Editorial
Authors: Hamid Eltigani Abdelgadir 
Published: September 2023

With this new issue of Tajsser, we are pleased to inform our readership that we are taking a new step towards further diversification in material and expansion in volume. Our intention is to enlarge the research section, to increase, gradually, the number of book reviews, but without affecting the volume of the regular sections allotted for translated material, or the section set aside for covering academic events carried out by Ibn Khaldoon Centre. A galaxy of researchers from various academic backgrounds have contributed to this Issue, and all of them have remarkably adopted the cross-disciplinary bridging methodology. The reader will come across research papers that focus on the transmission of meanings and ideas through social conceptions, philosophical terminologies, and cross-cultural translations. The reader will also find a paper on how legal contracts negatively affect the transfer of hard technology, and how the communication technology affect Feminism in the Arab World. The first paper discusses the conceptions of religion in the Qatari society, which many tend to describe as religious, or that the religious values constitute its anchoring pillars. However, one would like to know about the Qataris’s views on religion itself. Which dimension of religion is more vivid in their minds and occupies a priority? What are the sources for such perception? To answer these questions and more, a team of researchers, led by Latifa Al-Kaabi, a researcher in Tafsir, submitted their work under the title: “Qataris’ Perception of Religion,” which is a multi-entry bridging study. Taking lead from the theoretical framework of the socio-phycologist Serge Moscovici’s study on social representation, the researchers concluded that the Islamic creed and rituals constitute the central hard core of the Qataris’ conception of religion, whereas they attribute a lower status to the other dimensions of religion. However, those marginalized dimensions enjoy a great deal of flexibility and shed light on the heterogeneity within the Qatari society. Dr. Mohamed Houmam, a Professor of Linguistics and Discourse Analysis, presents the second paper. It focuses on the method of dealing with terminologies pertaining to the intellectual project of Taha ‘Abd al-Rahman, the contemporary Moroccan intellectual. The researcher believes that none can attain the total meaning of his project without a thorough understanding of the way he handles his concepts. It is assumed that ‘Abd al-Rahman’s motive behind this conceptual analysis is not a passion for complex linguistic structures; rather, it is a desire to produce an intellectual-philosophical discourse which is liberated from the biases of foreign terminology conquering the Arab-Islamic deliberative field, and open up a way for intellectual creativity in an encounter of contemporary problems. Along the same line of intellectual liberation from foreign biases, Dr. Khalida Hamed Tisgam inquires, in her paper, about the ideological dimension in translation and whether translation is only a bridge towards other cultures or it bears more significance. She questions the meaning of “honest” or “unbiased” translation and the moral responsibilities translators bear, in addition to the influence of ideology on translation. The researcher attempts to render answers to such questions by dealing with the controversy on the Afro-American poet Amanda Gorman in her poem (The Hill We Climb). The controversy goes back to the time when a white Dutch woman writer translated the poem of a black poetess to the Dutch Language. That incurred the anger of many people who inquired about how legitimate it was for a white translator to convey a text for a black poetess. Was it acceptable for the White to convey the suffering of the Black in translation? This looks like there is an “emotional particularities” no translator can convey to others; an issue that is closely related to the linguistic and religious particularities of the concepts which Taha ‘Abd al-Rahman deals with in the paper we have just mentioned. Similarly, Dr. Mawlai Abdul-Sadeq; Professor of Languages and Arts, presents a critical reading of the Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih’s (The Season of Migration to The North). In this reading, he tries to go beyond some previous studies that focused on the idea of antagonism between the East and West, without pausing to read the text within a post-colonial context, and discern the concept of cultural hybridity. Moreover, the very concept of cultural overlap has gained new dimensions in feminist studies. Dr. Rami Abu Shehab, Professor of Arabic Language, discusses the concept of cyber-feminism (technological feminism), by which he refers to a set of ideas and practices related to the interaction of feminism and cyberspace. This study traces the intellectual sources of this movement and the problems involved, as well as its practical effects on the feminist strife in the Arab World. Turning away from the soft cultural technology to the hard aspect of technology, and to the possibility of transferring it to the Arab-Islamic World with all its implications, is an issue tackled by Dr. Omar Al-Youssef, a Specialist in Legal Studies. He informs us of the type of contracts related to the transfer of technology from Industrial Countries to Developing countries. Interestingly, economists, politicians and jurists have different views of the nature of such contracts, and when it comes to the very meaning of “technology,” argument heats, as it centres on whether it is intangible money a buyer has no right to handle by modification or loaning (under intellectual property rights), or a tool this buyer has the right to deal with, under a contract, in a way that entitles them to have economic development and benefit that might lead up to technological independence. After presenting a detailed view of the historical backgrounds of the problem and its reflections in the Syrian and Egyptian experiences, the researcher believes the technology transfer contracts should have a twofold definition which concurrently proves it is tangible money for the supplier and a means of economic development for the importer, not to forget the terms that guarantee the rights of the two parties involved. While Dr. Al-Youssef elaborates on the concept of technology in legal contracts and its negative effects on the Arab Society, Dr. Haitam Suleiman, Professor of Law, tends to discuss the negative effects of modern legislations of the Western states on the Arab-Islamic Region entitled: “Legislation Morality between Sharia and Modern State Laws,” in the last research paper. Dr. Sulaiman deals with the issue of “Legislation Morality” by examining the historical contexts that crystallized the concepts of law, freedom and morals in the modern Western thought (with its various schools) as compared to the Islamic thought (legislative vision in particular). The study; in general, aims at giving answers to the main questions related to the freedom and morality of legislation, such as questioning the possibility of disentanglement between law and morality, and whether this inevitably exists in the Western legal context. In addition to these studies, the Issue includes a translated work contributed by researcher Soufiane Ouaki. This translation pertains to a paper titled “Interdisciplinarity Revolution” by Vincenzo Politi, who provides a scrupulous definition of inter-disciplinary researches and whether they form a real scientific revolution. Finally, we hope that our reader will notice that choosing this miscellany of studies reflects our keen desire in the interdisciplinary, extra-specialty works- where a researcher dares to borrow a concept from a neighboring field of knowledge, put it to test, and extract out a new vision. Such a process would normally entail a kind of a text re-reading, concept re-definition, adding a new factor, or raising a question- all of which will lead to creativity and invention.