Jihad Against Terrorism: A Response to Robert Spencer’s Views on Jihad

The word Jihād has been awfully misinterpreted in the post 9/11 literature. Quite a few critics of Islam have deliberately used Jihād as synonymous with terrorism. Robert Spencer, a prominent critic of Islamic Jihād, also maintains that Islam teaches violence, intolerance and extremism. The following research article is a critique of Spencer’s views on Islamic concept of jihad. It aims to prove that Islam is a tolerant creed and has nothing to do with violence and terrorism. The Holy Qur’an substantiates this claim and shows that the persecuted Muslim community was allowed to take up arms against the terrorists who not only tormented the innocent people but also expelled them from their native homes.

Analysis of Marked and Unmarked Choices of Code by Pakistani Bilingual Students

The present study focuses on the social and pragmatic motivations for codeswitching between Urdu-English in the language of Pakistani students in an educational setting. Using Markedness Model as the guiding theory, this research is an attempt to explore the impact of language environment and text types (referred to as discourse types in line with Hynd & Chase's [1991] study) on the verbal behaviour of Pakistani educated bilinguals. Students listened to three different texts — narrative, expository and instructional —in the form of audios in different languages —English, Urdu and Pakistani' —placed in order through Graeco Latin Square. The data is collected through directive interaction from a sample of 108 participants from public sector colleges in Islamabad. The participants' responses to questions on what they had heard in the audios were audio-taped and transcribed which provided data for the study. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used for data analysis. The findings for the qualitative content analysis demonstrate that despite limited proficiency in the second/foreign language as learners, the participants have a tendency to make marked choices of code to heighten their desire for higher social and economic status. The quantitative results reveal that participants are more sensitive to language environment regarding their use of English words (MS=16784.410, F (2,214) = 48.54, p< .001) and Urdu words (MS=47436.565, F (2,214) = 71.67, p< .001) as compared to discourse type, which showed no significant effect on the frequency of mixing codes. It also suggests that factors of gender, educational level and language background have some significance but in order to be polite in their responses, students attempt to accommodate their speech with the environment. The study implies that codeswitching in educational discourse is one of the major factors promoting bilingualism in the country. Implications for research on Pakistani's future status as a mixed code or a developing creole are given at the end. In the present study, Urdu-English codeswitched language has been called Pakistani which is different from Pakistani English.