The notion of " Islamic finance " was born during the tumultuous identity-politics years of the mid-twentieth century. Indian, Pakistani, and Arab thinkers contemplated independence from Britain, and independence of Pakistan from India, within a context of " Islamic society. " Islam was assumed to inspire political, economic, and financial systems that are distinctive and independent of the Wes...

This article recognises the potential importance of Islamic finance products in Australia, along with the current regulatory impediments preventing Australia from becoming a leader in the Asia-Pacific Islamic finance market. Taking into account the potential importance of, and impediments to, Islamic finance, this article highlights, through the historical development and contemporary state of ...

Recent research in group cognition points towards the existence of collective cognitive competencies that transcend individual group members' cognitive competencies. Since rationality is a key cognitive competence for group decision making, and group cognition emerges from the coordination of individual cognition during social interactions, this study tests the extent to which collaborative and...

This article formulates a model of Islamic science, medicine, and bioethics, part of the ongoing inner-Islamic discourse on the positioning of Islam vis-a-vis the life sciences and bioethics as developed within a non-Islamic context. It investigates the Islam-and-science paradigm considering the Islamic categorization of the sciences, provides a working definition of Islamic science including m...

Islamic Art is the art of civilization based on Islamic religion. Moreover, it not only concerned with particular region or particular people rather it is a combination of different civilizations and historical circumstances as painted with Islamic weltanschauung. The Arab civilization is probably more important. Although the Arabs have little art and even then, they developed Islamic art with ...

The Emergence of `Islamic Education Movement` is a response to the `secularization of education` faced by the ummah (muslim people) all over the world; in the sense that the `traditional Islamic Sciences` which are rooted in Islamic sources i.e. al-Qur’an (the Holy Book) and as-Sunnah (Tradition of the prophet) have been marginalized. Subsequently, Muslim scholars have made serious endeavors to...

A large literature contends that legal systems that adapt efficiently to meet the contracting needs of the economy foster financial sector development. The paper discusses the adaptability features of Islamic law related to commercial transactions (Islamic commercial law) in light of contemporary financial system. After discussing the nature and way the common and civil law traditions can evolv...

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...