Arts and Social Sciences Journal

To explore the intersection of magic, imagination, and place as a buttress against continued disenchantment furthered by an over reliance on rational thought, we turn to the (re)enchanted rhetoric of Starhawk, an eco-feminist peace activist and witch, to analyze the House on the Rock. We focused on the ways in which some rhetorical spaces challenge the postmodern idea of the disenchanting overemphasis on moral perfection, logic, and technological rationalization. Intertwined with cultural and political institutions, disenchanted rhetoric ensnares individuals in stultified existence that eliminates diversity, reifies hierarchy, dismisses creativity, and limits individuality. In positioning the House on the Rock as a rhetorical text we suggest that liminal spaces liberate individuals from the fetters of societal expectations, hierarchies, and institutions, offer a safe vantage point by which to examine conflicting viewpoints, and ultimately blur the distinction between entrenched understandings and new ways of knowing and seeing.

This paper explores the Islamic Republic of Iran’s use of stoning (rajm) as a penal measure sanctified by the Islamic Penal Code (IPC). Using data from newspapers and human rights reports the paper provides an overview and examples of stoning cases in contemporary Iran. The roots of the controversy about stoning in Islam and its use in Iran are explored. The paper concludes that the IPC’s procedures in contemporary Iran not only revive an age old debate at odds with the Islamic norms of sacred revelation. It also regards stoning women in contemporary Iran to be are flection of a state that supports violence against women and not an Islamic practice.

The paper focuses on the bilateral issues which hurdles the relations among the two states and looks for the mutual understanding in the important issues for the peaceful rise of the two Asian giants. For instance, there is a divergence of interests between the two like the border disputes, water disputes etc. Here an attempt has been made to illuminate whether China’s and India’s paths lead them to interact as rivals or partners.