Incidences of blasphemy and religious defamation
occur around the world, often provoking angry,
and sometimes violent reactions from religious
adherents. However, laws prohibiting blasphemy
and religious defamation are heavily criticised as
being against freedom of speech, despite their effect
on race relations. This article highlights the position
of blasphemy and religious defamation according to
International Law, and presents counterarguments
of the main objections to such laws. It also highlights
the issue from the Islamic perspective, and offers an
alternative approach to interpreting human rights.
This article concludes by explaining the need for
human rights and free speech to be interpreted
according to common moral and religious values,
and emphasising the purpose of human rights and
free speech—which should be for the attainment of
justice. In doing so, it is hoped that there will be a better balance in enforcing the right to free speech,
as well as the protection of religious sensitivities.
This essay seeks to re-emphasise the ontological status and trans-historical nature of Prophet Muḥammad as a timeless figure as well as central feature of Islamic civilisation as understood and venerated by Muslims. It presents critique on the misrepresentation of the Holy Prophet’s noble character resulting from some modernist interpretations influenced by modern scientific method that deviates from sound reasoning from Islām’s perspective on certain aspects of the Holy Prophet’s nature. A special emphasis is placed on the moral leadership as well as great ethical quality of the Holy Prophet that raised people who brought forth the Islamic civilisation into fruition. Re-defining the Age of the Holy Prophet to be the Golden Age of Islām, this essay proposes the nature of Islamic Civilisation as a Virtuous Civilisation, the culmination of the Holy Prophet’s virtuous character. Finally, comparing modern characterisation of Western civilisation as industrial-technological civilisation and recent effort by China to become an ecological civilisation, it concludes that Virtuous Civilisation is the current imperative for Muslims today alongside re-Islamising Muslim thought in a collectively intelligent and progressive manner with the Holy Prophet’s age and its moral and ethical quality of social perfection as the reference point.
Work shift has been shown to correlate with accident rates. Understanding of such correlation is pertinent especially among emergency response personnel since the decisions that they make determines not only the outcome of their responses but also the risks of accidents to themselves. A questionnaire data derived study used together with a semi quantitative risk analysis method was adopted to estimate the levels of accident risks between firefighters working on two work shifts. Two hundred and forty eight Malaysia’s Fire and Rescue Department firemen from 24 fire stations working on shifts were selected as respondents. The accident rate among firefighters in year 2006 was 52.8 %. Results showed that the Accident Risk Index (ARI) among firefighters working the 24 hours shift was higher (ARI = 3.14) compared with those in the 12 hours shift (ARI = 2.98). However, there were no significant difference in overall severity of the accidents between the two shifts (p>0.05). The difference in risk levels was attributed to the difference in the likelihood of accident occurrence.