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.

Role of Teacher’S Constructive Feedback in Improving Grade 5 Students’ Writing Skills in a Public School in Karachi

This study explored the role of teacher constructive feedback in supporting students’ writing skills. The study was conducted in Grade5 in a public school in Karachi. The study employed action research under qualitative research design over the three weeks comprising of three cycles. The data was collected in three main phases: reconnaissance phase, intervention phase and post-intervention phase. The data collection tools were; classroom observations, pre and post-test, focus group discussions, students’ notebook analysis, and my own reflections on classroom teaching. The research was conducted in the entire class however, students’ data i.e. written and oral responses, come from six students, who were selected randomly. The findings earlier indicated that students were not familiar with the different strategies of feedback processes. They were used to get feedback on their drafts from their teacher in a very traditional manner. They were also assuming that the purpose of highlighted errors by a teacher was, to correct and memorize text so that they could produce an error-free draft and could pass their exam with good grades. It was also found that writing skill was the least important skill for them. Based on the findings of the reconnaissance stage, I taught six lessons in three cycles. The overall findings revealed that constructive feedback is the scaffolder, which enables students to strengthen their learning of writing skills. The progress in their understanding of writing through various constructive feedback strategies appeared gradually. For example, the graphic organizer worked as an energizer for the students, verbal and written questioning techniques provided them with the opportunity to think and respond in detail. Similarly, provision with the opportunity to the students for self-assessment and self-reflection was another factor to promote students learning through sharing their views with the teacher. Likewise, teacher descriptive feedback and employment of rubric helped students’ to address their language writing difficulties. It further indicated that both the feedback processes and process writing approach are interlinked and both allowed students to reflect, revisit and reproduce an improved draft. It also pointed out that the teacher timely and ongoing feedback has the potential to develop students’ writing skills, which required a quality time and effort from the teacher. The findings also informed that feedback is not an isolated activity, rather it is an interactive and two-way process where the teacher and student are engaged in the process. However, the traditional and routine way of teaching and assessment