سائنس اور تہذیب و تمدن کے فروغ میں اسلام کا کردار

Islam is a complete code of life. It has complete instructions regarding all aspects of life. There is no moment in human life when the wisdom of Islam has not benefited humanity. Likewise there is no such area in the world where Islam has not put the light of guidance. Allah Almighty has systematically administered this world system.  Allah created the universe and set it disciplined, then created man and gave him every kind of physical, rational, logical and argumintive ability, so that humans can know the secrets of the universe by thinking and understanding it. The journey of research and discovery, which started long ago, is still continues today after passing through different stages of research. This journey of research resulted in evolution of philosophy, civilization, promotion of new scientific innovations and discoveries. The research and discovery resulted in the secrets of heaven and earth.  Today, man stands at the stage of science and technology, about which the human being in the older days even could not imagine of it. In this entire evolutionary journey, the religion of Islam is the only religion that not only stood firmly with humans, but guided him at every step during this evolutionary journey. In this context, the Quranic teachings are comprehensive matter. Allamah Sayyuti says "There is no knowledge and problem that is not discussed in the Qur'an. So Islam invites human to research in the system of the universe and presents the system of universe for its authenticity.

Health Status of Elderly Women in Socio- Economic and Cultural Context in Punjab Pakistan

Aging’ previously regarded as an emerging problem of the industrialized countries is now recognized as a global phenomenon. Currently, more than half of the world’s women aged 60 years and over are living in developing regions, i.e. 198 million compared with 135 million in the developed regions. Aging being an important global phenomena has attracted the attention of sociologists who are looking into the socio- economic and cultural antecedents of the process of ageing. The present study was planned to be conducted in Punjab province of Pakistan. Multistage Random Sampling Technique was used. According to this technique, sampling is done in two or more stages. At the first stage, from 36 districts of the ‘Punjab’ province, two districts were selected randomly. These were ‘Faisalabad’ and Rawalpindi’. At the second stage, out of eight towns, (of each district) two towns were randomly selected from each of the two districts, constituting a sampling of four towns. At the third Stage, two union councils (one rural and one urban) were randomly selected from each of the four above mentioned towns to constitute a sample of eight union councils. The desired sample of 500 respondents was to be divided on two districts of the ‘Punjab’ province. Both quantitative and qualitative methods (focus group) were used to collect data. Information on selected demographic and socio-cultural variables i.e. age, education, income, housing/living arrangements, nutritional status, social support and social network of the elderly women was collected through well organized interview schedule. Influence of these independent variables was observed on the ‘health status’ of elderly women (social, mental/ psychological and physical health status).Both independent and dependent variables were measured by operational zing and constructing the indexation. Analysis of data was made on the basis of uni-variate, bi-variate and multivariate analysis. Findings of uni-variate analysis: Mean age of the women was 69.4, around 35.0 percent were ‘widows’, 94.8 percent were living with their married/unmarried children. Only 13.4 percent of the elderly women and 26.6 percent of their husbands were literate. Only 3.4 percent of respondents were involved in some type of economic activity. The mean no. of children was around 5 children. Findings of bi-variate analysis: Statistical test indicated that the age of the elderly women was inversely related with the health status. However education, income, housing / living arrangements, nutritional status, social support and social network of the elderly women was positively associated with their health status. Findings of multivariate analysis: Results of ordinal regression analysis also showed that family income, housing/living arrangements, nutritional status, social support and social network had highly significant influence on the health status of the elderly women. Study suggests that the policy makers as well as health providers need to focus on the health and well-being of the older population, particularly in the context of poverty, low levels of education, nutrition and poor health system.