The early Christian and medieval practice of spiritual marriage, in which husband and wife mutually and voluntarily relinquish sexual activity for reasons of piety, plays an important role in the ...development of the institution of marriage and in the understanding of female religiosity. Drawing on hagiography, chronicles, theology, canon law, and pastoral sources, Dyan Elliott traces the history of spiritual marriage in the West from apostolic times to the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In 680 C.E., a small band of the Prophet Muhammads family and their followers, led by his grandson, Husain, rose up in a rebellion against the ruling caliph, Yazid. The family and its supporters, ...hopelessly outnumbered, were massacred at Karbala, in modern-day Iraq. The story of Karbala is the cornerstone of institutionalized devotion and mourning for millions of Shii Muslims. Apart from its appeal to the Shii community, invocations of Karbala have also come to govern mystical and reformist discourses in the larger Muslim world. Indeed, Karbala even serves as the archetypal resistance and devotional symbol for many non-Muslims. Until now, though, little scholarly attention has been given to the widespread and varied employment of the Karbala event.In Reliving Karbala, Syed Akbar Hyder examines the myriad ways that the Karbala symbol has provided inspiration in South Asia, home to the worlds largest Muslim population. Rather than a unified reading of Islam, Hyder reveals multiple, sometimes conflicting, understandings of the meaning of Islamic religious symbols like Karbala. He ventures beyond traditional, scriptural interpretations to discuss the ways in which millions of very human adherents express and practice their beliefs. By using a panoramic array of sources, including musical performances, interviews, nationalist drama, and other literary forms, Hyder traces the evolution of this story from its earliest historical origins to the beginning of the twenty-first century.Today, Karbala serves as a celebration of martyrdom, a source of personal and communal identity, and even a tool for political protest and struggle. Hyder explores how issues related to gender, genre, popular culture, class, and migrancy bear on the cultivation of religious symbols. He assesses the manner in which religious language and identities are negotiated across
contexts and continents.At a time when words like martyrdom, jihad, and Shiism are being used and misused for political reasons, this book provides much-needed scholarly redress. Through his multifaceted examination of this seminal event in Islamic history, Hyder offers an original, complex, and nuanced view of religious symbols.
The U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay has long been synonymous with torture, secrecy, and the abuse of executive power. It has come to epitomize lawlessness and has sparked protracted legal ...battles and political debate. For too long, however, Guantanamo has been viewed in isolation and has overshadowed a larger, interconnected global detention system that includes other military prisons such as Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, secret CIA jails, and the transfer of prisoners to other countries for torture. Guantanamo is simply - and alarmingly - the most visible example of a much larger prison system designed to operate outside the law.Habeas Corpus after 9/11 examines the rise of the U.S.-run global detention system that emerged after 9/11 and the efforts to challenge it through habeas corpus (a petition to appear in court to claim unlawful imprisonment). Habeas expert and litigator Jonathan Hafetz gives us an insider's view of the detention of enemy combatants and an accessible explanation of the complex forces that keep these systems running. In the age of terrorism, some argue that habeas corpus is impractical and unwise. Hafetz advocates that it remains the single most important check against arbitrary and unlawful detention, torture, and the abuse of executive power.
From an educational-historical view this book analyses the cultural models that underlie the conception and organisation of secondary teacher education and the professionalisation of future secondary ...school teachers in Europe. Based on different conceptions of school, citizenship and the teaching profession these models have an enormous influence on school policy. Taking the examples of Italy and Germany, the complex history of teacher education is reconstructed and analysed. The various articles deal in a long-term view with the emergence of national models of teacher education at the end of the 18th century, their consolidation in the 19th and 20th centuries and their transnational transformation between past and present.
"Der Band setzt sich bildungsgeschichtlich mit den kulturellen Modellen auseinander, die im europäischen Kontext der Konzeption und der Organisation der Lehrerbildung im Sekundarbereich und der Professionalisierung der zukünftigen Gymnasiallehrer zugrunde liegen. Sie gehen von unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen von Schule, Bürgerschaft und Lehrberuf aus und haben einen enormen Einfluss auf die Schulpolitik. An den beiden exemplarischen Fällen Italien und Deutschland wird die vielschichtige Geschichte der Lehrerbildung historisch rekonstruiert und analysiert. In einer Langzeitbetrachtung befassen sich die einzelnen Beiträge mit der Entstehung nationaler Modelle der Lehrerbildung am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, mit ihrer Konsolidierung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert und ihrer transnationalen Transformation in der Gegenwart."
Spinal muscular atrophy is an autosomal recessive neuromuscular disorder that is caused by an insufficient level of survival motor neuron (SMN) protein. Nusinersen is an antisense oligonucleotide ...drug that modifies pre-messenger RNA splicing of the SMN2 gene and thus promotes increased production of full-length SMN protein.
We conducted a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled, phase 3 efficacy and safety trial of nusinersen in infants with spinal muscular atrophy. The primary end points were a motor-milestone response (defined according to results on the Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination) and event-free survival (time to death or the use of permanent assisted ventilation). Secondary end points included overall survival and subgroup analyses of event-free survival according to disease duration at screening. Only the first primary end point was tested in a prespecified interim analysis. To control the overall type I error rate at 0.05, a hierarchical testing strategy was used for the second primary end point and the secondary end points in the final analysis.
In the interim analysis, a significantly higher percentage of infants in the nusinersen group than in the control group had a motor-milestone response (21 of 51 infants 41% vs. 0 of 27 0%, P<0.001), and this result prompted early termination of the trial. In the final analysis, a significantly higher percentage of infants in the nusinersen group than in the control group had a motor-milestone response (37 of 73 infants 51% vs. 0 of 37 0%), and the likelihood of event-free survival was higher in the nusinersen group than in the control group (hazard ratio for death or the use of permanent assisted ventilation, 0.53; P=0.005). The likelihood of overall survival was higher in the nusinersen group than in the control group (hazard ratio for death, 0.37; P=0.004), and infants with a shorter disease duration at screening were more likely than those with a longer disease duration to benefit from nusinersen. The incidence and severity of adverse events were similar in the two groups.
Among infants with spinal muscular atrophy, those who received nusinersen were more likely to be alive and have improvements in motor function than those in the control group. Early treatment may be necessary to maximize the benefit of the drug. (Funded by Biogen and Ionis Pharmaceuticals; ENDEAR ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02193074 .).
Placeboeffekte sind mehr als nur ungewöhnliche Heilungsprozesse oder als Störung abgetane Nebenfolgen ärztlicher Behandlungen. Sie ermöglichen vielmehr neue Perspektiven auf die grundlegenden Aspekte ...der menschlichen Existenz. Uwe Heyll zeigt auf, dass hinter den Placeboeffekten Funktionen des Erkennens stehen, die Geist und Körper zu einer untrennbaren Einheit verschmelzen lassen: Sie erzeugen ein Erleben, in dem sich das menschliche Selbst als Ausdruck der eigenen Persönlichkeit ausbildet. Auf dem Weg zur wissenschaftlichen Medizin wurden diese Funktionen jedoch schrittweise ausgesondert, so dass Placeboeffekte die Erscheinung einer wissenschaftlichen Anomalie angenommen haben.
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