Explore the vast range of titles available.

The belief in prophets before the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and in the divine books that Allah Almighty sent to humanity/books revealed to the humanity by Allah Almighty constitute two of the six/five articles of faith in Islam. The denial of any one of them would result in “apostasy” and excommunication. All textbooks on the Islamic creed as well as all other major theological sources acknowledge these beliefs which also comprise a primary component of the curriculum taught to Muslim children. However, the impact of these beliefs in Islamic thought and practice needs to be explored extensively. This paper attempts to highlight the role played by the previous prophets in Islamic life, especially in its devotional practices, with the hope that this type of study will contribute to/aim of increasing the awareness of other religions and developing a more inclusive approach towards them in the spirit of mutual appreciation and respect. These are –undoubtedly – some of/among the more pertinent and noble objectives that concern the modern man and the society. The paper begins by explaining the importance of belief in the previous prophets as set in the sources of Islam and then proceeds to highlight some aspects of its practical importance in Islamic thought and life. It concludes with a special focus on some Sufi concepts and practices that display their intrinsic connections to previous prophets.

A group of Latin-English macaronic sermons from the early fifteenth century collected together in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 649 offers suggestive insights into contemporary perceptions of Oxford University and of the compromised authority of its theological magisterium in the aftermath of the Wycliffite controversies in which the university had been fundamentally implicated. This essay argues that the sermons, in the epistemic ambiguity and indecision which lie at their heart, are characteristic of English “orthodox” discourses at this time which sought to negotiate the troubled relationship between unregulated lay questioning and academic theological enterprise.

It is known that microglial morphology and function are related, but few studies have explored the subtleties of microglial morphological changes in response to specific pathogens. In the present report we quantitated microglia morphological changes in a monkey model of dengue disease with virus CNS invasion. To mimic multiple infections that usually occur in endemic areas, where higher dengue infection incidence and abundant mosquito vectors carrying different serotypes coexist, subjects received once a week subcutaneous injections of DENV3 (genotype III)-infected culture supernatant followed 24 h later by an injection of anti-DENV2 antibody. Control animals received either weekly anti-DENV2 antibodies, or no injections. Brain sections were immunolabeled for DENV3 antigens and IBA-1. Random and systematic microglial samples were taken from the polymorphic layer of dentate gyrus for 3-D reconstructions, where we found intense immunostaining for TNFα and DENV3 virus antigens. We submitted all bi- or multimodal morphological parameters of microglia to hierarchical cluster analysis and found two major morphological phenotypes designated types I and II. Compared to type I (stage 1), type II microglia were more complex; displaying higher number of nodes, processes and trees and larger surface area and volumes (stage 2). Type II microglia were found only in infected monkeys, whereas type I microglia was found in both control and infected subjects. Hierarchical cluster analysis of morphological parameters of 3-D reconstructions of random and systematic selected samples in control and ADE dengue infected monkeys suggests that microglia morphological changes from stage 1 to stage 2 may not be continuous.

This paper focuses exclusively upon the political caricatures representing nations within Kladderadatsch [the weekly German magazine of social and political satire], analyzing the connection between word and image to a degree of specificity heretofore not offered by historians. The challenge has been not only to reconstruct the precise historical and political contexts in which an artist created a cartoon and its captions, but also to read and interpret the verbal and visual nuances as had Kladderadatsch's well-educated, bourgeois readership nearly a century ago. [Publication Abstract]