INTERDISCIPLINARY QURANIC STUDIES
Year:2012 | Volume:3 | Issue:2|Papers Count:6

Story is a useful means to convey human aspirations, experiences, thoughts, rites, traditions and values. The Quran uses stories when it intends to fix a truth in the reader’s mind or remove a falsehood from his mind. But this by no means prevents artistic features of storytelling from appearing in Quran’s stories. In the Quran’s stories, conveying religious ideas and using an artistic style are both considered important. This paper, paying attention to the concepts and fundamental principles emphasized today in storytelling and drama, tries to identify and categorize the images and features in Surah Yusuf related to place, time, dreaming and character as much as possible. The method used is description-analytical based on the images taken from the text of the Surah.According to the findings of the research, some of the main artistic-literary features of Surah Yusuf include: presenting a clear and precise picture of the society, place, and time of the story, creativity in creating and developing the characters and human natures, presenting different portrays of a character, dialogue, describing incidents, complication, crisis making, denouement, and creating expectations. These features act in coordination as the story unfolds and help to realize its objectives. The results of the research also showed that there are common points in the contemporary story- writing principles and the story-telling in the Quran in terms of narration, style, structure and use of artistic and literary nuances and techniques.

This research intends to investigate the effectiveness of Logotherapy together with recitation of Quran and prayers on treatment of depression and enhancing T helper Cell (CD4+) in depressed patients. The research proposal type was Quasi-experimental design with pre and post examination, follow-up period and control group. The research community included 50 women with neurotic depression who referred to private clinics and counseling and psychotherapy centers. The patients were homogeneous in terms of age, economic-social status, having standard deviation above the average in BDI depression questionnaire, not suffering from illnesses that undermines the immune system, and other specified variables.30 of the patients were selected at random and were divided randomly into experimental and control groups. The means used in this study included a BDI, assessment of immune cell in lab via the flow cytometric method.The experimental group received psychotherapy in 12 sessions through Logotherapy together with recitation of Quran and prayers but the control group did not receive the treatment. Then the levels of depression signs and the activities of the immune cells in the two groups before and after treatment and during the three-month follow-up period were analyzed. The findings showed a meaningful difference between the experimental group and the control group in terms of depression signs and T helper Cell (CD4+). After the experiment depression signs decreased meaningfully in the experimental group compared to the levels before the experiment and compared to the control group while the number of immune cells increased. These findings continued meaningfully during the follow-up period.

Entering the post-industrial era requires effective learning methods and this is even more important for rural communities. Agricultural extension plays a fundamental role in designing such methods to encourage them to learn more. Using arts, such as visualization, can make this possible because it brings about faster and deeper effects. One of magnificent manifestations in the Quran is that it creates introduces phenomena and teachings in the form of beautiful artistic images. Hence, it infuses life and movement into these phenomena and concepts, profoundly affects hearts, conveys a lot of meanings through few words (eloquence), and provokes using the senses to convince rationally. Education on technical and specialized agricultural issues through this art will not only make it easier for farmers to learn, but help them get acquainted with the Quranic culture as well.Investigating the function of the Quran’s visualization art in education of village dwellers, this research found that this art can help the instructor form a good relation with the audience and create favaroabel changes in their attitude about water and methods for water storage.

Traditional houses were constructed based upon the religious beliefs of residents and the traditional architecture applied Quran and Sunnah in architecture and city planning. Therefore, the traditionally-built houses are always infused with a religious spirit.The paper has been inspired by the following question: What is the relationship between Islamic identity and traditional housing?According to Quranic tenets and the Infallibles’ (AS) sayings on house and residence, the characteristics of Islamic identity and the relationship among them can be recognized through criteria of Islamic identity.The present paper is a field study founded upon a historical-descriptive-analytical research method and that its data has been collected via a library research method by studying hard and soft documents.The results of the research indicate that the religious identity of traditional housing can be categorized into three distinct criteria- structural, environmental, and semantic. The three criteria are inseparable and overlap one another. It means that the characteristics of religious identity first become known in structure. Then they are fortified in the environment and finally reach a lofty status through semantic relations. This paper also sheds light on issues pertinent to recreation of Islamic identity in contemporary housing taking traditional housing’s identity features into account.

The right to privacy is one of the most respected rights in all societies and Islamic teachings also emphasize it. Privacy is the state of being free from being observed, or one that the individual does not like to be revealed to others. People do not tolerate others entering their private space and react to it. The existence of teachings in Islam like the need for respecting others’ inherent dignity, the necessity of keeping a secret, respect for others’ self-esteem on the one hand and the emphasis in verses and Hadiths on the unlawfulness of inquisitiveness in other people’s private life indicate the important position of the right of privacy in Islam’s legal system.In this research, conducted in descriptive-analytical method, the concept of privacy is clarified and its status in verses of the Quran and Hadiths (narrations from the infallibles (AS)) is investigated.