50. Qaf/Qaf
I/We begin by the Blessed Name of Allah
The Immensely Merciful to all, The Infinitely Compassionate to everyone.
50:01
a. Qaf.
b. By The Qur’an, The Majestic.
50:02
a. They consider it strange that a Warner has come to them from amongst themselves.
b. So the disbelievers say:
c. ‘This is certainly something strange!’
50:03
a. How can it be that when we will be dead and turned to mere dust in the grave that we will be brought back to another dimension of existence?
b. Such a return to another dimension of existence is far-fetched.
50:04
a. Thus do they reckon while WE Know well what the earth consumes of them,
b. and with US is a Record which keeps track of their deeds, dealings, speech and preserves everything.
50:05
a. Rather they denied and belied The Truth - The Qur’an - when it came to them,
b. so now they are in a state of confusion.
50:06
a. Would they never look up to the celestial realm, above them, and reflect,
- how WE built it without apparent supports, and
- how WE beautified it with planets, and
- how come it has no flaws in it?
50:07
a. And the earth – how did WE spread it out, and cast upon it firm mountains,
b. and made all kinds of splendid vegetation, in pairs, to grow upon it.
50:08
a. WE did all this as an evidence as well as a reminder for every person who turns to Allah in awe, reverence and piety.
50:09
a. And also WE...
This article maps the role of religion in the prevalence and promotion of honour killing in tribal areas of Pakistan. Through simple sampling method a sample size of 377 respondents, comprising of ‘Maliks’ were selected from the study universe. The collected data was interpreted and presented at uni-variate, bi-variate and multi-variate levels. Chi-square test statistics were used to draw association between dependent variable (honour killing) and independent variable (religion) both at bi-variate and multi-variate levels. The study found a significant relationship of honour killing with the importance of religion in people lives, alienation from the religious teachings, dominance of cultural values over religion, existence of honour killing in all religious sects (Shia and Sunni), and lack of factual religious knowledge about honour killing. Moreover, a non-significant relationship of honour killing was found with permission of honour killing in Islam, and religious clerics often speak about honour killing in religious sermons. Understanding of women and their rights in light of the teachings of Islam, religious clerics need to perform their true role, and killing in either shape needs to be propagated as against the religion were presented some of the policy recommendations in lights of the study results.
Beliefs play a vital role in shaping actions. They not only drive the actions but also help in identifying strategies to practice beliefs. English Language Learning beliefs and strategy use is a relatively unexplored area in Pakistani context. The aim of this study is to investigate Pakistani college students’ and teachers’ beliefs about English language learning, to explore English language learning strategies used by the students and preferred by the teachers and to find out relationship between beliefs and strategy use. 419 college students and 40 teachers participated in the study. A wide range of data collection tools were used, including four Likert-scale questionnaires, comprising different versions for teachers and students respectively, The Individual Background Questionnaire (IBQ), the Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI), the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and Teachers Preferred Strategy Questionnaire (TPSQ). Apart from these questionnaires, other information gathering tools including Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), Open-ended Questions, Interviews and Classroom Observations were also used for collecting qualitative data with a view to imparting more reliability and objectivity to the data used for the study. In this regard, five focus group discussion sessions and 12 classroom observations were conducted. Data were analyzed using SPSS 20 for quantitative date, while the software Nvivo 9 was used for qualitative data analysis. The results largely suggest convergence in teachers’ and students’ beliefs, yet they differ from each other in many respects. The data revealed that metacognitive strategies are most frequently used by Pakistani students, while social strategies are amongst those least preferred. Gender as well as exposure to English is among significant factors in determining the use of these strategies. The study also showed that teachers preferred certain strategies over the others. Most importantly, the study testified that there existed a significant association between beliefs and strategy use. The study has important implications for language teaching, teacher training, syllabus reformation and the examination system. The study recommends that curriculum, teacher training programs and examination system prevalent in colleges of Pakistan be revised keeping in view teachers’ and students’ beliefs towards learning of English in order to improve English language teaching/learning situation in the country.