The paper addresses a number of issues regarding the extent to which trafficking may be applied to migrant domestic workers who enter under the kafala system of sponsorship in the Middle East.
Unlike most other countries in the Arab region, Egypt does not have a regular or significant intake of migrant workers who are contracted to perform the domestic chores of Egyptian households. The legal history of domestic work in Egypt is best characterised as one that denies the validity of paid domestic work as an employment relationship and so it is explicitly excluded from local labour law. While most domestic workers are Egyptian, obtaining work visas for migrant domestic workers is difficult, if not impossible.
Fraudulent practices at the recruitment stage can leave low-skilled workers extremely vulnerable. These practices might include debt bondage linked to payment by low-skilled migrant workers of excessive recruitment fees, costs and charges and deception about the nature and conditions of work, often leading to detrimental contract substitution and human trafficking for labour exploitation. A complex and opaque web of intermediaries including sub-agents and outsourcing agents facilitate visa trading and drive up recruitment charges for low-skilled migrant workers.
This chapter provides a critical examination of the phases, spatialities, and temporalities of neoliberalism by studying the port cities in the Persian Gulf. It begins by situating the concept of smart cities within a theoretical discussion that delineates the relationship between neoliberalization and urban spaces and identifies major fault lines. The focus is on Gulf cities in general which have been taking broad initiatives to decrease their oil/gas dependency by building a more diversified knowledge-based economy.
This paper aims to explore the possibilities of economic diversification in the State of Qatar through the regeneration of built heritage post the COVID-19 pandemic, promoting sustainable tourism and creating a center for cultural heritage in Qatar, thereby enhancing the sense of identity both socially and physically among the nationals and residents.
Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm explores the emerging ethical theory of the trusteeship paradigm as developed by the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane (b. 1944). The volume, with contributions in English and Arabic, examines the development of this modern Islamic theory of ethics and how it permeates various disciplines: philosophy, theology, legal theory, Sufism, moral theory, sociology and anthropology, communication, environment and biomedical ethics.
Islamic Ethics and the Genome Question is one of the very first academic works, which examine the field of genomics from an Islamic perspective. This twelve-chapter volume presents the results from a pioneering seminar held in 2017 at the Research Center for Islamic Legislation & Ethics, College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, in Qatar. The contributors to this volume, coming from different disciplines and specializations, approached the key ethical questions raised by the emerging field of genomics, viz.
The practice of independent legal reasoning (ijtihād) is a core tool for achieving the moral mission of the discipline of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh); it generates juristic rulings that help people become morally committed humans. Without ijtihād, it would be inconceivable that Islamic divine law could achieve its moral mission in every time and every place.
Translated by Dr Asadullah Yate and Dr Sameh Mustafa Asal.
Edited by Dr Dheen Mohamed.
The linear economic approach described as the "take, make, dispose of" model where the bulk of the material used to make products is ultimately thrown away is recognized as a contributor to the natural resource constraints faced by humanity. Responding to this problem requires an economic paradigm of "reduce, reuse and recycle" conceptualized as Circular Economy(CE). The paper explores ways Islamic finance can support circular businesses within OIC countries to achieve economic growth that is not at the expense of the environment.