تفسیر القرآن از سر سید احمد خان کا تحقیقی و تنقیدی جائزہ

Sir Syed Aḥmed Khān belonged to a famous family of the subcontinent during the late Mughal and early British colonial period. He was famous for his close relations with the colonial government. He served many years in the judiciary. In recognition of his services, he was conferred upon with various titles such as Sir, The Imperial Advisor, etc. He is the founder of the educational campaign which was later known as the Aligarh movement. He was worried about the future of Muslims in India. This worry forced him to produce various literary and Islamic books to uplift the political, cultural, educational and social status of the Indian Muslims. One of his famous contribution to Islamic literature of Quranic exegeses is his Tafsīr al-Qur’ān. His tafsīr is influenced by western thoughts. He, instead of following the traditional methodology of Quranic exegeses, tried to understand the Quranic verses rationally. This led him to deviate from many established concepts of Islamic doctrines. He went against the Muslims’ affirmed beliefs in his exegesis. He mistrusted some of the basics of Islamic thoughts and tried his best to make new parameters of writing & reading of the Quranic exegesis on human logics. In addition, some of his views show certain relevance to the Mu'tazilites school of thought. The aim of this paper is to present an analytical and a critical evaluation of the exegetical opinions of Sir Syed Aḥmed Khān, particularly on the issues where he deviated from the mainstream Islamic thoughts in his exegesis, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān.

Exploring the Differences in Chemistry Achievements of Secondary School Students Across School System and Gender in Quetta, Pakistan

This study aimed to explore academic achievements of secondary school students in Chemistry across schools systems and gender. A newly developed and validated instrument - Chemistry Achievement Test (CAT)-was used for collection of the data. CAT comprised 35 items (25 multiple response questions and 10 constructed response questions). CAT encompassed four content domains of Chemistry; fundamental chemistry, physical state and particulate structure of matter, periodic table and periodicity of elements, and acids, bases & solutions, extracted from National curriculum for secondary classes. Furthermore, items were categorized on three cognitive domains; knowledge, application, and reasoning. CAT was administered to 374 grade 10 students who were randomly selected from public (n=6) and private (n=6) schools of Quetta, Pakistan. A total of 190 (50.8%) boys and 184 (49.2%) girls participated in the research study.Results demonstrated that the students scored only 30% of the total score exhibiting a weak conceptual understanding in the selected concepts of chemistry. Comparison across school systems favored private school students (p<0.01). Of the four content domains students from private schools have performed significantly better than students from public schools in physical state and particulate structure of matter (p<0.001). Of the three cognitive domains students from private schools performed significantly better than students from public schools in reasoning (p<0.01).Furthermore, gender comparison depicted that girls outperformed their boys counterparts (p<0.001). Of the four content domains girls performed significantly better (p<0.001 for all three) than boys in three content domains except periodic table and periodicity of elements. Of the three cognitive domains the girls performed significantly better than the boys (p<0.001 for all three).Using CAT students' conceptual understanding can be explored as well as their corresponding teachers which might lead to enable researchers to find out the impact of teachers' conceptual understanding in students achievement in Chemistry.The study also generates opportunities for further research in the area of students’ learning outcomes in secondary schools.