The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences held a scientific event under the title "Chat GBT from the Perspective of Education and Ethics", through which it introduced the public, especially those interested in the subject, to the nature and importance of the topic, GBT Chat.

Dr. Muhammad Khajah, an associate researcher at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), gave a lecture at the beginning of the conference in which he discussed the artificial intelligence revolution and how ChatGBT technology is one of its pioneering products. In order for our societies to stay up with this incredible technological advancement, Dr. Khajah highlighted that GPT chat technology, which refers to discussion or chatter utilizing pre-trained generative transformer technology, is still in the development stage.

Then Dr. Muhammad Khajah went over the techniques, advantages, limitations and disadvantages of GBT Chat and explained that one of the advantages of this technology or this robot is that it can access a huge amount of information in a short time and extract from it what the questioner needs and has the ability to analyze, but the researcher cannot attribute Something for GBT chat, i.e. it's not a source, so far at least. Khajah explained that what distinguishes ChatGBT from others is its superior and immediate ability to explain complex concepts in simple words, and to produce content from A to Z without direct quoting from other sources even though it is not connected to the Internet, although it has been fed with data available on the network.

Effects of CHAT GPT on educational assessments

The effects of chatGBT on educational assessments were the topic of a lecture by Dr. Fawzia Al-Awadi, assistant professor in the department of fundamentals of education at Kuwait University. Dr. Fawzia highlighted that social intelligence has huge benefits that will greatly alter the field of education. ChatGBT technology is distinctive in that it can reduce the time and effort required of humans to produce high-quality content and texts that address requirements or enquiries. However, one drawback of "ChatGPT" when it is used in the educational sector is that students may utilize it, thus procedures must be built to identify whether the text was written by a student or generated by a chatbot. This is because of its superior capacity to write material.

Considering the possibility that students will use ChatGBT technology to solve their homework, there are those who recommend that students write drafts of their research papers in their classrooms using browsers that monitor computer activity, and some universities are considering asking their students to explain all their references face to face.

One of the well-known drawbacks of this technology in the field of education is its ability to reproduce students’ answers, which will require a quick response from the educational sector through more expressive and positive ways of evaluating students based on derived concepts and away from recycling content.

Ethical perspectives on the use of ChatGPT

The next speaker was Dr. Hussein Al-Mahri, an associate professor in Kuwait University's department of computer science. Al-Mahri explained that since chatbot technology was introduced in 2018, artificial intelligence has altered both the world and users' perceptions of it, particularly because the information provided by them is often accurate and closely related to reality, just like you would receive from a real person. But, the system is still in its infancy, making it challenging for anyone attempting to deal with it ethically.

Yet, the danger resides in users' high trust in it because the main source that the program uses to receive and interpret data is the Internet, which is an open world with faulty information, and thus it may deliver incorrect information to users. Dr. Al-Mahri urged specialists in a variety of sectors, including law and ethics, to keep up with this massive knowledge-technological transformation.

Tooba Towfiq

• From the right to choose what to wear, to the right to education and work, Indian Muslim women are at risk of losing it all.
• Indian Muslims have been fashioned within the Indian nation-state through a legacy and language of violence.

Amid the desk-thumping cheers of the lower house of the Indian parliament, detrimental decisions were rattled off as part of the 2023 budget process this month, marking yet another step towards disempowering Muslims in the country. This is the same house where the ruling right-wing government often fashions itself as the messiah of Muslim women, even as they endure a potentially devastating assault on their social, economic and political rights.

Amongst myriad cuts to budgets affecting minorities and women, the government has cut funding to help students from minority communities pass preliminary exams, while slashing the budget for madrassas.

From the right to choose what to wear, to the right to education and work, Indian Muslim women are at risk of losing it all. Yet, despite this urgency, the public outcry is not nearly as pronounced as it should be. 

Ongoing global debates around the right to education (in the context of Afghanistan) and the freedom to choose how to dress (in the context of Iran) have comfortably ignored Indian Muslim women - and this is hardly a new phenomenon. 

Backlash against the Taliban, one would like to believe, stems from their clear negation of women’s rights. Yet, much of the international outcry actually stems from the legacy of US military intervention in Afghanistan and the Orientalist inclination to “save” Muslim women. 

Along the same lines, the leader of India’s right-wing government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, insists that he has “freed” Muslim women. But Muslim women - fearless and with their fists raised - would disagree. 

Climate of intimidation 

She stood alone, fearless and veiled head-to-toe, heckled by men in saffron scarves. This is how Muskan Khan, the “poster girl” for last year’s hijab-ban protests in the Indian state of Karnataka, subverted the stereotypical representation of a Muslim woman in the Indian imagination. 

She was educated and indomitable, a subversion of the essentialised label of victimhood accorded to Indian Muslim women that is often incorrectly blamed exclusively on Muslim men. A year later, women like Muskan are facing the brunt of the Indian state’s harmful legislation, as well as a climate of violence and intimidation. 

Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani was among many admirers of the newly released budget, which she praised for its focus on “inclusive development”. Ironically, the government has significantly slashed the budget of the ministry she heads - and the scale of these cuts is hard to ignore. 

For minority educational empowerment, the budget allocation has been reduced from Rs 2,515 crores ($304m) to Rs 1,689 crores ($204.5m). The allocation for skills development and livelihoods was cut by 99 percent, while incentives for free coaching and other allied schemes were reduced by around 60 percent.

This follows a trend that started last year. In December, the government discontinued the Maulana Azad National Fellowship, a scholarship for students from minority communities pursuing higher education. The fellowship was initially implemented more than a decade ago upon the recommendations of the Sachar committee, which highlighted the abysmal state of social, economic and educational conditions for Muslims in India. 

Such steps are incongruous with government data. Indian Muslims continue to have relatively low access to education, particularly with regards to higher education, where enrolment numbers for Muslim students have been on the decline. Muslim students also tend to rely more on government institutions than non-Muslims. With little-to-no government support, students from Muslim communities will find it increasingly difficult to access education.

Interestingly, the enrolment of Muslim women in higher education has been growing in proportion to that of Muslim men. But this discouraging package of legislation is set to undo these strides, compounding the disadvantageous position that Muslim women in India occupy within the matrix of their religious, gender and class identities. 

Wholesale assault

The ruling government insists that Muslim women “feel safe” under the BJP, and in justifying the hijab ban, it asserted that “misguided” Muslim women need to be brought into the “mainstream of education”. 

If this is the case, why are Muslim women dropping out of colleges in Karnataka? A recent report by the Karnataka branch of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties found that more than 1,000 female Muslim students dropped out of schools in five districts during the hijab row. 

The fallout of anti-Muslim legislation is not restricted to Muslims from economically underprivileged backgrounds; there is also an ongoing exodus of urban Muslims. Many young Muslims, especially women, are finding that safe public spaces are disappearing for them. Muslim women have been targeted through sexist mock “auctions”, while also facing significant hiring biases.

This wholesale assault is a recipe to intimidate and disempower Muslim women in India, buttressed by a culture of communalised rhetoric, in which convicted rapists are prematurely released and go on to receive a hero’s welcome. A language of intimidation, along with open calls for violence against Muslim women, are being normalised by mainstream news media, popular culture and vigilante internet trolls. Hate is being manufactured here. 

The tepid reactions to this urgent crisis show that the foundations from which this project draws its strength are not new. Indian Muslims have been fashioned within the Indian nation-state through a legacy and language of violence, wherein Muslim women exist only as victims who need to be saved from violent Muslim men, or as sexualised objects on which wars of religious nationalism are to be played out. 

Global discussions on women’s rights do not invite many allies for Muslim women in India. 

In videos about the Karnataka hijab controversy, while Muslim teachers had to remove their veils before entering schools and Muslim students who refused to do so were sent home, the only woman allowed to exist on her own terms was a teacher imposing “discipline”. She wore a sari and a bindi - the only acceptable image of an “Indian” woman in the populist imagination. 

Source: MEE  

 *Views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Al-Mujtama.

For the academic year 2022–2023, the Al-Ataa Center for Projects and Volunteer Activities of the Social Reform Association launched its fifth annual giving competition. The competition, which is aimed at students of all educational levels in schools in the State of Kuwait, is held in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, the Public Authority for Youth, the Kuwaiti Teachers Association, and illustrious volunteer teams like the "Green Hands" team and the "Tarahum" team. Its goal is to inspire students to follow in the giving and giving footsteps of their parents and grandparents.

In this regard, Hamad Al-Ali, secretary general of the Social Reform Society, stated, "The competition seeks to inspire both male and female students at all educational levels to engage in philanthropic and volunteer activity. And to cultivate a new generation of volunteers who will carry on the noble work started by their forebears. Moreover, to emphasize the significance of schools in the State of Kuwait Volunteer and charitable work teaches students the value of doing humanitarian volunteer work and gives them the practical skills they need to demonstrate their patriotism in the appropriate, positive way while avoiding inappropriate and impolite expression.

"The promotion of volunteerism among male and female students at all academic levels, the instillation of educational values in the minds of male and female students at all academic levels, the strengthening of the role of volunteer teams in bringing about positive change in society, and the highlighting of outstanding volunteer projects and initiatives both inside the school and outside it are some of the other objectives we have set for ourselves.", added Hamad Al-Ali.

Abdul Rahman Al-Mayass, a school principal, honored the head of the “The Righteous Son” team, Mr. Khaled Moawad Ahmed, honoring the school students, members of the “Good Son” volunteer team, then honoring the entities and personalities participating in this volunteer event.

Hanan Al-Qattan

The psychiatrist, Dr. Hanan Al-Qattan, director of the Ettizan Center for Consultation and Training, said in an interview with Al-Mujtama that the psychological effects of earthquakes lead to traumatic disorders called post-traumatic stress disorder. Anyone who is exposed to any accident that threatens his life is exposed to psychological trauma.

The effects of this trauma vary from person to person depending on how well they can cope with the disaster and the frequency with which the images haunt them. The most pronounced of these effects are insomnia and sleep disorders, which are crucial for restoring mental equilibrium as well as treating a variety of physical issues. This appears to man in the form of voices from his imaginations, which cause "mental wandering" and a person to become disconnected from reality.

One of the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Dr. Al-Qattan, is that a person experiences distress, tension, and anxiety as they enter a state of depression and are surrounded by their sorrows for a prolonged period. This is because they are unable to cope with the effects of losing a family member or themselves. He loses enthusiasm for life and experiences regret as well as other unpleasant consequences of tragedies because he believes that his future is over.

There are two axes that affect the extent of the harmful consequences of post-traumatic stress according to Al-Qattan:

The first axis is the genetic and psychological tendency to mental diseases including depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The second axis is represented by how the personality developed and how this person was raised. Does he have a great level of certainty and submission to The Almighty, or does he lack faith meanings? As a result, he becomes unable to accept God's will and destiny, making adaptation impossible. This is known as personality development, and it helps to explain the differences between people. As experts have stated, "It is not the trauma that causes a problem, but rather your own perception that generates the problem."

What is trauma?

Among the effects of disasters is the lack of a balanced awareness of what happened, which generates some problems in behavior, such as recklessness, lack of caution, indifference to security and safety means, and mental disregard for the problem and crisis. Reactive anxiety is not caused by a crisis, but rather chronic anxiety, and it has negative effects such as irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, malaise, weakness, and fatigue.

One of its side effects is excessive terror or pathological fear caused by nervous system activation. As a result, as proven by post-earthquake aftershocks, adrenaline is secreted involuntarily. Individuals frightened, and the response to the stimuli was significantly faster than before, indicating a large production of adrenaline. This demonstrates that the body is awake and has a normal reaction. Allah Almighty has created bodies that are always in a defensive condition, but if a person lives in this state for an extended period of time, it can have an impact on his psychological state. Those who have been traumatized must therefore calm down, breathe deeply, remember Allah, and place their trust in Him.

Stages of Trauma

There are stages of trauma experienced by a person, says Dr. Hanan Al-Qattan:

• The first stage is the stage of denial when a person is in a stage of rejecting this event, or not accepting it.
• Then the person moves to the stage of anger and protest, which is the second stage. This is a healthy stage because it moves a person from illogical denial to acceptance.
• The third stage is the bargaining stage. They try to save what can be saved.
• Then comes the fourth stage, which is depression.
• The last stage of acceptance, in which the person accepts what happened.

These stages differ according to the person’s psychological health. There are those who possess high psychological health and reach the stage of acceptance faster, as happened with our master Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, when he said: “Whoever says: The Messenger, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, is dead, his head will be cut off.”

 When Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, reminded him of the Qur’anic verse: (Muhammad is not except a Messenger; Messengers have passed away before him. If he dies or is killed, will you turn about on your heels? And he who turns on his heels will not harm Allah a thing. Allah will recompense the thankful.) (Al-Imran: 144).    He said: “It is as if I am hearing it for the first time.” This is evidence that he moved to acceptance and comprehension quickly and did not take minutes. The speed of response and reaching acceptance varies from one person to another.

Means of support

Dr. Hanan Al-Qattan says: There are ideas and means of psychological support:

  Firstly, calm down those affected, in the first moments and the golden hour. Do not let people with panic pass for long hours, and then go to calm them down. The first calm is what saves the person, and it is what curbs the unconscious secretions of adrenaline and other repercussions. Remind them to be patient, calm, and embrace them, especially children, because they quickly move from fear to the world of childhood and to a sense of safety, then feed them, give them water and food, and sometimes participate with them in collective work, as teamwork greatly alleviates the suffering of those affected in such disasters.

Al-Qattan indicated that there are cases that require psychological support of a different kind, and the development of treatment plans for these cases. Even the one who practices psychological support needs to stabilize his heart so that he does not reach the stage of collapse, and to recharge himself again with the spirit of giving. In the first stage, the support should be a first aid for the psychologically affected.

Secondly, once things have calmed down, there will be another form of assistance. It is a slow help that consists of building a strategic plan to handle nightmares, anxiety, and stress, rather than venting in inappropriate ways such as breaking furniture, beating, or succumbing to despair and sadness.

Finally, a therapeutic journey begins with a strategy based on the degree of trauma, which varies from child to child depending on his or her personality. There are children who have panicked, children who are psychologically stable, children who chat to themselves in the car, and children who laugh and play and are unaware of the tragedy because they are so young.

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Read the article in Arabic

"Gun violence is an epidemic and Congress must act now," said Biden (Representational)

The deadly shooting in Mississippi Friday comes days after a man, also with no known motive, attacked a university campus in the northern state of Michigan, killing three people.

Washington:

A gunman killed six people in the southern US state of Mississippi on Friday, prompting President Joe Biden to call again for tightened gun restrictions only days after he pleaded for action following a deadly university shooting.

Police in Mississippi said a man shot and killed a person at a store in the small town of Arkabutla, then went to a nearby house and killed a woman, according to local media.

CNN later reported, citing the county sheriff, that the woman was his ex-wife.

Police then tracked down his vehicle to a home later determined to belong to the suspect, and found two more men killed nearby, Sheriff Brad Lance told CNN.

The fifth and sixth person, a man and a woman, were found shot and killed in a neighboring house, and were possibly related to the suspect, who was detained as he attempted to flee, Lance said.

The Tate County Sheriff's Office identified the alleged shooter in a Facebook post as 52-year-old Richard Dale Crum, saying he was in custody and charged with first-degree murder.

In a tweeted statement, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said he had been briefed on the incident.

"At this time, we believe he acted alone. His motive is not known," said Reeves.

"Please pray for the victims of this tragic violence and their families at this time."

The case was taken on by the sheriff of Tate County, where Arkabutla is located, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

- 'Enough' -

The deadly shooting Friday comes days after a man, also with no known motive, attacked a university campus in the northern state of Michigan, killing three people.

"Enough," said Biden in a statement released Friday night, echoing the same exasperated sentiment he expressed after the Michigan shooting.

"We are 48 days into the year and our nation has already suffered at least 73 mass shootings. Thoughts and prayers aren't enough. Gun violence is an epidemic and Congress must act now," Biden said.

Last month, two deadly mass shootings also occurred in less than a week, both in California and involving the Asian American community.

"We need -need- commonsense gun law reforms," Biden said Friday night.

His calls for Congress to reinstate a national ban on assault rifles, which existed from 1994 to 2004, has run up against opposition from Republicans, who are staunch defenders of the constitutional right to bear arms and have had a narrow majority in the House of Representatives since January.

There were an estimated 44,000 gun-related deaths in the United States last year, about half of them murder cases, accidents and self-defense, and half of them suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive database.

When Amina Khatoon saw news footage of a Turkish woman and her children stuck under the rubble of a devastating earthquake and crying out for help, the Rohingya refugee in Delhi did not think twice before selling her last piece of jewellery to buy relief material for donation.

The contribution is bound to pinch Amina, 56, and her family, who fled Myanmar 18 years ago, more than most of the donors at the Turkish embassy here.

Their hut in a slum on the banks of the Yamuna was lost to a fire in 2018. She bought a pair of gold bangles with four years’ savings in 2021 as insurance for a calamity. The same year she had to sell one of them for a surgery she needed.

“This is a big calamity. Had I been back home in Myanmar, we would have sold some of our land and donated. I feel good that I am able to do something because I had this bangle. We have faced what people there are facing after the earthquake — to be without a home and support,”.

With Rs 65,000 from the sale of the bangle, and some more money from their savings, Amina’s family bought cookies, jackets, milk powder, women’s clothes and blankets; filled two taxis with it and drove to the embassy from their dwelling in South East Delhi’s Zakir Nagar.

In the video, a woman is seen screaming from a gap in the rubble and rescue workers unable to break through. The news anchor says that the woman was begging for her children to be rescued and for which she would be indebted for life to the rescuers.

“My mother came in the middle of the night (between Thursday and Friday) and showed us the video, saying that we must help. I said we don’t have anything to give. Then she took off her bangle and said sell this,” Hussain said.

Amina’s husband Aman Ullah ran a boat service from their hometown Buthidaung down the Mayu river to Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state in Myanmar.

He also owned two trucks, a hotel and one of the only two telephones in Buthidaung, until he fled to Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar with his wife and seven children in 2005.

Later, they followed their son Abdullah, who got married to a Rohingya refugee in Delhi, to India in 2012.

The family travelled on a bus from Chittagong to the India-Bangladesh border somewhere close to Calcutta and walked across with local guides.

They took a train to Delhi and first settled in a tent opposite the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ office before moving from slum to slum.

“We know Turkey. In Bangladesh, they had built a hospital near our camp. When our camp (thatched huts on the Yamuna floodplains in Kanchan Kunj) was gutted in a fire (in 2018), kits with essential items came with the Turkish flag on them,” Amina said.

Aman Ullah now runs a grocery store with Hussain. Amina’s three sons are married, and another, Ali Johar, is a key functionary of India’s main Rohingya group — the Rohingya Human Rights Initiative.

The family survives on the earnings from the grocery store and a research fellowship that Ali has. His sister Tasmida was the first girl of their community in Delhi to attend college.

Ali now has a visa to go to Canada but India doesn’t issue exit visas to “illegal immigrants”— which Rohingyas are classified as. The demand for exit visas for Rohingyas is now under litigation in Delhi High Court.

“She didn’t want us to tell anyone about this, but Ali told her that if people read about this, more may come forward to help. We would have contributed to Syria also but we could only afford this much, so we thought of giving to Turkey first as the video she saw was from Turkey,” Hussain said.

Several families and groups of students arrived throughout the day to donate at the embassy at Nyaya Marg.

“Their plight breaks my heart. This can happen to any of us. Giving to them is the best use of my bangle,” Amina said when asked if she had contributed more than she could afford.

• Three students were killed, and five others wounded, some with life-threatening injuries, in a shooting on Michigan State University’s campus Monday night.
• The gunman fled the shooting scenes — an academic building and the student union — prompting a manhunt. He later died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
• Police identified the suspect as Anthony Dwayne McRae, a 43-year-old man who was not affiliated with MSU. Police do not yet know a motive.
• "This truly has been a nightmare we are living tonight," said Chris Rozman of the MSU Police.

 Another American city was dealing with the aftermath of yet another horrific mass shooting on the campus of Michigan State University on Tuesday.

Police searched for a motive, survivors recounted their brush with death, politicians condemned the mayhem and expressed condolences, and a heartbroken doctor sobbed as he counted the latest casualties — three dead, five injured, all students targeted by yet another suspect wielding a gun and an unknown grudge.

The post-chaos choreography following the latest mass shooting was all too familiar to Michigan mom Andrea Ferguson, whose daughter survived the 2021 massacre at Oxford High School and now attends Michigan State.

“It was like reliving Oxford all over again,” Ferguson said, referring to the high school massacre that left four students dead. “The phone call, the word shooting, shooter, it was surreal.”

This was also the second deadly mass shooting for 21-year-old Michigan State University senior Jackie Matthews. She was 11 years when a gunman armed with an assault rifle gunned down 20 first graders and six staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in her hometown of Newtown, Connecticut.

“Something so traumatic is devastating no matter what age you are,” said Matthews, who remembers being on lockdown at Reed Intermediate School, the neighboring school to Sandy Hook.

Meanwhile, an iconic fixture on the MSU campus known as The Rock was painted black Tuesday in response to the mass shooting. And written in red on the rock’s face were the words “How many more?” followed by “Stay Safe MSU.”

“This truly has been a nightmare that we are living tonight,” said Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of the Michigan State University Police.

All three victims were from the Detroit suburbs, university police said. Alexandria Verner was a junior from Clawson, Brian Fraser was a sophomore from Grosse Pointe, and junior Arielle Anderson was also from Grosse Pointe.

Monday’s massacre was the second school shooting of the year, according to NBC News’ school shooting tracker. And it happened on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Parkland school shooting in Florida that left 14 students and three staff members dead.

Catholic clergy in Portugal have abused nearly 5,000 children since 1950, an independent commission said on Monday after hearing hundreds of survivors’ accounts.

Thousands of reports of paedophilia within the church have surfaced around the world, and Pope Francis is under pressure to tackle the scandal.

The Portuguese inquiry, commissioned by the church in the staunchly Catholic country, published its findings after hearing from more than 500 survivors last year.

“This testimony allows us to establish a much larger network of victims, at least 4,815,” the commission head, Pedro Strecht, told a press conference in Lisbon that was attended by several senior church officials.

Strecht, a child psychiatrist, said it would be difficult now for Portugal to ignore the existence of child sexual abuse or the trauma it had caused.

Responding to the report, the head of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP), Bishop José Ornelas, said: “I am satisfied with this difficult and dramatic work, and we hope it marks a new beginning.” He also expressed “a thought for the victims”.

The country’s bishops will convene in March to draw conclusions from the report and “rid the church of this scourge as much as possible”, Father Manuel Barbosa, a senior CEP member, said in January.

Faced with a multitude of clergy sexual abuse cases that have come to light worldwide and the accusations of cover-ups, Pope Francis promised in 2019 to root out paedophilia in the Catholic church.

Inquiries have been launched in several countries in addition to Portugal, including Australia, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The pontiff may meet some of the Portuguese survivors when he visits Lisbon in August, the capital’s auxiliary bishop, Américo Aguiar, said recently.

The time limit for bringing charges has already expired for the vast majority of offences recorded by Strecht’s six-member commission, but 25 cases have been transferred to the prosecution service.

One of them concerns “Alexandra”, a 43-year-old woman who has requested anonymity. She alleges a priest raped her during confession when she was a 17-year-old novice nun.

“It’s very hard to talk about these things in Portugal,” a country where 80% of people say they are Catholic, said Alexandra, who is now a mother and works as a kitchen helper.

“I kept it secret for many years, but it became more and more difficult to cope with it alone,” she said in a telephone interview last week.

She found the courage to report her attacker to church authorities three years ago, but said she was ignored.

The bishop in charge did no more than pass on her complaint to the Vatican, which has still not responded, she said.

Manuel Clemente, the cardinal patriarch of Lisbon and the highest-ranking prelate in Portugal, said last April that he was ready to “recognise the errors of the past” and ask survivors for forgiveness.

“Bishops asking forgiveness doesn’t mean anything to me,” Alexandra said. “We don’t know if they mean it.” She felt sickened by the church and its cover-ups, she added.

The independent commission, at least, had afforded her an understanding ear and psychological support. It was “a good first step” for survivors who wanted to “break the wall of silence” that had surrounded them, she said.

“This has taken far too long,” Strecht quoted another anonymous victim as saying. “The church needs to cleanse itself.”

Mustafa Ashour

Digitization has invaded modern man's life and has the potential to reinvent human life, as the number of smartphone users in 2023 CE has climbed to more than 6.8 billion people or 89% of the Earth's population. Smartphones account for 95.8% of Internet users, while the overall number of social media users is 4.74 billion, or 59.3% of the population.

The increased use of digitalization has been linked to the growth of cybercrime. By 2025, the annual cost of the damage caused by these crimes might be $10.5 trillion worldwide. If cybercrime were a "state," it would have the third-largest economy in the world. The biggest threat to humanity, according to American billionaire "Warren Buffett," is cybercrime. For instance, (1) Ransomware damages cost $20 billion in 2021 CE, according to estimates.

Here, fundamental issues concerning the link between ethics and digitalization arise. Is it possible to foster conscientious awareness in the digital space, thereby preventing the epidemic of cybercrime, or is digitization an arena devoid of the power of conscience and its prick because it is a space formed in the shadows of modernity and secularization, with no room for the unseen in its structure and interactions?

Wasteful instinct

Conscience is the voice of Allah in man, the instinct that distinguishes between good and evil, adherence to the standards of right and wrong, and self-vigilance that does not stop blaming deviation or error.

History confirms that with the processes of modernization and secularization during the last three centuries, the role of religion in the Western world declined, and a situation described as "de-sanctification" emerged. Faith was absent, and the moral standards set by religion were transgressed, under the pretext of "the death of God." Here, the power of control, compulsion and punishment moved away from religion, towards society and what society imposes in terms of law and punishment, to achieve harmony and discipline within it. Therefore, conscience has become the voice of society, not the voice of religion.

This major shift had a huge human cost. The internal self-discipline that used to control morals has been absent. It was a reason for some to get away and do whatever they wanted, as long as they were safe from the law. Perhaps this explains the presence of more than a billion surveillance cameras in the world in 2021 CE, 54% of which are in China, meaning that there is one camera for every three Chinese. This means that technology has become the perfect alternative to conscience. The waves of atheism and secularization, and the vast and expanding digital space, tempt some of those who hide behind screens with pseudonyms and fake accounts, to obey their evil impulses.

Online ethics

The ethics of the internet "Privacy" is one of the qualities of digital, and it is an area where many people hide to access and blackmail others. Furthermore, providing information that dispels privacy clouds makes a person an easy target for any extortion process and tempts some to hunt down those with exposed privacy, especially since the Internet has a strong, almost unforgettable memory, and is characterized by an incredible information retrieval ability, and the legal and legislative limits to protect privacy are less advanced than the escalation of the crime.

Digital "allows people to say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn't typically say or do in the actual world face-to-face". Because there is no direct sensory contact between individuals, the impact of abusive acts on the offender is often underestimated, which encourages him to repeat and lose a sense of remorse or anguish as a result of viewing his outrageous behaviour. The absence of fear and responsibility leads to recidivism.

However, the pressure of cybercrime was a motive to search for a moral space for digitization, which restricts its whims and desires. Discussions have emerged about the necessity of ethics in the digital space, but they were closer to human development advice aimed at improving behavior away from any religious influences, under the pretext of the necessity of "technology neutrality". Thus, advocates of the so-called digital ethics contented themselves with creating an awareness of how to use the digital medium to improve life, or talking about "digital ethics" given that the legal structure could not keep pace with digital developments. In front of that gap crime thrives.

But the presence of conscience and self-censorship in the digital age requires that the individual possess an internal standard for determining right and wrong, which comes from outside the human realm. Normative norms that come from another space, which is the religion that defines what is right and wrong, good and bad, shared by the largest possible number of people so that man becomes a censor of himself before any authoritarian control from outside.

Despite this urgent need for religion in building conscience, to curb rebelliousness and mutations of human evil, the majority of the visions circulating in Western society do not pay attention to the role of religion in building conscience, and advise - as an alternative - to teach digital ethics from childhood and in the early educational stages, and develop them with Educational rise, so that ethics becomes inherent to digital, but they forget that conscience cannot detect its existence through magnetic resonance imaging, as it is not a network of wires, but something immaterial, as it is "a memory from within that directs man, and an internal feeling of right and wrong, virtue and vice." written in our hearts since our creation.” That is, it is the sound of common sense.

Modern facts demonstrate that materialism is not the most reasonable way to interact with the world, and especially with technology. Nor is the mind alone capable of instilling self-censorship in human behaviour. Deviant programmers that engage in electronic blackmail and fraud are among the most bright and knowledgeable individuals, but their morals are low, and their consciences are idle and cancelled. One indication of firm conviction in the invisible is conscience. When a person with a conscience hides, he is aware that unseen powers are observing him externally and inwardly, and nothing of his intention or action is hidden from those unseen powers.

A similarity can be found between digital tyranny and pharaonic tyranny, in the Almighty’s saying in Surat Al-Fajr: "And [with] Pharaoh, owner of the stakes? –(10) [All of] whom oppressed within the lands(11) And increased therein the corruption.(12) So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment.(13)"

 So, what does a person expect to gain from obscuring the presence of God, striking the foundations of belief, confusing them, and weakening their influence and presence in life? Here we recall the saying of Christ, peace be upon him: “You will know them by their fruits. Do you reap grapes from thistles or figs from thorns?”

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1. Ransomware: A type of malware that is designed to block access to files, until a sum of money is paid.

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For centuries, cows have been considered sacred by India’s majority Hindu population, a symbol of both the Earth and the divine.

Indeed, so revered are the animals that authorities had planned to rebrand this Valentine’s Day as “Cow Hug Day”, hoping the move would both boost citizens’ “emotional richness” and strike a blow for local heritage over what is seen as a western cultural import.

But the move appears to have backfired and been abandoned after it prompted a flood of internet memes, cartoons and jokes by TV hosts about the importance of consent.

The declaration of February 14 as “Cow Hug Day,” had come in a statement Monday from the Animal Welfare Board of India, which called cows the “backbone of Indian culture and rural economy.”

The cow is “the giver of all, providing riches to humanity” due to its “nourishing nature,” said the agency, a statutory body that advises India’s Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.

It said the push to hug cows was part of an effort to promote “Vedic” or sacred Hindu traditions, which it claimed have been eroded by Western influence.

“Vedic traditions are almost on the verge of extinction due to the progress of (western) culture over time,” the statement said. “The dazzle of western civilization has made our physical culture and heritage almost forgotten.”

But within a week of the announcement – after days of mockery and ridicule online – the idea appears to have been dropped.

For days, media outlets have been mocking the government’s plan, publishing satirical cartoons showing cows running away from amorous men, while internet users have delighted in posting videos of violent encounters between beast and man.

An anchor on one of India’s leading English-language news channels, NDTV, was even filmed attempting to hug several cows, which appeared to rebuke his advances.

“Consent is important,” he joked during the segment.

‘Cow science’

This is not the first time the government has caused a stir with its policies towards cows – the killing or eating of which is considered a sin by many Hindus, who account for about 80% of India’s 1.3 billion people.

The sale and slaughter of the animal is banned in much of the country and the animals are often left to roam free in the streets and roads looking emaciated, where motorists must take care to avoid hitting them.

An agency for the protection of cows, known as the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog (RKA), was set up in 2019 by the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying.

Two years later, the RKA was forced to indefinitely postpone a national “cow science” exam after the curriculum prompted widespread criticism over its unscientific claims about the animal.

Among several unproven claims, the 54-page exam study guide stated that large-scale abattoir activity leads to major earthquakes, suggesting that pain emitted by mass slaughter could generate enough stress to trigger a seismic reaction.

Without providing evidence, it also stated that native (Indian) cows produce the best quality of milk, compared to “exotic cows.”

A political animal

Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rise to power in 2014 on a wave of Hindu-nationalism, the animal has also become increasingly politicized.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is strongly aligned with conservative Hindu traditions and critics say cow-worship has been used as a tool to intimidate, harass and even kill Muslims, who they accuse in some cases of disrespecting the animals.

According to Human Rights Watch, cow vigilante crimes in India have been ignored or covered up by authorities since Modi took office.

During Modi’s 2014 election campaign, he promised to end a “pink revolution” – a phrase he used to describe the slaughter of cattle.

Other BJP lawmakers have taken it one step further.

“I had promised that I will break the hands and legs of those who do not consider cows their mother and kill them,” said Vikram Saini, a legislator for the state of Uttar Pradesh, at an event in March 2017.

The statements led to an outcry in the country where violence against women and minorities makes frequent headlines. Critics say there is a double standard within the government, and argue the BJP isn’t doing enough to protect vulnerable groups.

In 2017, a photo series from photographer and activist Sujatro Ghosh portraying Indian women wearing cow masks went viral on social media. The series of images was intended to depict a society in which cows are more valued than women.

Speaking to reporters about “Hug a Cow Day” on Thursday – before it was cancelled – BJP lawmaker Giriraj Singh said “a very good decision has been taken” by the government.

“Cows should be hugged,” he said. “We should love and hug the cow.”