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This tiny booklet is meant to highlight the nature of theological
dialogue between two middle managers, one representing the
Pakistani Taliban faction and the other representing the ISI
(Pakistani Inter-services Intelligence). Pakistani Taliban are an
offshoot of the Afghani Taliban which the ISI had armed and
nurtured to take control of Afghanistan in the vacuum left by the
withdrawal of the Russian Army. The dialogue is my translation of a
dialogue captured in two videos given below, in Urdu taken probably
during the first operation against the Pakistani Taliban in the
Tribal Areas. What makes the confrontation extremely engaging is
because both protagonists are well versed in Islamic and national
history of Pakistan. Constantly during the dialogue the ISI Handler
seems to be reaching out to the rebellious Talibani leader by
giving him an olive branch over and over again. The Talibani leader
on his part comes across as mocking and deriding his former master,
repeatedly rejecting all conciliatory efforts of the former
partners. This dialogue should be listened by all Urdu listeners as
the translation below cannot do complete justice to the very
interesting and logical dialogue. I believe that the Talibani
theology represents a very rigid form of Islamic thought which
simply believes that all the world belongs to Allah as he is the
absolute master, and that all creatures are His slaves, and that
the Qur'an represents His law which is incumbent on all of His
slaves. Actually, this definition is pretty common across most
Islamic strands, the real difference with the Talibani theology is
that they believe that anyone not following the letter of Qur'an,
automatically becomes an apostate (Murtid) thus an enemy of Islam.
They therefore thus justify their war against the 'Islamic Republic
of Pakistan'. Another observation I made is that the particular
Islamic historical events mentioned in the dialogue below are not
well known among the majority popular brand of Sunni Islam.
Talibans also consider themselves to be Sunni but they seem to use
certain contentious aspects of Islamic history like the Masjid
al-Dirar event as an analogy (dalil), which is rarely discussed
almost unknown among most practising Sunni Muslims. The Taliban
therefore, have been able to forge together a variant of Islamic
theology without any known Ulema, or extensive literature of their
own. Instead they tend to quote these neglected or greyed events
from the Islamic history as proofs of their actions, justifying
suicide bombings, arbitrary killing of their enemies whether Muslim
or non-Muslim, to great effect. The Taliban seem to have embraced
end-justifies-the-means strand employed within Islam right from the
time of the Prophet and still used today by all current Islamic
movements of today. Within Islam there is no real centralised
canonical order akin to Catholics in Rome or Protestants with their
Church of England, which leaves the field wide open for any Muslim
scholar to start churning out fatwas (religious injunctions) in
huge numbers. Just a cursory glance in some of the scholars
mentioned in the dialogue below roughly reveal around 2000 fatwas
per scholar, which is a pretty high number to control. Such a high
amount of fatwa churn provides ample resource for anyone to justify
their actions, which I hope will be pretty obvious for anyone
reading the dialogue below. As the dialogue is accessible on the
internet, I shall try and provide all references from the WWW by
asking Sheikh Google in blue, details of link are given at the end
of the dialogue.
Inferring three-dimensional (3D) shape of real objects from visual
information belongs to the main domain of the computer vision
applications. Shape From Focus (SFF) is one of the passive methods
that uses focus as a cue to infer the 3D structure of the object.
In SFF, the objective is to find out the depth by measuring the
distance of well-focused position of each object point from the
camera lens. A sequence of images is acquired either by displacing
the object in small steps or by changing the focal length of the
lens in the camera. First, a focus measure, which is a criterion
that can effectively measure the focus quality, is applied on each
image pixel of the sequence. An initial depth map is obtained by
maximizing the focus measure along the optical axis. In order to
refine the initial depth estimate, different approximation and
machine learning techniques have been used. In this book, various
focus measures and SFF techniques based on machine learning
approaches are discussed.
Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904-1997) a renowned Pakistani scholar, author
of nine-volume commentary on the Holy Qur'an, Tadabbur-e Qu'ran
(Urdu), addresses fundamental questions on the Islamic political
system. After a brief introduction to the concept of khilafah in
Islam and a description of differences between the Islamic State
and the conventional states, Islahi explains the basic principles
of the Islamic State. He details conspicuous characteristics of the
nation founded on Islam and explains the rights of Muslim and
non-Muslim citizens of the state. He concludes his discussion on a
detailed analysis of the duties and obligations of the rulers and
the state officials in Islam. Islahi maintains that the traditional
understanding of the rights of the non-Muslim citizens in the
Islamic State, the so-called dhimmis, in erroneous. He believes
that the Islamic State is not required by the divine law to subject
all the non-Muslims to the payment of jizyah. Islahi's thoughts in
this book represent the views of a great majority of the learned
Pakistani Muslims regarding the Islamic Khilafah.
In the past, four crane species were recorded in Pakistan including
demoiselle crane (Anthropoides virgo), Eurasian crane (Grus grus),
Siberian crane (Grus leucogeranus) and the Sarus crane (Grus
antigone). But more recently only two species (demoiselle and
Siberian cranes) winter here while the other two are thought to be
extinct from here. In Pakistan crane species face various threats
including hunting, live trapping and habitat loss. River Indus
around Dera Ismail Khan provides attractive sites to the migrating
cranes and according to an estimate about 1,000 cranes are hunted
on this particular site. In the past, usually 100-200 cranes were
seen on river beds each day, staying for a short rest period during
spring season. But now due to widespread disturbance along their
migration route, they cannot find a chance to feed and rest here
and so are compelled to take unusually long journeys to get out of
Pakistan. Large populations of demoiselle crane, however, occur in
captivity at Bannu, Lakki Marwat and adjacent tribal areas of
northern Pakistan.
The present study was undertaken to develop oral sustained release
tablets of metoprolol tartrate using natural hydrophilic matrix
formers (xanthan gum and tragacanth). Sustained release matrix
tablets of metoprolol tartrate were prepared by using different
ratios of drug, xanthan gum and tragacanth. Microcrystalline
cellulose (MCC) was used as diluent. The polymer was incorporated
into a matrix system using direct compression technique. Different
formulations were evaluated with respect to dissolution profile in
900 mL phosphate buffer (pH 6.8), 0.1 M HCl solution and distilled
water for 12 h at 37 C. Increasing the amount of polymer (xanthan
gum) in the formulation led to slow release of drug. The kinetic
treatment showed the best fitted different mathematical models
(Zero order, First order, Higuchiis and Hixson-Crowell). Most of
the solid matrix formulations followed Higuchi or zero order
kinetics. The formulations F1, F2, F3 and F7, F8, F9 showed maximum
linearity. The results showed that the formulation F9 containing
30% xanthan gum and 10% gum tragacanth is the most similar to that
of the reference marketed preparation.
MALIK TARIQ MAHMOOD is a young dynamic professional with ability to
work in diverse managerial positions, a team member who can work
with minimum supervision, a team leader who can lead to success
with growth possessing analytical skills, convincing
communicational abilities and desire to excel in the profession. He
is a life member of SPELT Islamabad Chapter and a member of Mass
Media Forum, Islamabad. He is doing MPhil leading to PhD in Mass
Communication from Allama Iqbal Open Universality, Islamabad,
Pakistan. His book entitled "NEWS-SEEKING PATTERNS OF ACADEMICIANS
AND ADMINISTRATORS OF ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY" was published.
He has also written 4-5 research articles which are published in
Euro Journals, United Kingdom, Resource Information Centre (ERIC),
and ArticlesBase (Free Online Articles Directory).
In this book you will find new approaches regarding skin care in
which a most widely used green tea is explored for skin care. Green
tea is used as beverage by millions of people but a little is know
about its topical applications. Here in this book you will read
about non-invasive bioengineering techniques and how green tea is
benificial when applied topicaly to the skin. Every aspect in this
book is elaborated scientifically.
The main purpose of this research is to investigate the newspaper
reader's liking for different news patterns by the academicians and
administrators of Allama Iqbal Open University. Information is
obtained by using a wide variety of both informal and formal
sources; i.e. human sources, internet and Mass Media. Keeping in
view its nature and requirement to explore and examine the
difference in news-seeking patterns of academicians and
administrators of AIOU. The news-seeking patterns studied with
respect to the selected aspects, namely; educational development,
national and international affairs, politics, health, and job
hunting as well as articles and editorials in relation to the
selected variables of occupation, age, and qualification.
The epidemiological association between migraine and mood disorders
has been reported since mid-twentieth century. This monograph
describes one of the first studies into migraine's association with
bipolar disorder. Unlike other studies, this one looks beyond the
superficial and attempts to understand the biological basis of the
bipolar disorder, migraine co- morbidity. To achieve this aim, the
role of central serotonergic system was investigated by carrying
out neuropharmacological challenge studies in patients with bipolar
disorder or migraine alone, in those who had both, and in healthy
controls.
Toxicity due to heavy metals is of major concern in Pakistan.
Mercury, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, lead, zinc and copper
concentrations have increased to alarming levels in the water, soil
and air which have become large dumps of industrial effluents.
Physiologically, heavy metals can profoundly affect the functioning
of the endocrine system and in Pakistan, thyroid related diseases
are also very common. Chromium in hexavalent form is highly toxic
and a known carcinogen, however as opposed to the trivalent form,
its toxic effects on the thyroid structure and function are
relatively unexplored. Acute exposure to chromium (VI) can occur in
the occupational set up. The present study, therefore, investigated
the thyroid gland structure and function following intraperitoneal
administration of potassium dichromate (Cr-VI) in laboratory
rats.Diverse techniques were employed during the study. The results
give an insight to the toxic effects of hexavalent chromium on the
thyroid gland and describe how the metal interferes with the
functioning of the gland; not only with its morphology but also at
cellular and molecular levels.
This book introduces, describes and validates a novel technology
for Conversational Recommender Systems (CRSs). It is targeted for
researchers, teachers and students related to the fields of Machine
Learning and/or E-commerce. Specifically, CRSs are intelligent
E-commerce applications that assist users by supporting an
interactive recommendation process. To this end, CRSs employ some
type of a recommendation strategy, i.e., a specification of the
system behavior. Typically, this strategy is pre-determined in
advance and hard-coded inside the system, thus making it possibly
non-adapted to the dynamic needs of the users. The technology
presented in this book allows CRSs to autonomously learn the
optimal (best) strategy for a given recommendation context, from
amongst a set of available ones. The optimal strategy is best
adapted to the users' needs, and is learned using Reinforcement
Learning techniques (a branch of Machine Learning). We have
validated this technology through simulations as well as in an
online evaluation involving several hundreds of real users. Our
results justify the application of this technology in
state-of-the-art E-commerce portals.
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