HUMANS AS PEDAGOGIC CREATURES: Islamic and Western View

The essence of human creation in Islamic perspective refers to the text of the Koran in terms of khalaqa (creating) and ja’ala (making). Both elements can grow through the educational process. This perspective points that humans are naturally pedagogical beings with the potential for education. This paper aims at elaborating the essence of humans as pedagogic creatures, both in Islamic and Western views. This study relied on library research for its findings. The information was gathered from a variety of books and papers on the subject. In the Islamic view, the level of education development, along with the pedagogical process that initiates it, involves informal, formal, and non-formal education. However, in the Western view, there are two categories, namely navitism and behaviorism.Abstrak:Hakekat penciptaan manusia dalam perspektif Islam dengan merujuk pada nash Alquran pada istilah khalaqa (menciptakan) dan ja’ala (menjadikan). Kedua unsur itu dapat berkembang melalui proses pendidikan. Perspektif ini menyatakan bahwa manusia secara fithrawi disebut sebagai makhluk paedagogiek dengan potensi untuk dapat dididik dan dapat mendidik. Artikel ini bertujuan untuk memaparkan hakekat penciptaan manusia sebagai makhluk paedagogiek, baik dalam pandangan Islam maupun Barat. Penelitian ini menggunakan penelitian kepustakaan. Data pada penelitian ini diambil dari berbagai buku dan artikel yang berkaitan dengan topik tersebut. Dalam pandangan Islam, tingkat perkembangan pendidikan manusia, seiring dengan proses paedagogis yang mengintarinya meliputi pendidikan informal, formal, dan non formal. Sedangkan dalam pandangan Barat, ditemukan dua kategori yaitu paham navitisme dan paham behaviorisme.

Islam as Future Religion: What Western Community Say

The paper focuses on Islam as a Future Religion with a Western View of Society. This research is qualitative with an international literature review that discusses Islam as a great religion and the future. Data analysis was carried out by collecting related references and reviewing them article by article to get answers. This study finds that Islam is a highly developed religion with various obstacles and challenges, but Islam is a serious concern for the West.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF COSMPOLITANISM IN THE CONTEXT OF WESTERN VIEW

This article describes that cosmopolitanism reflects the nature of capital, striving towards where the best conditions are created for it and it is possible to obtain the greatest benefit. In the history of industrially developed countries, a complex interaction of cosmopolitanism with the idea of a nation-state is traced. The elements of cosmopolitanism were also present in communist ideology. It is in the context of cosmopolitanism that his basic thesis of building a classless and stateless society on a global scale can be interpreted. In the USSR, where during the first decade of Soviet power the expectation of a world revolution was replaced by the predominance of political principles in politics, the concept of cosmopolitanism acquired a persistently negative meaning and was perceived as a bourgeois ideology. After World War II, the state periodically campaigned to combat "rootless cosmopolitanism" and adultery in the face of Western scientific and cultural achievements. Furthermore, we can point out that a different interpretation of cosmopolitanism has led to frictions of various kinds. In essence, it should have been one of the most important factors in solving world problems. In this research work, special attention is paid to the notion of cosmopolitanism in the context of the current situation in the world. An important problem is the place of the human being in the world as a matter of philosophy or the place of the human being in the system of state politics as a matter of political science.

Screenwriting: Between Art and Craft

This paper discusses the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in terms of art and craft. It argues that since Romanticism established itself in the 19th century as the dominant Western view on art and culture, it has driven a wedge between people’s notions of art and craft, promoting the former and demoting the latter. This rift has impeded the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in general. Following this, art historians and sociologists of art have suggested developing a “third system of art,” one that reintegrates the artist and the artisan, the art and craft-based values. This essay develops the basic tenets of a “technical approach” to the teaching of screenwriting. This technical approach sits in-between a Romantically biased “free-wheeling” approach and a mechanistic, “rule-based” approach. It is argued that a technical approach to screenwriting or storytelling could help materialize such a “third system of art” and benefit the practice, teaching, and study of screenwriting and storytelling.

Reconstruction of Cliché Image of Oriental Woman in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

This paper attempts to hold a mirror to the existential struggle of an immigrant Muslim woman who is trying to survive on her journey to the west. Mohsin Hamid presents Nadia as one of the main characters in his 2017 novel Exit West. The paradox concerning Nadia is that while her preference for wearing a long black robe confirms the western misconstrued image of Muslim women, her actions, her view of the world, of life and of herself definitely refute the ingrained eastern notion of the suppressed, submissive, silenced Muslim woman. According to the dominant western view, oriental women are still under the strict control of the mechanisms of patriarchy. Among the control mechanisms of patriarchal order are traditions, norms, values and religion. However, Nadia does not fall into this western miscategorization of Muslim woman with her strong, rebellious character, and with her freethinking and insight. Indeed, it is Nadia, who safeguards, directs and in a sense, matures Saeed’s-the other main character-rather timid and naïve personality. What is unexpected in the journey of these two characters is that the one who is need of identity reconstruction is not the female but the male character, for Nadia does already have a firmly constructed identity and she has no intention to transform either her outfit or her world view for the sake of integrating herself into the western culture. In brief, through the character of Nadia, Mohsin Hamid reconstructs the cliché image of oriental woman. In Exit West, Hamid reverses stereotyped gender roles by attributing his female character all the dominant personality traits attached to the male sex.

Alice in Wonderland

This chapter details the author’s interactions with the wider Chinese society and her efforts to understand what she saw and experienced. She tried to understand Chinese history through Chinese eyes, putting aside her Western view. Authentic Chinese food was new to her and she was impressed by Beijing as an ultramodern city. A visit to a Chinese home gave her a view of Chinese family life. The author learned that “speaking English” has levels and that one can read English without knowing how it sounds. She also came to appreciate the beautiful sound of the erhu, a musical instrument that she hadn’t previously encountered.

Modern Theories and Islamic Concept of Jihad Impacting Pakistan Security Dilemma

Pakistan National Security is directly related to a mix of Islamic precepts and the implications of contemporary real politics. Initially modern theories were a philosophical response to priesthood of the time hedging Christianity for their own predominance. With the advent of Islam the West applied the same antipathy to the faith of Islam and later it impacted Muslim states and Regions. The West however, circumvented religion as historical legacy representing Christianity. Pakistan being part of wider Muslim world is prone to historically prejudiced; direct and indirect threats based on Modern political theories. Modern theories are Euro-centric owing to their war prone regional history. Islamic Security concepts characterize trans-border implication. Modern political and security perspective are based on; personal experience of the people gone through wars and civil chaos whereas Islamic concept of just war is based on faith absolutes and Meta narratives1. Modern theories imply human nature as a pivot to craft response in anticipation of a predetermined threat to justify pre-emption. Modern theories have become the seed of modern state policies. Islam makes it obligatory to prepare and built power to first deter and retaliate only under tyranny, oppression and under the threat of expulsion and extermination. Pakistan military initiative are deemed inspired by Islamic concept of Jihad and have become cause of her Security Dilemma due to prejudiced Western view. Islam emphasis on mankind as one whole universal community called ‘Ummah’. The modern theories divide the world on National identifies and globalizes only trade and transactions. National Interest in modern theories is pivotal to the state policies. This marked difference is sometime purposely confused as a strategy to dub even a legitimate resistance or movement as Terrorism depending on National Interest expediency. The major cause of conflict is embedded in Islamic and modern political connotations of a just war. These polemical perspectives explain Pakistan Security Dilemma as part of the Muslim world and a need for negotiated understanding for peace and stability and interfaith harmony.

Culture and Social Development

Humans need other people to survive and thrive. Therefore, relatedness is a basic human need. However, relatedness can be conceived of very differently in different cultural environments, depending on the affordances and constraints of the particular context. Specifically, the level of formal education and, relatedly, the age of the mother at first birth, the number of children, and the household composition have proven to be contextual dimensions that are informative for norms and values, including the conception of relatedness. Higher formal education, late parenthood, few children, and a nuclear family drive relationships as emotional constructs between independent and self-contained individuals as adaptive in Western middle-class families. The perspective of the individual is primary and is organized by psychological autonomy. Lower formal education, early parenthood, with many children, and large multigenerational households, drive the conception of relationships as role-based networks of obligations that are adapted to non-Western rural farm life. The perspective of the social system is primary and organized by hierarchical relatedness. Social development as developmental science in general, represented in textbooks and handbooks, is based on the Western middle-class view of the independent individual. Accordingly, developmental milestones are rooted in the separation of the individual from the social environment. The traditional rural farmer child’s development is grounded in cultural emphases of communality which stress other developmental priorities than the Western view. Cross-cultural research is mainly interpreted against the Western standard as the normal case, but serious ethical challenges are involved in this practice. The consequence is that textbooks need to be rewritten to include multiple cultural perspectives with multiple developmental pathways.

Transidentité et transfiction à l’heure de la postmodernité

The Western view of the world is fundamentally a binary one, in which institutions (political, scientific and religious) have tried to pass off as natural those distinctions which are cultural in origin, particularly those concerning men and women. The male/female organic distinction has been used as supposed evidence for the creation of gender constructs. However, biology today shows that an infinite diversity of sexual orientations and identities exists within both animal and human worlds. What is the effect of “otherness” within oneself when “I am the other”? The post-modern novel Chéri-Chéri by Philippe Djian questions the legitimacy of human binary and the distinction between sexes and genders.