Divine Reward Research Articles

Framing the Labor of Paid Egg Donors in Iran: Marginality, Gendered Care, and Divine Reward

ABSTRACT Despite the economic incentives evidenced in the recruitment strategies of the Iranian fertility industry for egg donors, the official discourse put forward by policymakers conveys egg donation as an altruistic act. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in two fertility clinics in Tehran, I center the narratives of paid egg donors to investigate how multiple meanings are attributed to egg donation as a form of labor, demonstrating how reproductive inequalities are perpetuated in this context. Following feminist theorists of reproductive bioeconomies, I argue that Iranian donors experience and articulate their participation in local egg market through the prism of their economic marginality, gendered responsibilities, and religiously informed beliefs, including divine reward.

The Impact of Religious Influence on Humanitarianism: Evidence from Local Communities Affected by Floods in Kilosa, Tanzania

This article aims to elucidate the impact of religion on humanitarian practices within local communities affected by floods and the resulting contributions to community survival. Empirical data derived from interviews and focus group discussions conducted with community members in Msowero and Mbigiri wards, Kilosa District, in Morogoro Region, forms the basis of the study findings. Both Muslims and Christians perceive assisting the needy as a divine directive and command, with Holy Scriptures such as the Bible and Quran affirming that those helping their fellow humans will receive divine reward. The act of helping the needy is identified as a means of validating one’s faith, expiating sin, demonstrating respect for others, engaging in worship, and fulfilling a duty to God. The study reveals that individuals in flood-affected local communities actively engage in humanitarianism by helping victims. These acts encompass providing basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter, facilitating education services by covering school fees and acquiring uniforms for students, and offering health-related services. Such humanitarian practices significantly contribute to community survival by ensuring the availability of essential resources for victims, promoting good health and well-being, and facilitating access to social services, particularly education for children. This article not only highlights how religiously influenced humanitarianism is pivotal for community survival but also underscores the essential role played by individual local community members as crucial contributors to government and development partners’ endeavours in safeguarding people’s well-being during and after natural disasters like floods.

Unlocking Fertility - with administration of Lekhaniya Mahakashaya in Pushpaghani Jataharini w.s.r. to PCOD

Children are a gift from the Lord; the fruit of the womb is a divine reward. Average Reproductive Age is 14-49 yrs. This age group have number of conditions related to menstrual cycle, such as Menorrhagia, Dysmenorrhea, Irregular menses, PCOD, endometriosis, etc. According to WHO - PCOD is a lifestyle disorder which is a common hormonal condition that affects women of reproductive age. It usually starts during adolescence, but symptoms may fluctuate over time. PCOD can cause hormonal imbalances, irregular periods, excess androgen levels and cysts in the ovaries, absence of menstruation, excessive hair growth (face, body, including back, belly and chest), acne, weight gain, hair loss, skin darkening (in neck and groin). Irregular periods, usually with a lack of ovulation, can lead infertility. PCOD is a leading cause of infertility. PCOD can lead to anovulation where ovaries stop releasing eggs. PCOD is a common condition that causes 70% of anovulation cases. PCOD causes the excessive production of androgens, which cause the follicles in your ovaries to remain small instead of maturing and growing as they have to prepare for ovulation. In Ayurveda on the basis of symptoms Pushpaghani Jataharini can be correlated with PCOD. PCOD is a chronic condition and cannot be cured. However, some symptoms can be improved through lifestyle changes and medications. In order to treat PCOD the changes in the life style and the administrations of Ausadhies like Lekhaniya Mahakashaya (Musta, Kustha, Haridra, Daruharidra, Vacha, Ativisha, Katurohini, Chitrak, Chirbilva).

Perceptions of motherhood in mothers of children with disabilities in Turkey: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT Objectives This study aimed to explore how mothers of children with disabilities perceive mothering through metaphor. Subjects and Methods The study was conducted in March 2023 with 28 women who had experienced motherhood. The data were collected using the Descriptive Information Form and the Metaphorical Perceptions Form developed by the researchers who reviewed the literature. The women’s metaphorical perceptions were obtained by filling in the following sentence: ‘Being a mother of a child with disabilities is like/similar to … … … . because … … ’.. The interviews were conducted individually using the in-depth interview method and analysed using the descriptive analysis technique. Results The metaphors created by mothers of children with disabilities were grouped under two main themes: interpretation and challenges. Each major theme contains sub-themes. The main theme of interpretation includes cleansing from sins and divine reward, empowerment, being privileged, and acceptance/change in outlook on life, while the sub-theme of challenges includes constant struggle, stigmatisation, imprisonment/isolation, and uncertainty. Conclusion The women involved in the study produced the most metaphors for their perceptions of being a mother of a child with a disability for the sub-theme of imprisonment/isolation in the main theme of challenges. On the other hand, the least number of metaphors were produced in the sub-theme of acceptance/change in the outlook on life in the main theme of interpretation. According to the results, the perception of motherhood of women with children with disabilities will especially guide midwives who are responsible for the care of children with disabilities aged 0–6 years, and mental health workers.

On Animals, Autonomy, and Apocalypticism in Daniel

Abstract Daniel is a book concerned about living in and under imperial rule, whether it be following Daniel’s exploits in court tales or envisioning the end of empire in dreams. At the same time, Daniel is also about bodies—human and animal, divine and earthly, real and imagined. The variety of bodies mirrors what Cary Wolfe dubs a “species grid” (Wolfe and Elmer, 2003), which categorizes bodies from the fully realized subject of the “humanized human” to the “animalized human” and the “humanized animal” and, finally, the objectified “animalized animal.” This article uses and adapts this grid to chart the power of animals, humans, and the divine in Daniel. The result is that we can see more clearly how Daniel transitioned from an earlier Deuteronomistic theology that understood humans as the cause of divine reward and punishment to an apocalyptic worldview that removed power from human hands entirely.

Religious beliefs and food waste prevention practices: mechanisms of divine and environmental awareness

ABSTRACT Under the crisis of food and energy shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is emergently important to emphasize food waste prevention in the tourism and hospitality industry because people around the world have started traveling in the post-pandemic era. Based on norm activation model and individualism-collectivism, this study proposes a perspective of religious beliefs to conceptualize divine awareness (i.e. divine retribution and divine rewards) and environmental awareness (i.e. resource scarcity and eco-friendly) on the formation of food waste prevention practices. A total of 571 samples from Taiwan and 483 samples from the United States was collected. Both countries showed that religious beliefs improved divine retribution, divine rewards, and religious food waste prevention practices. Divine rewards enhanced tourists’ awareness of resource scarcity and eco-friendly, and resource scarcity led to religious food waste prevention practices. Interestingly, the effects of divine retribution on resource scarcity and eco-friendly were significant only in Taiwan.

A Critical Ethnographic Study of Families of Brain-Dead Patients: Their Experiences and Attitudes to Organ Donation.

Despite the difficulty of making decisions providing facilitating mediators and removing barriers to making decisions about choosing the right path to donate the organs of brain-dead patients by families can assist in improving the services and help the lives of fellow human beings. This study aimed to explain the decision-making mediator for organ donation in families with brain-dead patients in a cultural context. This qualitative study with a critical ethnographic approach was conducted based on Carspecken's stages from August 2021 to March 2022. In this regard, 22 participants were selected through the purposive sampling method and considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Sampling was continued until data saturation. After obtaining the required ethical approval, data collection was performed through observation, semi-structured interviews, and document review. All data were recorded and managed using MAXQDA 18 software. Based on the results, the main themes and subthemes of this study included "inefficient decision-making mediator" (the shadow of the socioeconomic situation on the medical status of organ recipients, as well as pessimistic influential individuals, social accountability, dialect difference, and ethnic beliefs) and "efficient decision-making mediator" (social learning, material, and spiritual motivation, mother role, and divine reward). The results of this study, derived from a cultural context, can be applied to carrying out future applied and empirical research. Moreover, they can be used in the field of various nursing roles, especially management, care, and education.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Рец. на кн.: AMIRA MITTERMAIER. GIVING TO GOD: ISLAMIC CHARITY IN REVOLUTIONARY TIMES. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. XIV+233 p.

Amira Mittermaier’s book examines the practices of Islamic charity in contemporary Egypt. To answer the question of how and why pious Muslims engage in charity in their mundane lives, the author visits not only mosques, shrines, charitable and volunteer organizations, but also Tahrir Square in Cairo, an important locus for understanding Islamic piety. The place became widely known in 2011 due to the massive anti-government protests that came to be known as the Arab Spring in Egypt. The study of political activism allows the author to get a better grasp on the ordinary ethics of Islamic charity that considers the issues of social justice to be no less important compared to the political activism. But unlike liberal emancipatory projects, the understanding of social justice within the framework of Islamic piety relies on a fundamentally different ethics, political ontology, and temporal orientations. Drawing upon different cases, Mittermaier demonstrates the diverse ethical repertoire of Islamic giving, ranging from the examples of radical asceticism and self-denial, based on the Sufi ideal of the gift, to the more utilitarian approaches to charity, where gift exchange is considered to be a means to collect divine rewards for performed virtues. By comparing the Islamic gift ethics with the secular projects of social restructuring and reducing poverty, the author urges the reader to rethink Islamic charity as having a specific political meaning and potential vis-a-vis progressive ideas and politics.

Recognizing Extravagance Consumption and Avoiding Wastefulness Using Islamic Benchmarks in Nahj al-Balaghah

Excessive consumption on a large scale in various affairs causes the waste of substantial material assets and sometimes even endangers the lives of human beings. This consumption leads to famine and the reduction of necessary materials for future generations. The wrong consumption patterns in Islamic society are undeniable, and their adverse consequences have exposed Islamic societies. However, one of Islam’s best accurate social-economical guidance is avoiding excessive consumption. This article attempts to clarify the Modification Consumption Patterns using the sayings of Imam-Ali (AS) in Nahj al-Balaghah. Regarding the revision of Hadiths and Quranic verses, the researchers can extract and conclude the basic consumption patterns and present them to the Islamic community. For Example, “Extravagance Consumption ruins the divine rewards.” Islam had warned the Islamic Community to avoid excessive consumption while using the pure resources on the earth. Holy Quran harshly condemned profanes and those who are abundantly excessive about any consumption on the earth. In Surah Araf, verse 31: “O Children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer: eat and drink: But waste not by excess, for Allah, loveth not the wasters”. These patterns can be compared with other patterns in the Islamic community.

더 나은 배관설비를 위하여: 베케트 후기 작품에 나타난 King Lear에 대한 문학적 암시

This paper tries to understand the nature of Beckett’s literary allusion by way of analyzing the literary allusions to King Lear appearing in his later English texts. King Lear and Beckett’s works bear similarities in terms of the theme of the failure of divine reward, the experiment in human misery and sufferings and the element of the grotesque pantomime. As a frame of reference for our study, there are three major case studies on Beckett’s literary allusions respectively undertaken by Gontarski, Knowlson and Caselli, which respectively shed light on the echoes in the mythical patterns, the generality of quotation and its sensory embodiment and the self-reflective and ironical intertextuality. As this paper analyzes Ill Seen Ill Said, Worstward Ho and Endgame as the three representative cases of Beckett’s literary allusion to King Lear, Ill Seen Ill Said’s quotation of “vile jelly” is, firstly, found to create profound thematic echoes between the fruitless efforts of its camera-eye and those of Gloucester in King Lear. In terms of the general quotation and its sensory embodiment, the text echoes the senility dramatized in King Lear by materializing the frailty of the one frail remaining eye and the abject body of the old woman. The case of ironical intertextuality in the work is performed in the way in which, the better one understands King Lear, the better one can understands the work in allusion to it itself, as a subtle device in the text bringing about the inversion between origin and product. Worstward Ho sets Edgar’s line “the worst is not so long as we can say ‘This is the worst’” as a very important preoccupation as well as the most important thematic thread in the work. Endgame illustrates similarities to, and influences from, King Lear in its ethos and pathos. Peter Brook’s iconic 1962 production King Lear so effectively witnessed to and exploited those similarities as to alter the general interpretation as well as the critical opinion of the Shakespearean original. As Beckett himself explained, these literary allusions are like “bits of pipe” that he carefully and meticulously chose for a better working literary construction.

Blockchain zakat: An integrated financial inclusion strategy to manage Indonesia’s potential zakat funds

The research aims to analyze the potential of using blockchain to promote integrated financial inclusion through Indonesian potential zakat funds. We use a qualitative approach (the business model canvas) as the analysis tool. We generate the data using the literature study. The essence of the zakat funds management implies that zakat assets should not be left idle. Further, greater zakat funds collected, managed, and distributed will deliver more benefits to mauquf alayh, greater divine rewards to the wakif, and greater funds received by nazir. Our results indicate that the zakat blockchain programs offer various benefits because blockchain facilitates more decentralized and borderless transactions. The benefits include achieving targets more effectively; avoiding overlap; developing zakat more systematically; monitoring more effectively in planning, organizing, actuating, and evaluating nazhir zakat; and contributing to short, medium, and long-term national socioeconomic objectives. In sum, we conclude that more decentralized and borderless blockchain-facilitated transactions potentially enhance Indonesian zakat funds' potential collection and utilization.

Shawn M.Colberg, The Wayfarer's End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020, x + 313 pp. $75.00

Shawn M.Colberg, The Wayfarer's End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020, x + 313 pp. $75.00

Factors Affecting Professional Integrity in Nurses: A Qualitative Content Analysis

Background: Integrity is one of the professional values mentioned in the ethical codes of the ProfessionalNursing Association. It is defined as a commitment to the five fundamental values of integrity, trust, equality,respect, and accountability. This study aims to explore factors affecting professional integrity in nurses.Methods: A descriptive content analysis was carried out by 17 interviews with Iranian nurses who werechosen through purposive sampling. The data collection instruments were semi-structured interviewsand observation. The interviews were recorded and transcribed word by word; then, they were coded andanalyzed by Graneheim and Lundman qualitative content analysis method. For the trustworthiness of thestudy, Guba and Lincoln’s criteria were used.Result: After analysis, the latent meanings formulated into one theme,” keeping up confident beliefs,” whichconsists of “religious beliefs,” “inner call,” “philanthropic sense,” “empathetic care” and “divine rewards”categories.Conclusion: Many factors are heading to internalizing professional integrity in nurses in Iran. Authorities,managers, and faculty members should pay special attention to the internalization of professional integrityand ethical values, such as altruism, conscience, empathy, and the presence of God in life to decrease themistakes and promote quality of care.

The wayfarer's end. Bonaventure and Aquinas on divine rewards in Scripture and sacred doctrine. By Shawn M. Colberg. Pp. xii + 313. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020. $75. 978 0 8132 3291 1

The wayfarer's end. Bonaventure and Aquinas on divine rewards in Scripture and sacred doctrine. By Shawn M. Colberg. Pp. xii + 313. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020. $75. 978 0 8132 3291 1 - Volume 72 Issue 3

The Wayfarer's End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine by Shawn M. Colberg

The Wayfarer's End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture and Sacred Doctrine by Shawn M. Colberg

Ethical Wealth Is Not a Paradox: The Talmudic Guide to Prosperity

A crucial pedagogical tool of the Talmud, one of the most influential books of Late Antiquity, is the use of divine reward and punishment as a way to promote ethical conduct. This paper examines ten behaviors whose reward, according to the sages, is wealth. These include being charitable, conducting business in an ethical manner, honoring the Sabbath, respecting one’s spouse, acquiring wisdom, being an honest public servant, and leading a simple, humble life

The Ontology, Arrangement, and Appearance of Paradise in Castilian Kabbalah in Light of Contemporary Islamic Traditions from al-Andalus

This study is a comparative analysis of the appearances of the lower and upper Paradise, their divisions, and the journeys to and within them, which appear in mystical Jewish and Islamic sources in medieval Iberia. Ibn al-‘Arabī’s vast output on the Gardens of divine reward and their divisions generated a number of instructive comparisons to the eschatological and theosophical writing about the same subject in early Spanish Kabbalah. Although there is no direct historical evidence that kabbalists knew of such Arabic works from the region Catalonia or Andalusia, there are commonalities in fundamental imagery and in ontological and exegetical assumptions that resulted from an internalization of similar patterns of thought. It is quite reasonable to assume that these literary corpora, both products of the thirteenth century, were shaped by common sources from earlier visionary literature. The prevalence of translations of religious writing about ascents on high, produced in Castile in the later thirteenth century, can help explain the sudden appearance of visionary literature on Paradise and its divisions in the writings of Jewish esotericists of the same region. These findings therefore enrich our knowledge of the literary, intellectual, and creative background against which these kabbalists were working when they chose to depict Paradise in the way that they did, at the time that they did.

A Talmudic Vade Mecum to Acquiring Worldly Wealth

A crucial pedagogical tool of the Talmud, one of the most influential books of Late Antiquity, is the use of divine reward and punishment as a way to promote ethical conduct. This paper examines ten behaviors whose reward, according to the sages, is wealth. These include being charitable, conducting business in an ethical manner, honoring the Sabbath, respecting one’s spouse, acquiring wisdom, being an honest public servant, and leading a simple, humble life.

Psychological Effects of Charitable Activities on the Worldly Mental Health and Eternal Happiness of the Hereafter from the Perspective of the Qur'an and Hadith

From the point of view of religious teachings, charitable act has the first effect on one's worldly and hereafter life and guarantees one's worldly mental health and eternal happiness in the hereafter. Worship in any form has been a factor in mental health. The goodness and virtue of an action is also in proportion to the compatibility of its components with each other, and the compatibility and appropriateness of the set of components with the end and purpose of that action. Therefore, benevolence and charity are the observance of these two proportions with the position of action. Now, the question is, what effect do these charitable activities have on the mental health of this world and the eternal happiness of the hereafter? Analytical, psychological, and descriptive study of verses and hadiths indicate that worldly effects such as increasing longevity and livelihood, receiving divine rewards, etc., and hereafter effects such as ignoring the torment, attaining heavenly blessings, eternal reward and... cause the mental health of the person in the world, and his eternal happiness in the hereafter.