Midtown Comics is a New York City comic book retailer with three shops in Manhattan and an e-commerce website. The largest comic book store in the United States, the company opened its first store in the Times Square area in 1997, its second was opened on Lexington Avenue in 2004, is known as the Grand Central store for its proximity to Grand Central Terminal. Its Downtown store was opened on Fulton Street in the Financial District in November 2010, it used to operate a boutique inside Manhattan's Times Square Toys R Us. The store is noted for appearances by celebrities known outside the comic book industry, for its friendly and energetic staff, for being the most media-friendly comic store in the United States, it was named by The Village Voice in 2012 as the Best Comic Book Store in New York, has been hailed by CBR.com as "the industry’s leading retailer of comic books, graphic novels and manga." On July 13, 2012, the National Geographic Channel premiered Comic Store Heroes, a reality television program set at Midtown Comics.

In 2013, it was ranked number 44 on Bleeding Cool magazine's Top 100 Power List of Comic Books, due to its geographic proximity to the then-headquarters of "Big Two" of the American comic book publishing industry, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, the relationship between the store and industry professionals. Midtown was founded by partners Gerry Gladston, Angelo Chantly, Thomas Galitos and Robert Mileta, who met as teenagers in Astoria and sold comics in their video stores in Brooklyn and Queens before opening the flagship Midtown Comics in Manhattan, on West 40th Street and Seventh Avenue; the store houses 500,000 books in its collection. According to The New York Times: The stereotypical view of comics stores is that they are dim and dusty places with a no-girls-allowed clubhouse atmosphere. In reality, they run the gamut. For instance, the West Side Midtown store is bright and welcoming to all, with two floors and 5,000 square feet of space; the main floor, one story above street level, has a long wall with countless racks of new and released comics.

The rest of the space offers DVDs, trading cards, back issues and trade paperbacks. Toys and other collectibles are upstairs; the second Midtown store, on Lexington Avenue and 45th Street, though smaller than the first one, is just as inviting. Midtown Comics is the official retail sponsor of New York Comic Con, has performed this role since the NYCC's inception in 2006; each year, Midtown creates a "show-within-a-show", featuring round-the-clock appearances by comics creators and variant comic books by publishers like Marvel Comics and Top Cow. On November 10, 2010, Midtown Comics opened a third Manhattan store. Known as their Downtown store, it is located in the Financial District, at 64 Fulton Street, in the southernmost section of the borough. Inaugural book signings were held for that branch featuring Jim Lee and Jonathan Layman, creator of Chew; as of June 2012, Midtown is the largest comic book store in the United States. The store is a sponsor of Artists Assemble!, a comics festival in Union City, New Jersey that began in February 2013.

In May 2012, Midtown Comics opened a boutique inside the flagship FAO Schwarz toy store in Manhattan's Fifth Avenue shopping district. The boutique offered graphic novels, hardcover books and collectibles; the boutique ceased operations when FAO Schwartz closed in July 2015. In October 2013, Midtown opened a shop inside the Toys R Us store in Manhattan's Times Square; the shop, located next to the second floor animatronic Tyrannosaurus that forms the centerpiece of the Jurassic Park display, offers items similar to that offered in the FAO Schwarz boutique. In 2013, Midtown was ranked number 44 on Bleeding Cool magazine's Top 100 Power List of Comic Books, due to its geographic proximity to the headquarters of the "Big Two" of the American comic book publishing industry, Marvel and DC, the fact that industry professionals both shop there and are privy to reaction from Midtown staffers and owners. In October 2016, Marvel Comics and Midtown Comics jointly decided to pull from circulation J. Scott Campbell's variant cover of the first issue of The Invincible Iron Man, produced for the store, after previews of the cover were criticized for sexualizing the depicted character, 15-year-old Riri Williams.

The cover depicted the character, a teenaged MIT engineering student who reverse engineers one of Iron Man's armored suits to wear herself, in a midriff-baring crop top, in contrast to the more modest way in which artist Stefano Caselli depicted the character in the book's interior art. Campbell called the decision "unfortunate," explained that his rendition of the character was intended to depict "a sassy, coming-of-age young woman", he regarded the reaction to the cover as a "faux controversy", saying, "I gave her a sassy'attitude'...'sexualizing' was not intended. This reaction is odd." Brian Michael Bendis, the writer on the series, was pleased with the decision to pull the cover, saying that while he liked the face Campbell had drawn on Riri when he viewed the art as a work in progress, he disliked the completed art, saying, "Specialty covers are not in my purview and it was being produced separately from the work of the people involved in making the comic. Not to pass the buck but that’s the fact.

If I had seen a sketch or something I would have voiced similar concerns. I am certain the next version will be amazing." Midtown's website was at first purely informational, but has developed into a full-scale retail website. The stores and website are supported by a warehouse in Queens, a staff of around 150 who are described by New York Magazine as "a rare mix of nerd knowledge and chummy confidence – who foster an atmosphere where browsing

Desmond Fitzgerald is an Irish medical doctor and academic leader. On 6 October 2016, Fitzgerald was announced as the President-elect of the University of Limerick, he took up this role in early 2017. Prior to this, Desmond held the positions of Vice President for Health Affairs with University College Dublin and Chief Academic Officer at Ireland East Hospital Group from 2015 to 2016. Fitzgerald was born on October 30, 1953 to Maureen O’Donovan from Limerick and Thomas Joseph Fitzgerald from Belfast. Fitzgerald attended Stillorgan, Co.. Dublin, he studied medicine at University College Dublin, National University of Ireland and graduated with a MB, BAO, BCH, in 1977, a Diploma in Mathematical Statistics from Trinity College Dublin in 1982. He was awarded an MD from the National University of Ireland in 1994. Following his graduation from medical school at UCD and medical residency in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, the Charitable Infirmary Jervis Street Hospital and the Richmond Hospital in Dublin, Desmond completed a Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin.

In 1983, he moved to Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the US to train in clinical pharmacology and cardiology. He remained in the US to head a large coronary care facility and a research programme into the causes of cardiovascular disease. In 1991, Fitzgerald returned to University College Dublin and shortly after this he established a research laboratory and held attending physician positions at several Dublin hospitals. In 1994, he was appointed Professor and Head of Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Over the next 10 years, he built a research programme that bridged basic research and the clinical sciences; these included the RCSI Clinical Research Centre. He led the development of the College's translational medicine research programme, which culminated in the Programme for Human Genomics, a €42m research partnership between the three medical schools in Dublin that has since grown into the national programme for translational medicine. From 2002, he was appointed as Director of Research and a member of the senior management team at RCSI.

In 2004, Fitzgerald was appointed Vice President for Research and Professor of Molecular Medicine in UCD. Fitzgerald developed the research strategy and oversaw its implementation through a new organisation, UCD Research. In five years, the university soared in global rankings to enter the top 100, trebled its research funding and increased its rate of academic publication by 250%. Central to the research strategy in UCD has been the development of a series of multi-disciplinary programmes with a strong translational focus; these have included six research institutes spanning humanities, social sciences, engineering and business. He developed a series of programmes in the humanities targeting major societal challenges in areas that included education and child development. Fitzgerald established 7 structured PhD programmes and a Researcher Career Framework and led the strategic recruitment of a large group of academics. Fitzgerald was criticised for his high salary on joining UCD from RCSI. In reality, his package was in all likelihood less than at RCSI.

UCD defended the salary on the basis that he achieved a major turnaround in research funding, amounting to €1bn during his watch. Fitzgerald led the development of the UCD Science Centre, a €300m development, funded through philanthropy and successive bids to the national investment fund in higher education, the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions. Phase I opened in September 2011, with Phase II completed in September 2013, as of October 2016, Phase III is in the planning stage. From the outset, it was envisaged that computational science and informatics would be central to the development; this ambition has been realized with an €80m national data analytics centre award to UCD and its partners in 2013. The UCD Science District includes several major programmes, include The Earth Institute and INSIGHT, the national data analytics programme, it is home to Ireland's largest and most comprehensive campus for education and research in the Health Sciences, spanning biomedical research, population science and health services research.

Fitzgerald developed a science outreach programme, including the UCD Imagine Science Film Festival and Science Expression. During his tenure at UCD, Fitzgerald has played a central role in the development of biomedical and health research, building links to the hospital campuses. Central to these efforts has been the UCD Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, opened in 2002, a 13,000 sq m facility, home to 400+ biomedical researchers. Several state-of-the-art technology platforms have been developed in the Institute to support the biomedical community, including comprehensive proteomics facilities, gene sequencing and bioinformatics. Based on these capabilities, the Institute was well positioned in 2009 to establish the €20m national programme in Systems Biology funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Allied to the UCD Conway Institute are facilities for translational medicine, with the core goal of improving patient care; the facilities include the Clinical Research Centres on the ho

Certain verses from the Qur'an have been a subject of controversy by many critics. The 216th verse of the Surah, Al-Baqara is about Jihad in the way of God. كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ ٱلْقِتَالُ وَهُوَ كُرْهٌ لَّكُمْۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تَكْرَهُوا۟ شَيْـًٔا وَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْۖ وَعَسَىٰٓ أَن تُحِبُّوا۟ شَيْـًٔا وَهُوَ شَرٌّ لَّكُمْۗ وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ وَأَنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ Transliteration Kutiba ʿalaykumu l-qitālu wahuwa kurhun lakum waʿasā ʾan takrahū šayʾan wahuwa ḫayrun lakum waʿasā ʾan tuḥibbū šayʾan wahuwa šarrun llakum w-Allāhu yaʿlamu wāʾantum lā taʿlāmūna. Abdullah Yusuf Ali's commentary on this verse is: Some quote Al-Baqara 216 as proof of Islam's intention to Jihad. Explaining the context of this verse, Qur'anic scholars have commented on the historical context of this verse, as well as the overall context of this verse, in which fighting is only ordained in conditions of persecution. Muslims are required to defend themselves from oppression to establish justice. Abdullah Yusuf Ali explains the historical context of the verse:Abdul Majid Daryabadi explains the historical context of this verse: Online Quran Project includes the Qur'an translation of Abdul Majid Daryabadi.

The Qur'an and War: Observations on Islamic Just War Chapter Introductions to the Qur'an - by Syed Abu-Ala' Maududi Tafheem-ul Qur'an Towards Understanding the Qur'an Terrorism and Jihad: An Islamic Perspective - Part - 3 by Zakir Naik Terrorism and Jihad: An Islamic Perspective - Part - 4 by Zakir Naik