"Progressiver Islam" im ausgehenden Zarenreich: Das Plädoyer des St. Petersburger Imams und Regierungsbeamten Ataulla Bajazitov (1846-1911) für die Partizipation der Muslime an der modernen Zivilisation

Ataulla Bajazitov (1846-1911) fulfilled a social double role by serving his Tatar community in St. Petersburg as imam and the Russian state as military Muslim ‘cleric’, translator and teacher. By founding Russia’s first monolingual Tatar newspaper, initiating St. Petersburg’s first Friday mosque and presenting scriptural and rational arguments for the compatibility of Islam and the modern Civilization to a Russian-speaking public as early as 1883, he has been a pioneer among the Muslims in Russia in several respects. In contrast though to similar activities of his Russian contemporary, the Krim Tatar Ismail Gasprinskii (1851-1914), Bajazitov’s endeavours have remained almost unnoticed in Western scholarship. Also in Tatarstan, his books have been only recently reprinted. The present study analyzes Bajazitov’s three monographs written in Russian, namely A Response to Ernest Renan’s lecture “Islam and Science” (1883), The Relationship of Islam towards Science and People of Different Faith (1887) and Islam and Progress (1898). There, he exposes many positions that around that time started to become key arguments of Muslim reformers in the Near East for the progressivness of Islam. The study takes also into account reactions to Bajazitov’s monographs by Russian officers in Tashkent who tried to demonstrate the backwardness of Islam, especially Nikolai Petrovič Ostroumov’s (1846-1930) response in his book entitled Quran and Progress – On the intellectual awakening of today’s Russian Muslims (1901/1903).

An assessment of obesity and hyperphagia in individuals with Smith-Magenis syndrome

Smith-Magenis syndrome (SMS;OMIM# 182290) is a multiple congenital anomalies and mental retardation syndrome caused by a 3.7- Mb deletion on chromosome 17p11.2 or a mutation in the RAI1 gene. Although the majority of the SMS phenotype has been well described, limited studies are available describing growth patterns in SMS. There is some evidence that individuals with SMS develop obesity. Thus, this study aims to characterize the growth and potential influence of hyperphagia in a cohort of individuals with SMS. A retrospective chart review was conducted of 78 individuals with SMS through Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) at Texas Children¡¯s Hospital (TCH.) All documented height and weight measurements were abstracted and Z-scores (SD units) for height-for-age, length-for-age and BMI-for-age were calculated. Mail-out questionnaires were provided to the corresponding parents of the cohort to assess for the presence of hyperphagia through a validated hyperphagia questionnaire (HQ). Analysis of this data demonstrates that by the age ¡Ý 20 years males with SMS have mean BMI¡¯s in the 85th-90th percentile corresponding to an overweight BMI, and females with SMS had mean BMI¡¯s in the 95th -97th percentile corresponding to an obese BMI. Parents indicated that hyperphagia is present in individuals with SMS as 76% of parent¡¯s report having to lock food away from their child. Females¡¯ age ¡Ý 20 years of age had the highest mean behavior, drive and severity scores as well as the highest BMI. Thus, this study concludes that it appears overweight and obesity, as well as hyperphagia, are present in this cohort of SMS individuals. The results of this study will hopefully enable parents and caregivers of children with SMS to take preventative measures in order to control food related behaviors present in their children as well as to prevent overweight and obesity and the associated negative health consequences.

What's Happening? Allan Kaprow and Claes Oldenburg Argue About Art And Life

In 1961 Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) and Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) exchanged a number of letters in which they argued about the definition of their avant-garde practices as Happenings. Kaprow, who first introduced this "root-metaphor," as he would later call it, describes with it the necessity of the respective activity to be as far removed as possible from all motives, materials, and formats conventionally connected to art. Oldenburg, who at the time of this exchange was just as active in the New York performance scene as Kaprow, disagrees with his colleague's removal of their practice from the artistic sphere. Oldenburg is also dissatisfied with the fact that Kaprow, through his writings, launches a critical discourse that follows his own definition of the Happening. The two artists thus argue just as much about the positioning of their practices with respect to art as over the authority to establish such a position. This essay traces their argument through their written conversation and in doing so exposes the immense influence Kaprow's rhetoric had on the subsequent art-historical canonization of their respective practices: Oldenburg's more ambivalent position is today amalgamated with Kaprow's theoretical stance.