Studies of Muslims in Europe which deal with the strictly religious dimensions of the Islamic presence have often stressed processes of individualisation, fragmentation of authority, and emergence of new, types of leadership. 'While such trends are important, they do not exhaust the dynamics of
The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) was founded in London in 1997 upon the initiative of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE). While most of its members are
The past few years have carried both great hopes and deep frustrations for the future of democratization in Egypt. The country witnessed a significant national referendum; two major elections, presidential and parliamentary, in September and November–December 2005 respectively; the formation of a pro-reform movement; and a remarkable political vitality. It is uncertain, however, whether these developments will place Egypt on the threshold of a sustainable democratic transformation.
Developing countries have been facing a number of challenges including poverty. Pakistan is one of the developing countries that is home to a large number of poor, constituting about one-third of its population. The state has been introducing different poverty reduction programs from time to time during the last six decades. These include integrated rural development to transfer payments such as
Although the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was not established with the explicit purpose of providing aid to the world’s underprivileged, its founders were motivated, at least in part, by a wish to impersonate and enhance “Islamic solidarity” in the face of widespread poverty in Muslimmajority countries (İhsanoğlu 2010:3). Diverse OIC institutions emerged, including the Islamic Development Bank (1975), the Islamic Solidarity Fund (1974), and the Islamic Centre for Development of Trade (1981), dealing with both humanitarian and developmental concerns (Kayaoglu 2015:17).
Embeddedness and local cultures and contexts are key in the development of entrepreneurship. Embeddedness is cultural, territorial and networked. All these aspects have to appropriately translate into entrepreneurship education, training and curricula. Entrepreneurs must be able to understand and translate values and culture, as well as the knowledge of their territories, into their work and practices. After a literature review, this chapter showcases these principles through the example of
This chapter scrutinizes the fragmentation of the OIC aid system. It is argued that this fragmentation is a result of the asymmetrical intergovernmental relationship between a small number of aid donors (notably the hydrocarbon-rich Gulf States) and a large and increasing pool of aid recipients. The chapter illustrates that this process is empowered by the asymmetrical setting of the OIC (there are very few donors with whom to compete), donors have “bilateralized” the multilateral by supporting their own “aid recipients”. This has progressively fragmented the OIC aid system.
This chapter sheds light on the contribution that al-Harith b. Asad al-Muhasibi may have played at the critical historical juncture for the development of Sufism by situating him in this critical milieu. It is noteworthy that the conceptualisations of “ascetics” and mystics” do not fit very comfortably with several figures of early Sufism.