Updike’s Use of the Qur’anic Verses in Terrorist

This article exposes Updike’s use of the Qur’anic verses in his novel Terrorist. Apparently, the writer wants to investigate a Muslim terrorist’s mind, which causes him to launch deadly attacks against the American people. However, the results of Updike’s investigation are problematic and subjective. Updike seems to be a new Orientalist who manipulates the Qur’anic scripture to assert his mastery, neutrality and intolerance of Islam for non-believers. It proves that his presentation of Islam is based on stereotyped myths and lies. The narrator claims that the protagonist “Ahmad”, under the guidance of his religious teacher Sheikh Ahmed, inspired by the irrational and suppressed tone of the Qur’an, commits a suicide attack at Lincoln Tunnel but in the end, he is persuaded by his Jewish- school- councilor to discard this idea. Conclusively, it sounds that Updike fails to detach himself from his characters and misuses the Qur’anic verses to defend his pre-supposed ideology against Islam.

Social Media and Youth: Uses, Problems and Prospects A Case Study of Southern Punjab

The current study aimed to explore and investigate the social media uses and gratifications among youth of Southern Punjab, Pakistan with regard to problems and prospects. The researcher aimed to investigate the social media usage behavior, preferences, gratification and motives of the youth aged between 17-25 years to measure the prospects and problems of social media usage patterns. It also aimed to investigate the dependency of the youth in terms of seeking relaxation, information, knowledge or other entertainment through different website of social media on internet. It was also measured that the level of impact of social media on social interactions, on religious information and level of trust and reliability over the information provided by social media websites. Survey research design has been utilized as a data collection tool by using pre constructed questionnaire screened after pilot study. A total of 1200 respondents were selected by purposive sampling technique from the three selected districts which are divisional headquarters of Southern Punjab, Pakistan as per population statistics given by Federal Bureau of Statistics and Punjab Development Statistics for probability of sample. Out of 1200 respondents 1000 respondents responded to questionnaire. The findings indicate that almost most of the respondents were having social media accounts but Facebook users were dominant as compared to other social networking sites. Most of the respondents shared to use social media between 2-4 hours per day. There was significant association between education and consideration of social media as a major source of information about different events and happenings. The photo sharing activity was the preferred activity by the majority of the youth groups as compared to other activities like accessing poetry, videos and quotations. The results supported the both theories Uses and Gratification and Social Learning as there was significant difference of usage patterns among youth belonging to different socio-demographic characteristics. They were interpreting social media contents differently for the sake of their gratifications by using social media. Similarly, the learning patterns through social media and getting its impact on the lifestyles, attitudes, and interaction patterns were significant. The hypotheses of the study were also cheeked through the statistical test chi-square. The study also identified a few areas for future researchers.