Islamic Traditions and Comparative Modernities

Islamic Reform and Modernities in South Asia

From the beginning of the Islamic era, Muslim societies have experienced periods of renewal (tajdid). Since the eighteenth century, Muslim societies across the world have been subject to a prolonged and increasingly deeply felt process of renewal. This has been expressed in different ways in different contexts. Amongst political elites with immediate concerns to answer the challenges of the Wes...

Alternative Modernities for Colonial Korea

Comparative Observations on the Near Eastern Epic Traditions

We must not doubt that stories were told and enjoyed long before humans learned how to transpose what the ear hears into what the eye sees. Whether brief or developed, transmitted verbatim or embellished, these tales were likely sung, chanted, intoned, or declaimed, with or without bodily accompaniments. Neither must we doubt that long before what we call writing (characters with visual codes) ...

Islamic and Conventional Banking in the Nineties: a Comparative Study

There is a serious lack of empirical studies on Islamic banking. This paper attempts to fill that gap to some extent. Using data for the 1990-98 period, several hypotheses and common perceptions about the practice of Islamic banking have been tested. The performance of Islamic banks has been evaluated using both trend and ratio analyses. For this purpose, some objective “benchmarks” for various...

Comparative Performance Study of Conventional and Islamic Banking in Pakistan

The purpose of this empirical study is to analyze and compare the performance of Islamic and conventional banking in Pakistan and to find out which of the banking stream is performing better than other. For this study, sample of 22 conventional banks and 5 Islamic banks were selected. For in-depth understanding and sound comparison, key performance indicators were divided into external and inte...