The Scope of the Death Penalty under the Sharia Law

The death penalty is one of the core issues which have been widely discussed around the world. As capital punishment has been the part of the Islamic legal system, the Quran and hadith explicitly established the penalties in various serious crimes. A majority of the world‟s nations has abolished the death penalties from their constitutions, but most of the Islamic countries firmly believe in this system. One root cause of it is that the Holy Quran and hadith provide the justification for capital punishment. Further, several Islamic countries where Islam has the status of the state religion, allow the application of the death penalty. This work has prompted us to expose that the Islamic penal code is well-established in the legal and political systems of Islamic countries and the impact of religious traditions have an indirect impact on the implication of the death sentence. Since the death penalty is even now broadly established in Muslim countries, there is also increasing support in several of these states to abolish of the death penalty. Some secular activists have distorted the Quranic verses dealing with the death penalty to support their instance. For different reasons, they claim that political governments may use the death penalty as cover to suppress their political rivals. Our findings reveal that secular propaganda against the Islamic penal system is based on wrong assumptions and a result of Islamophobia. This research article can provide a logical discussion on the issue of capital punishment, rooted in the true spirit of the Islamic punishment system.

Exploring the Contribution of Mentoring in Improving Teaching and Learning

Producing highly skilled, competent teachers in developing countries, such as Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan, requires an on-going teacher education, training and support. A number of research studies indicate that mentoring provides a highly useful service for teachers in their continuing education. As such, mentoring has been widely accepted as a process to support beginning teachers' professional development. However, little is known in developing countries about what mentoring is, and to what extent it brings improvement in teaching and learning. Therefore, in this particular case study was designed to explore the contribution of mentoring in facilitating the beginning teachers' teaching practice and the improvement that this can bring in the students' learning outcomes, in a developing country's context. The study is largely based on interview data provided by a mentor and two mentee teachers who were the participants of this study. During the study, the mentee teachers disclosed the factors, that they perceived to be the most influential in affecting their progress as teachers. In line with many research studies, this particular research confirms that the attitude and skills of a mentor are a critical factor in raising the confidence and self-esteem of beginning teachers. The findings of the study indicate that mentoring creates a model for extending the learning process and, thus, it evolves to serve a pivotal function for nurturing the beginning teachers' professional development, in their initial years of experience in the classroom. The study pays particular attention to the impact of the mentoring process on improving the students' learning, and suggests a number of strategies for further improving the students' learning outcomes. Based on the results of the research findings, the study confirms that improvement in beginning teachers' teaching practice produces substantial improvement in students' learning outcomes. In addition, some recommendations and implications have been drawn from the study, so as to contribute to the betterment of the mentoring process in Pakistani schools and also in schools in Kyrgyzstan.