Popular resistance SC3037C Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Popular resistance SC3037C - Essay Example Knowing and understanding the relationship between the narratives and the perceptions which some Muslims may hold can certainly help policing protest movements and help in controlling a situation that could spiral out of control. A Muslim empire was more or less firmly established during the lifetime of the founder of the religion, i.e. Muhammad, but the golden age of the empire came a few centuries later when the Muslims had expanded their region and spread their religion from India to Africa and even into Europe as a Spanish Muslim region was formed. In this manner, the Muslims are perhaps unique amongst the major religions of the world since their empire was founded in the name of religion but divided on national lines overtime (Petersen, 2005). Even then, religion remained important and still continues to be so. While many of the narratives today focus on the battles which the Muslims have had with ‘non-believers’ in the past, the historic narratives also focus on discovery, learning and being objective in scientific experiments (Rochberg, 1992). Sardar (2004) discusses this very topic and reports that: â€Å"The Koran devotes almost one-third of its contents to singing the praises of scientific knowledge. The first Koranic word revealed to the Prophet Muhammad is: "Read." It is a basic tenet of Muslim belief that the material world is full of signs of God; and these signs can be deciphered only through rational and objective inquiry. ‘Acquire the knowledge of all things’ the Koran advises its readers; ‘Say: O my Lord! Increase me in knowledge’ (Sardar, 2004, p. 28)†. From a religion which devotes itself to peace and the search of knowledge, the narratives about Islam today are clearly more focused on the militant aspect of the religion in which victory means the blessings of god while martyrdom means seventy virgins in paradise (Turner, 1999). This changing narrative means that if the story of Islam can be retold and given to the Muslims

Foreign Exchange Currency Markets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Foreign Exchange Currency Markets - Essay Example rd was established with the aid and support of economic giants of the time such as America, Great Britain, France and other nations which supported the idea of stability through linking their currency with gold. The gold standard became firmly entrenched in the international economic environment after the Second World War when the Bretton Woods system was created. The Bretton Woods system gave rules and established regulations for the commercial and fiscal exchanges between the nations which had emerged victorious after the war. The purpose of establishing such a system was to strengthen and rebuilt those economic systems that had collapsed after the war. As discussed by Bird (1994), the system depended heavily on the regulations provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The basic feature of the Bretton Woods system was an agreement made by each nation that their monetary policies and fiscal agendas would maintain the currency value of the country near a preset value in terms of gold. The IMF had the authority to handle and settle payment imbalances between various nations and had the responsibility to monitor the fiscal activities various countries. Thus the term gold standard was used for the system which worked quite well for many years until it collapsed in 1971 when America pulled out of the gold standard (Bird, 1994). Even before the American pullout, the fundamentals of the gold standard had already weakened. The monetary interdependence of nations which came about after the second world war when international trade become very important allowed banks and even large companies to transfer huge amounts of capital from one location to the other (Cooper & Sneddon, 2001). Currency Speculators could convert large sums of money from a weak to a strong currency in the hope for the currency to gain value if it was so adjusted by the government. If the speculation was incorrect, the money could