluleke locates Jesus’ body in the bodies of his fellow Africans. This study first identifies major convergences and tensions between these two christological perspectives and, second, posits that the scandal of reciprocity, seen as a characteristic feature of African christologies, can be translated into a twofold guiding principle for approaching and assessing African Christianity theologically.     

Re-reading Anscombe on ‘I’

According to a ‘Straight’ reading of Elizabeth Anscombe’s (1975 Anscombe, E. 1975. “The First Person.” In her Mind and Language, edited by S. Guttenplan, 45–65. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) ‘The First Person’, she holds a radically non-referring view of ‘I’. Specifically, ‘I’ is analogous to the expletive ‘it’ in ‘It’s raining’. I argue that this is not her conclusion. Her substantive view, rather is that if what you mean by ‘reference’ is a certain rich and recherché notion tracing to Frege, then ‘I’ is not a referring term. Her methodological point is that one shouldn’t be ‘bewitched by language’ into thinking that ‘I’, because of its syntax, must exhibit ‘reference’ in this sense.     

Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state: relationality and the mosque not built

ABSTRACT

Interactions between religious groups and state actors in cities across Europe are increasingly marked by complex relations that transcend the limitations usually associated with ‘local’ context, religion, or politics. However, scholars often fail to adequately conceptualise the multiple connections between religion and the state across various spatial dimensions. This contribution addresses this lacuna by introducing a relational approach to understanding the nexus of space, religion, and state. It is argued that a relational understanding of space helps to avoid the fallacy of neglecting other spatial categories such as the translocal or the global. This contribution’s conceptual arguments are based on an investigation of the spatial implications of the puzzle of why one of the largest mosque projects in Germany, the Munich Forum for Islam, failed to materialise.     

Sharʿī norms and German Schools: Court Challenges to Participation in Swimming Lessons,School Trips and Sex Education

ABSTRACT

This article examines the treatment by German courts, from the early 1970s to 2016, of requests made by Muslims to be exempted from school activities for religious reasons. Based on a qualitative reading of 72 court rulings, the article demonstrates a shift in the courts’ decision-making, from initially tolerating Muslim requests for exemption to firmly denying them. Arguments from the court rulings are substantiated by an analysis of the public discourse on Muslims in German schools. The results suggest that the transformation of court attitudes corresponded with the rise of broader concerns about multiculturalism and manifestations of Islam in the public sphere, the liberalization of gender norms, and increasing secularism within German society. The article further demonstrates that, contrary to public perception, requests for exemptions from school activities were not a distinctly Muslim phenomenon. Christian families have challenged school activities in a similar way.     

Two Shi‘i Jurisprudential Methodologies to Address Medical and Bioethical Challenges: Traditional Ijtihād and Foundational Ijtihād

The legal‐ethical dynamism in Islamic law which allows it to respond to the challenges of modernity is said to reside in the institution of ijtihād (independent legal thinking and hermeneutics). However, jurists like Mohsen Kadivar and Ayatollah Fa?lalla have argued that the “traditional ijtihād” paradigm has reached its limits of flexibility as it allows for only minor adaptations and lacks a rigorous methodology because of its reliance on vague and highly subjective juridical devices such as public welfare (ma?la?a), imperative necessity (?arūra), emergency (i?tirār), need (?āja), averting difficulty (‘usr) and distress (?araj), hardship (mashaqqa), and harm (?arar) without interrogating the fundamentals (u?ūl) of ijtihād. In contrast, in the “foundational ijtihād” model theology, ethics, intellect, epistemology, linguistics, hermeneutics, modern sciences, history, cosmology, anthropology, and the sources of Islamic legal theory (u?ūl al‐fiqh) interact with one another to obtain resolutions that are just and non‐discriminatory.     

Crafting mosque-state relations through community-service work: the case of Yardam mosque in Kazan,Tatarstan

ABSTRACT

This contribution examines a symbiotic relationship between the state, represented by local government officials, and a mosque through a case study of the Yardam mosque in the central Russian region of Tatarstan. What in 2002 began as a community service-based project at a small mosque in the outskirts of Tatarstan’s capital Kazan, grew into a charitable foundation and a rehabilitation centre for the blind and disabled, housed under a newly-built mosque. The foundation is able to maintain its large-scale operations by forging strategic partnerships with local elites – local government officials and entrepreneurs – and by ensuring that the mosque’s leadership supports ‘traditional Islam.’ In turn, the local government showcases the mosque as a positive example of traditional Islam in Tatarstan: peaceful, community-service-oriented, and loyal to the state. As such, Yardam serves as a ‘desirable norm’ for the state and a real-life lesson for religious organisations: to be successful, their vision, mission, and work must be aligned with those of the state. Ultimately, the case of Yardam illustrates how Russia’s religious policy with the focus on ‘tradition’ can shape ‘mosque-state’ relations at the local level.     

A non-commutative generalization of Łukasiewicz rings

The goal of the present article is to extend the study of commutative rings whose ideals form an MV-algebra as carried out by Belluce and Di Nola [1] to non-commutative rings. We study and characterize all rings whose ideals form a pseudo MV-algebra, which shall be called here generalized Łukasiewicz rings. We obtain that these are (up to isomorphism) exactly the direct sums of unitary special primary rings.     

Discussions about indigenous,national and transnational Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Transnational Islam is increasingly presented in the Russian political rhetoric as a security threat. Therefore, Russian politicians and authorities attempt to support indigenous or national forms of Islam. Similar policies are implemented in several western European countries. Yet they tend to disregard the heterogeneity of the Muslim community, they create exclusions and they are often conceived as imposing outside evaluations and interpretations on Islam. This contribution analyses initiatives intended to develop a national Islam in post-Soviet Russia. While the aims, methods and problems in different countries are often quite similar, the values and norms underlying these initiatives vary and reflect the societies from which they emerge. This contribution argues that since the 1990s, the changes in the political line of the Kremlin have impacted the project for a ‘national’ Islam by placing less emphasis on liberal values and more emphasis on adherence to loyalism and political conservatism.