Few events of history are as commonly misunderstood in the West in general, and the US in particu... more Few events of history are as commonly misunderstood in the West in general, and the US in particular, as are the Muslim Conquests of the 7th and 8th Century or the “Crusade Periods” of the 11th and 12th Centuries. Unfortunately, much of what Americans know about early Islam and the Crusades are skewed by post-9/11 politics or obscured by popular culture such as Ridley Scott’s recent movie, “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005). Typically, Islam and its leaders are portrayed as fanatical religious zealots, violently intolerant of other religions or cultures.
Fortunately, these eras are extensively documented by contemporary scholars, Muslim, Christian and Jewish alike (Aslan 2011; Lewis 2008; Housley 1992). While there were certainly some instances of “conversion by the sword,” (Levy-Rubin 2000) as early as the 8th Century, cities under Muslim rule (i.e. the “Pax Islamica”) hosted theological debates with invited Christian scholars (Griffith 1992). Jews fleeing brutal persecution within Christendom were promoted to high-level administrative posts under Caliphate rulers (Lewis 1984). During the same period, the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad (under Al-Maʾmūn ibn Harūn 786-833 CE) was the multicultural intellectual center of the World for the study of humanities as well as sciences including mathematics, engineering, astronomy, medicine, cartography, chemistry, and zoology (Al-Khalili 2012, Lyons 2010). While to completely discount the sanguinary nature of these periods would be naïve, the overwhelming weight of scholarship suggests the vast majority of peoples who converted to Islam did so willingly, if not even enthusiastically. Antony Adolf (2009) noting that “[T]he rapidity of these vast early territorial gains is no less stunning than the low degree of violence Muslims used to achieve them.” Schuon (2003) writes that “Islam is often reproached as having propagated its faith by the sword; what is overlooked is that persuasion played a much greater role than war in the expansion of Islam.” It should also be noted that typically, Christians and Jews were not actually forced to convert to Islam, although were required to pay the “jizya,” a type of tax or tribute payable to the local authorities (Nyazee 2000; Schacht 1964).
What have not been adequately critiqued, at least in a contemporary leadership/management context, are successful leadership traits of both the Prophet Muhammad and his early civil and military successors, which arguably can be said to have helped Islam spread throughout the known world and allowed it to rule far flung empires for over 500 hundred years. Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level (Dana 2010). Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith (Dana 2009, Ramadani et al 2015). Dana (2009) and Ramadani et al (2015) make the case for specific attributes, qualities and characteristics, which provide a context to evaluate effective entrepreneurial behavior. This article extends the previously mentioned scholars research by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro... more Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level. Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith. This chapter extends the previous researches in the field by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
Given the current risk environment, businesses are obligated to do their utmost to protect system... more Given the current risk environment, businesses are obligated to do their utmost to protect systems and ensure consumer confidentiality. Unfortunately, even the prudent and vigilant business entities may still be susceptible to data theft or other outside system intrusion. In this respect, sound corporate governance should include some degree of planning and preparation for worst-case scenarios. There are several fundamental questions that every business should consider in order to effectively prepare for a breach of cybersecurity and ensure the integrity of stored data. For instance, in the event of a major system compromise, who bears the cost of system restoration or reimbursement? What about negative publicity, loss of goodwill, and lawsuits? What constitutes due diligence before and after a data compromise? What steps should management consider post-breach? What are the legal consequences to our business, customers, and other stakeholders, and should we purchase cyberinsurance? This chapter seeks to provide answers to those questions, as well as to offer valuable suggestions for both individual private consumers and business entities on how to best protect electronic information. The first section of the chapter, “Part I,” addresses current infrastructure risks and the challenges associated with cyber insurance underwriting. The next section, “Part II,” will attempt to summarize the increasingly complex legal and regulatory landscape inherent in preserving data integrity and preventing identity theft. Finally, the last section, “Part III,” of this chapter will address the concept of “due diligence” and emphasize the importance of postbreach best practices that seek to protect revenue streams and customer goodwill while minimizing business disruptions and legal liability.
Police must be provided with consistent and unambiguous legal authority to arrest and detain dome... more Police must be provided with consistent and unambiguous legal authority to arrest and detain domestic terror suspects who are “armed, equipped and prepared” to engage in illegal acts that are dangerous to human life and safety, or who appear to intimidate or coerce others, or that appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by destruction of property or physical violence. If individuals engaged in so-called Black Bloc tactics face preemptive misdemeanor arrests (or felony arrests for actually engaging in violence) they will be forced to remove masks and be deprived of their most effective (and disruptive) tactical tools and strategies. In many cases, they might just stay home. On the other hand, groups using these techniques may adapt to circumvent the ways in which they are profiled. In every instance, there are substantial First Amendment considerations that necessitate careful tailoring of law enforcement measures to threats posed, and practical considerations tha...
Entrepreneurship and Management in an Islamic Context, 2016
Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro... more Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level. Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith. This chapter extends the previous researches in the field by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
In the current risk climate, the loss of confidential patient data to unauthorized third parties ... more In the current risk climate, the loss of confidential patient data to unauthorized third parties presents a daunting challenge for healthcare professionals. In this context, the introduction of large networks of computerized health information has caused the number of individuals with access to patient medical records to expand exponentially.Physicians make widespread use of laptops, home-computer links, smart phones, smart cards, USB flash drives and PDAs. E-prescribing systems link physicians and others directly to pharmacies. A contemporary physician's Blackberry typically contains far more patient information than the locked filing cabinets of previous years. Unfortunately, all of this healthcare data — ranging from medical diagnosis and treatment codes, to names, addresses, birthdates, social security numbers, bank and credit card accounts — has enormous value to identity thieves who exploit open networks and Wi-Fi systems.Within the context of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 all "covered entities" that collect private health information must comply with specific administrative, technical and physical security standards and procedures for "electronic protected health information."
... 6 Over the past two years, hackers, disaffected employees, and other cyber criminals have com... more ... 6 Over the past two years, hackers, disaffected employees, and other cyber criminals have compromised data networks at TJ Maxx/Marshalls, Barnes & Noble, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Stanford University, Princeton University, The Veterans Administration, Fannie Mae ...
Few career fields are as dynamic as healthcare. Even non-clinical employees and volunteer staff m... more Few career fields are as dynamic as healthcare. Even non-clinical employees and volunteer staff may encounter risks or assume responsibilities unforeseeable in other career fields. Clinical workers in particular must respond to life and death workplace challenges with competence and compassion. Employee reliability is the single most important health system input. Reliability begins with thorough employment background screening. As they minimize risks from “bad hires,” background investigations must also comply with federal, state, and local laws as well as industry standards and best practices. Although predicting the likelihood of future malfeasance by any single employee is impossible, effective backgrounding enhances quality of care, decreases risks, and lowers costs. Managing the vetting process with competence requires a solid working knowledge of all lawful steps needed to ensure full, due-diligence compliant background investigations. If a screening process is transparent an...
Creating a knowledge base that is accurate, up-to-date and complete remains a significant challen... more Creating a knowledge base that is accurate, up-to-date and complete remains a significant challenge despite substantial efforts in automated knowledge base construction. In this paper, we present Alexandria -- a system for unsupervised, high-precision knowledge base construction. Alexandria uses a probabilistic program to define a process of converting knowledge base facts into unstructured text. Using probabilistic inference, we can invert this program and so retrieve facts, schemas and entities from web text. The use of a probabilistic program allows uncertainty in the text to be propagated through to the retrieved facts, which increases accuracy and helps merge facts from multiple sources. Because Alexandria does not require labelled training data, knowledge bases can be constructed with the minimum of manual input. We demonstrate this by constructing a high precision (typically 97\%+) knowledge base for people from a single seed fact.
Few events of history are as commonly misunderstood in the West in general, and the US in particu... more Few events of history are as commonly misunderstood in the West in general, and the US in particular, as are the Muslim Conquests of the 7th and 8th Century or the “Crusade Periods” of the 11th and 12th Centuries. Unfortunately, much of what Americans know about early Islam and the Crusades are skewed by post-9/11 politics or obscured by popular culture such as Ridley Scott’s recent movie, “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005). Typically, Islam and its leaders are portrayed as fanatical religious zealots, violently intolerant of other religions or cultures.
Fortunately, these eras are extensively documented by contemporary scholars, Muslim, Christian and Jewish alike (Aslan 2011; Lewis 2008; Housley 1992). While there were certainly some instances of “conversion by the sword,” (Levy-Rubin 2000) as early as the 8th Century, cities under Muslim rule (i.e. the “Pax Islamica”) hosted theological debates with invited Christian scholars (Griffith 1992). Jews fleeing brutal persecution within Christendom were promoted to high-level administrative posts under Caliphate rulers (Lewis 1984). During the same period, the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad (under Al-Maʾmūn ibn Harūn 786-833 CE) was the multicultural intellectual center of the World for the study of humanities as well as sciences including mathematics, engineering, astronomy, medicine, cartography, chemistry, and zoology (Al-Khalili 2012, Lyons 2010). While to completely discount the sanguinary nature of these periods would be naïve, the overwhelming weight of scholarship suggests the vast majority of peoples who converted to Islam did so willingly, if not even enthusiastically. Antony Adolf (2009) noting that “[T]he rapidity of these vast early territorial gains is no less stunning than the low degree of violence Muslims used to achieve them.” Schuon (2003) writes that “Islam is often reproached as having propagated its faith by the sword; what is overlooked is that persuasion played a much greater role than war in the expansion of Islam.” It should also be noted that typically, Christians and Jews were not actually forced to convert to Islam, although were required to pay the “jizya,” a type of tax or tribute payable to the local authorities (Nyazee 2000; Schacht 1964).
What have not been adequately critiqued, at least in a contemporary leadership/management context, are successful leadership traits of both the Prophet Muhammad and his early civil and military successors, which arguably can be said to have helped Islam spread throughout the known world and allowed it to rule far flung empires for over 500 hundred years. Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level (Dana 2010). Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith (Dana 2009, Ramadani et al 2015). Dana (2009) and Ramadani et al (2015) make the case for specific attributes, qualities and characteristics, which provide a context to evaluate effective entrepreneurial behavior. This article extends the previously mentioned scholars research by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro... more Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level. Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith. This chapter extends the previous researches in the field by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
Given the current risk environment, businesses are obligated to do their utmost to protect system... more Given the current risk environment, businesses are obligated to do their utmost to protect systems and ensure consumer confidentiality. Unfortunately, even the prudent and vigilant business entities may still be susceptible to data theft or other outside system intrusion. In this respect, sound corporate governance should include some degree of planning and preparation for worst-case scenarios. There are several fundamental questions that every business should consider in order to effectively prepare for a breach of cybersecurity and ensure the integrity of stored data. For instance, in the event of a major system compromise, who bears the cost of system restoration or reimbursement? What about negative publicity, loss of goodwill, and lawsuits? What constitutes due diligence before and after a data compromise? What steps should management consider post-breach? What are the legal consequences to our business, customers, and other stakeholders, and should we purchase cyberinsurance? This chapter seeks to provide answers to those questions, as well as to offer valuable suggestions for both individual private consumers and business entities on how to best protect electronic information. The first section of the chapter, “Part I,” addresses current infrastructure risks and the challenges associated with cyber insurance underwriting. The next section, “Part II,” will attempt to summarize the increasingly complex legal and regulatory landscape inherent in preserving data integrity and preventing identity theft. Finally, the last section, “Part III,” of this chapter will address the concept of “due diligence” and emphasize the importance of postbreach best practices that seek to protect revenue streams and customer goodwill while minimizing business disruptions and legal liability.
Police must be provided with consistent and unambiguous legal authority to arrest and detain dome... more Police must be provided with consistent and unambiguous legal authority to arrest and detain domestic terror suspects who are “armed, equipped and prepared” to engage in illegal acts that are dangerous to human life and safety, or who appear to intimidate or coerce others, or that appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by destruction of property or physical violence. If individuals engaged in so-called Black Bloc tactics face preemptive misdemeanor arrests (or felony arrests for actually engaging in violence) they will be forced to remove masks and be deprived of their most effective (and disruptive) tactical tools and strategies. In many cases, they might just stay home. On the other hand, groups using these techniques may adapt to circumvent the ways in which they are profiled. In every instance, there are substantial First Amendment considerations that necessitate careful tailoring of law enforcement measures to threats posed, and practical considerations tha...
Entrepreneurship and Management in an Islamic Context, 2016
Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro... more Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level. Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith. This chapter extends the previous researches in the field by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
In the current risk climate, the loss of confidential patient data to unauthorized third parties ... more In the current risk climate, the loss of confidential patient data to unauthorized third parties presents a daunting challenge for healthcare professionals. In this context, the introduction of large networks of computerized health information has caused the number of individuals with access to patient medical records to expand exponentially.Physicians make widespread use of laptops, home-computer links, smart phones, smart cards, USB flash drives and PDAs. E-prescribing systems link physicians and others directly to pharmacies. A contemporary physician's Blackberry typically contains far more patient information than the locked filing cabinets of previous years. Unfortunately, all of this healthcare data — ranging from medical diagnosis and treatment codes, to names, addresses, birthdates, social security numbers, bank and credit card accounts — has enormous value to identity thieves who exploit open networks and Wi-Fi systems.Within the context of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 all "covered entities" that collect private health information must comply with specific administrative, technical and physical security standards and procedures for "electronic protected health information."
... 6 Over the past two years, hackers, disaffected employees, and other cyber criminals have com... more ... 6 Over the past two years, hackers, disaffected employees, and other cyber criminals have compromised data networks at TJ Maxx/Marshalls, Barnes & Noble, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Stanford University, Princeton University, The Veterans Administration, Fannie Mae ...
Few career fields are as dynamic as healthcare. Even non-clinical employees and volunteer staff m... more Few career fields are as dynamic as healthcare. Even non-clinical employees and volunteer staff may encounter risks or assume responsibilities unforeseeable in other career fields. Clinical workers in particular must respond to life and death workplace challenges with competence and compassion. Employee reliability is the single most important health system input. Reliability begins with thorough employment background screening. As they minimize risks from “bad hires,” background investigations must also comply with federal, state, and local laws as well as industry standards and best practices. Although predicting the likelihood of future malfeasance by any single employee is impossible, effective backgrounding enhances quality of care, decreases risks, and lowers costs. Managing the vetting process with competence requires a solid working knowledge of all lawful steps needed to ensure full, due-diligence compliant background investigations. If a screening process is transparent an...
Creating a knowledge base that is accurate, up-to-date and complete remains a significant challen... more Creating a knowledge base that is accurate, up-to-date and complete remains a significant challenge despite substantial efforts in automated knowledge base construction. In this paper, we present Alexandria -- a system for unsupervised, high-precision knowledge base construction. Alexandria uses a probabilistic program to define a process of converting knowledge base facts into unstructured text. Using probabilistic inference, we can invert this program and so retrieve facts, schemas and entities from web text. The use of a probabilistic program allows uncertainty in the text to be propagated through to the retrieved facts, which increases accuracy and helps merge facts from multiple sources. Because Alexandria does not require labelled training data, knowledge bases can be constructed with the minimum of manual input. We demonstrate this by constructing a high precision (typically 97\%+) knowledge base for people from a single seed fact.
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Books by John Winn
Fortunately, these eras are extensively documented by contemporary scholars, Muslim, Christian and Jewish alike (Aslan 2011; Lewis 2008; Housley 1992). While there were certainly some instances of “conversion by the sword,” (Levy-Rubin 2000) as early as the 8th Century, cities under Muslim rule (i.e. the “Pax Islamica”) hosted theological debates with invited Christian scholars (Griffith 1992). Jews fleeing brutal persecution within Christendom were promoted to high-level administrative posts under Caliphate rulers (Lewis 1984). During the same period, the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad (under Al-Maʾmūn ibn Harūn 786-833 CE) was the multicultural intellectual center of the World for the study of humanities as well as sciences including mathematics, engineering, astronomy, medicine, cartography, chemistry, and zoology (Al-Khalili 2012, Lyons 2010).
While to completely discount the sanguinary nature of these periods would be naïve, the overwhelming weight of scholarship suggests the vast majority of peoples who converted to Islam did so willingly, if not even enthusiastically. Antony Adolf (2009) noting that “[T]he rapidity of these vast early territorial gains is no less stunning than the low degree of violence Muslims used to achieve them.” Schuon (2003) writes that “Islam is often reproached as having propagated its faith by the sword; what is overlooked is that persuasion played a much greater role than war in the expansion of Islam.” It should also be noted that typically, Christians and Jews were not actually forced to convert to Islam, although were required to pay the “jizya,” a type of tax or tribute payable to the local authorities (Nyazee 2000; Schacht 1964).
What have not been adequately critiqued, at least in a contemporary leadership/management context, are successful leadership traits of both the Prophet Muhammad and his early civil and military successors, which arguably can be said to have helped Islam spread throughout the known world and allowed it to rule far flung empires for over 500 hundred years. Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level (Dana 2010). Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith (Dana 2009, Ramadani et al 2015). Dana (2009) and Ramadani et al (2015) make the case for specific attributes, qualities and characteristics, which provide a context to evaluate effective entrepreneurial behavior.
This article extends the previously mentioned scholars research by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.
Papers by John Winn
Fortunately, these eras are extensively documented by contemporary scholars, Muslim, Christian and Jewish alike (Aslan 2011; Lewis 2008; Housley 1992). While there were certainly some instances of “conversion by the sword,” (Levy-Rubin 2000) as early as the 8th Century, cities under Muslim rule (i.e. the “Pax Islamica”) hosted theological debates with invited Christian scholars (Griffith 1992). Jews fleeing brutal persecution within Christendom were promoted to high-level administrative posts under Caliphate rulers (Lewis 1984). During the same period, the “House of Wisdom” in Baghdad (under Al-Maʾmūn ibn Harūn 786-833 CE) was the multicultural intellectual center of the World for the study of humanities as well as sciences including mathematics, engineering, astronomy, medicine, cartography, chemistry, and zoology (Al-Khalili 2012, Lyons 2010).
While to completely discount the sanguinary nature of these periods would be naïve, the overwhelming weight of scholarship suggests the vast majority of peoples who converted to Islam did so willingly, if not even enthusiastically. Antony Adolf (2009) noting that “[T]he rapidity of these vast early territorial gains is no less stunning than the low degree of violence Muslims used to achieve them.” Schuon (2003) writes that “Islam is often reproached as having propagated its faith by the sword; what is overlooked is that persuasion played a much greater role than war in the expansion of Islam.” It should also be noted that typically, Christians and Jews were not actually forced to convert to Islam, although were required to pay the “jizya,” a type of tax or tribute payable to the local authorities (Nyazee 2000; Schacht 1964).
What have not been adequately critiqued, at least in a contemporary leadership/management context, are successful leadership traits of both the Prophet Muhammad and his early civil and military successors, which arguably can be said to have helped Islam spread throughout the known world and allowed it to rule far flung empires for over 500 hundred years. Previous scholarly work has explored how religion influences behavior at both the macro and micro level (Dana 2010). Specific attention has been given to the role Islam plays as a variable in the behavior of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship as experienced within the context of the Islamic faith (Dana 2009, Ramadani et al 2015). Dana (2009) and Ramadani et al (2015) make the case for specific attributes, qualities and characteristics, which provide a context to evaluate effective entrepreneurial behavior.
This article extends the previously mentioned scholars research by drawing on exemplars that would allow further research on what effective leadership within an Islamic context looks like. Meritocracy, honesty, tolerance, personal courage, and compassion for others were essential underpinnings of the expansion of Islam from the borders of China to the Atlantic coast of Spain. A model for a conceptualization and examination of Islamic Leadership has been developed. The model involves a refinement of previously proposed, but not fully conceptualized, frameworks of Islamic Leadership.