Polemic Views about the Source of Qur’ān in Medieval Christian Writings with a Reflection upon Contemporary Orientalists: A Critical Review

Before the advent of Islam, there was a strong tradition of polemic writings both among the Jews and the Christians to prove the errors of adversary. But, after the advent of Islam in general, and the conquering of Roman / Byzantine empire by the Muslims in the era of Righteous Califate in specific, due to embracing Islam by a large number of local populace, the flux of Christian polemic writing was directed towards Islam. A number of polemic writings surfaced as a resort to keep their religion alive. These writings tried to belittle all basic concepts, beliefs, and creeds of Islam, and even the personality of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and the Holy Qur’ān. The contemporary orientalist polemic writers have claimed that there are several accounts originating from Jewish and Christian sources which tried to allegedly prove that the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was instructed by Jewish or Christian scholars in the composition of Holy Qur’ān, and to support this claim, they not only point out to certain Jewish or Christian sources, but have parroted their arguments as well, with the similar motives. With this, they have attempted to discredit Islam by raising doubts about the origin of Qur’ān. But despite of their efforts the fact remains firm that the Qur’ān has a Divine origin and was revealed by Allah Ta‘ālā unto Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). In this regard, the purpose of this article is to analyze the medieval polemic writings, their motives, and their rumination by the orientalists of the contemporary age. A critical approach is adopted in this analytical, and historical study, using published authentic data and literature including academic books, research papers, periodicals, dictionaries and reliable web sites also.

Intragroup Conflict Among Employees and Its Impact on Their Performance

Intragroup conflict is an inevitable reality in organizational life. It holds the potential for change. Task conflict is associated with disagreement among group members and relationship conflict is linked with interpersonal incompatibilities. Management makes lucid decisions because they know that intragroup conflict is very important and it has significant impact on employee's performance. They defuse or eradicate its impact but never avoid. This dissertation fills a gap in the conflict literature concerning intragroup conflict and its impact on employee's performance. Moreover, it also clarifies the impact of task conflict and relationship conflict on employee's performance. The purpose of this study is to test a model of intragroup conflict among employees and its impact on employee's performance. The sample of 142 individuals, working in 27 different teams, belonging to commercial banks of Rawalpindi/Islamabad was selected. Questionnaires comprising four parts were sent directly to target the segment. In the first part, the first 12 questions were about personal/general information; second part consisted of 4 questions relating to task conflict; third part consisted of 5 questions of Cox's organizational conflict scale concerning to relationship conflict; and the last part consisted of 17 questions on employee's performance. Task and relationship conflict showed that the model is significant at .05 confidence level (p>0.05). We compared both variables on individual basis, which revealed that the variable difference is significant at p<0.05. The regression coefficient for relationship conflict was 0.408, which suggests that employees' performance was sensitive to changes in the relationship conflict. The other variable, i.e. task conflict is insignificant to employees performance at .05 confidence level as it is p>.05 level. The regression coefficient of task conflict was negative but without any significance. In this model, only significant variable that account variation in employee's performance is relationship conflict. It's possible that the employees within the organization try to keep the conflict concealed because of management/ organization reputation or flaming effect. This study would help executives as well as management tier to understand how to take advantage from this research study and to develop measures to solve 'intragroup conflict.