Browsing by Subject "Muslim"
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Item Open Access Ethics, Practice, and Future of Islamic Banking and Finance(2010-05-26T17:27:32Z) Montgomery, JohnThis paper explores the ethical mandates of Islamic banking and finance (IBF) and then studies the recent performance of IBF on the positive level. The ethical section is divided into four parts: (1) promotion of trade and cooperation, (2) prohibition of ribā and of profiting without risk, (3) prohibition of gharar and maysir, and (4) requirement of charity and altruistic acts. Each of these topics is discussed on the normative level. Subsequently, the performance of IBF is assessed through a comparative study of IBF institutions and conventional banks operating in select Muslim majority countries from 2005 to 2008. The analysis shows that IBF institutions are able to provide competitive returns for their customers while adhering to its ethical injunctions. At the end of the paper, recommendations are offered to make IBF more efficient and transparent.Item Open Access How the Media Affect U.S. Foreign Aid Allocations? Evidence from the Aid Allocation Pattern to Muslim Countries(2013) Kim, SeungjunThe previous literature fails to reach consensus on the role of media in the foreign aid allocation. My paper attempts to answer following questions by examining Muslim countries: Are there any media effects on the pattern of aid giving? If the media influence the amount of aid, then how does it play its role? In addition, although previous studies show that different donors have prioritized specific groups, no study systemically shows the reason why a donor prioritizes certain recipients. Examining all recipients and donors cannot control the circumstantial factors generated by different regions and ethnicities. In other words, donors allocate international aid to different group of countries for various reasons and much of the research fails to examine the reasons that cannot be generalized.
This paper conducts the OLS time series regression analysis with robust standard errors for U.S. foreign aid allocations, specifically for 46 Muslim/Arab countries. The results of my empirical analysis are threefold. First, Muslim/Arab related factors such as oil reserves, Millennium Challenge Account, and the existence of terrorist groups affect aid variation. Second, the more media attention a country acquires, the more it is likely to receive more generous allocations of aid. Finally, and most importantly, there is a negative interaction effect between the level of media coverage and the number of U.S. soldiers present in that country on aid allocation. When a Muslim recipient maintains more number of U.S. soldiers than the yearly mean U.S. troop level of Muslim countries, the media effect on aid volume decreases. This finding provides guideline for the plausible links around the public, media and governing bodies.
Item Open Access Queer Muslim Environmental Futurisms: Taqwa (Introspection) and Barzakh (Liminality and Paradox)(2023-04-20) Ghanem, MayaThrough Orientalism, EuroAmerican hegemony constructs nature and sexuality to control ideas and resources around Muslims and nonhumans. EuroAmerican colonizers introduced to Islamic theology the very association of sexuality with “natural/unnatural.” As a result, claims by numerous Islamic scholars that homosexuality is forbidden in Islam because it is “unnatural” echo Orientalist constructions of nature and sexuality. This thesis draws from intersectional queer Muslim perspectives to question Orientalist constructions of nature. I examine academic literature, artistic mediums, and political realities to theorize Queer Muslim Environmental Futurisms (QMEF). Reckoning with the “paradox” of their identities, queer Muslims offer non-linear temporalities that reject Orientalist binaries between humans and nature, queerness and Muslimness. Dismantling Orientalist binaries, I argue that Queer Muslim Environmental Futurisms (QMEF) instead embrace the barzakh (liminality and paradox) of queer/Muslim and human/nature relationships. I first outline a QMEF to facilitate dialogue between queer and Muslim environmental literature over different points of time. I then analyze Saba Taj’s there are gardens at the margins, a mixed-media visual arts exhibition highlighting queer Muslim relationships, to demonstrate how barzakh can negotiate new temporalities and relationships for queer Muslims and nonhumans. I also examine moments of QMEF during the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey, which show queer-Muslim coalition and blips of breakage in linear time. In these examples, I unpack how queer Muslims embrace contradictions, bringing opposites together as a whole. This thesis thus demonstrates how QMEF heals separations between queerness and Muslimness, human and nonhuman creation