Search Results (1,034)

This study investigates the key determinants of bank stability and profitability in commercial and Islamic banks listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) in Jordan, with a focus on credit risk and capital adequacy during the period 2018–2024. Using panel data from 15 banks, the study applies fixed effects regression models with clustered standard errors. Liquidity is proxied by the loan-to-deposit ratio (LDR), credit risk by the loans loss provisions-to-total loans ratio, and capital strength by the equity-to-assets ratio, alongside a COVID-19 dummy and an interaction term between liquidity and credit risk. Financial performance and stability are measured using return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and the logarithmic Z-score. The findings indicate that credit risk has a significant negative effect on both bank performance and financial stability, whereas capital adequacy exerts a positive and significant effect. The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected financial performance and stability, while liquidity (LDR) shows no significant direct effect. The interaction between liquidity and credit risk was statistically insignificant across all estimated models, suggesting that credit risk remains the dominant determinant regardless of liquidity conditions. The study highlights the importance of effective credit risk management and strong capital buffers in enhancing bank resilience. It contributes to the literature by providing recent evidence from the Jordanian banking sector and by incorporating multiple performance measures, a pandemic shock variable, and risk interaction effects to better understand bank stability within a unified empirical framework for an emerging banking market. Full article

This study examines whether conventional and Islamic real estate indices are associated with different patterns of financial connectedness and long-memory behavior in selected eco-resource sectors. The analysis focuses on four resource-related financial markets—water, food, agriculture and livestock, and reduced-energy sector exposure—and evaluates how the inclusion of different real estate indices changes the connectedness structure of this system. Bayesian Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) is used to estimate time-varying connectedness and spillover dynamics, while Long Short-Term Memory Neural Networks (LSTM-NN) are applied as a complementary tool to assess long-memory and forecasting-related patterns in the connectedness series. Compared with using either method alone, this design captures both the evolving network structure of market-based risk transmission and the persistence of connectedness patterns over time. Using market data from 20 September 2016 to 9 January 2026, the results show that conventional real estate indices are generally associated with stronger connectedness in the eco-resource financial network, suggesting greater potential for market-based risk transmission. In contrast, Islamic real estate indices exhibit comparatively lower connectedness and more persistent long-memory behavior in the examined sample. These findings indicate that real estate asset heterogeneity matters for understanding financial connectedness among selected sustainability-related sectors. The study contributes to sustainable finance by showing how conventional and Islamic real estate assets may play different roles in the financial connectedness of resource-related markets. Full article

The tale commonly known as “Hunter Catches Birds” circulates widely across South Asia, the Islamicate world, and insular Southeast Asia. Despite linguistic, religious, and cultural differences, the narrative architecture of the Hunter Catches Birds tale displays remarkable continuities across Buddhist, Persian, Malay, Indonesian, and Javanese traditions. Its persistence across radically different religious and cultural settings raises a broader question of how narrative meaning remains recognizable through continual reinterpretation. In early Malay renderings, particularly within the Hikayat Bayan Budiman tradition, oral materials are reorganized into framed and nested literary structures. These forms enable both textual and visual interplay while supporting ethical instruction alongside aesthetic elaboration. Frequently positioned as an introductory episode in parrot-cycle literature, the story integrates motifs such as collective escape, feigned death, interspecies conflict, and the tension between loyalty and betrayal. These narrative elements remain open to reinterpretation in different moral and cultural settings. Drawing upon Sanskrit, Persian, Uyghur, Malay, Indonesian, and Javanese materials, this study examines how the tale moved across oral, manuscript, and visual traditions. Rather than treating the narrative as a fixed folktale type, the article approaches it as a flexible modular structure whose ethical meanings were continually reshaped across changing religious and social environments. These interactions generate layered systems of meaning in which image and text jointly shape narrative tension, vulnerability, and strategic judgment. In Persian miniature traditions, scenes of entrapment, sacrifice, and escape are organized through sequential composition and spatial tension, allowing conflict, vulnerability, and narrative causality to be experienced visually as well as textually. By tracing these transformations, this study argues that the enduring vitality of the Hunter Catches Birds tradition may lie less in narrative stability than in the sustained reinterpretation of repeated narrative structures across textual and visual cultures. Full article

Islamic banking is increasingly expected to align Sharia-based intermediation with sustainability objectives, yet empirical evidence remains limited on how sustainability disclosure links financing structures with bank performance. This study examines whether Islamic Sustainable Banking (ISB) functions as a mediating mechanism between profit-sharing financing, debt-based financing, and financial performance in Islamic banks in Indonesia and Malaysia. ISB is measured using an Islamic Sustainable Banking Disclosure Index that integrates Maqasid al-Shariah principles with SDG-oriented disclosure indicators. Using panel data from 23 Islamic banks over 2018–2023 and applying partial least squares structural equation modeling, mediation analysis, PLS-MGA, and permutation tests, the study finds that both profit-sharing and debt-based financing are negatively associated with ISB disclosure, while ISB is positively associated with net profit margin but not return on assets. The mediation results indicate statistically significant negative indirect associations through ISB, suggesting that sustainability disclosure operates as a conditional transmission mechanism rather than an automatic performance driver within the specified PLS-SEM model. Cross-country tests reveal significant differences between Indonesia and Malaysia, particularly in the associations between financing structures and profitability. The study contributes to Islamic sustainable finance by clarifying how Maqasid-oriented disclosure connects financing composition, governance capacity, and profitability, while offering practical implications for bank managers, regulators, and policymakers seeking to integrate sustainability into Islamic banking governance and financing decisions. Full article

This study examines the theological structure of Tengrism, understood here as a heuristic term for the broader Tengri-centered early Turkic belief system, its historical transformation, and its continuity in post-Islamic Turkic culture and folklore from an interdisciplinary perspective. Although the continuity of pre-Islamic Turkic beliefs in later Turkish folk culture has been noted in previous scholarship, the specific mechanisms through which Tengri-centered concepts survived as implicit theological structures within lived religion, folk belief, and Alevi-Bektashi ritual–poetic traditions have not been sufficiently systematized. The research argues that Tengrism should not be understood merely as an archaic remnant of belief but as a comprehensive theological paradigm shaping cosmology, political legitimacy, ethical order, and the perception of sacredness in early Turkic societies. In this context, epic and mythological texts such as the Orkhon Inscriptions, the Epic of Oghuz Khan, the Book of Dede Korkut, and the Epic of Manas constitute the primary textual sources of the study. The research is based on a qualitative design and employs phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches. The phenomenological perspective seeks to understand the theological principles of Tengrism and the perception of sacredness within their own cultural and symbolic universe, while hermeneutic analysis interprets the continuity of symbolic and mythological elements preserved in folkloric narratives. The findings indicate that the Tengri-centered and cosmologically structured character of early Turkic religiosity did not disappear after the adoption of Islam; rather, it persisted through folkloric narratives, popular beliefs, ritual practices, and the Alevi-Bektashi tradition. These findings demonstrate that Tengrism continues to function as a dynamic theological paradigm within Turkish cultural memory and popular religiosity. Full article

This article examines how young Muslim women in contemporary France live, negotiate, and recalibrate the hijab within a differentiated secular order that distributes the conditions of public visibility unequally across institutional sites. Rather than treating the headscarf as a legal controversy or as a symbolic test of the compatibility of Islam with republican secularism, the analysis asks how visible Muslim femininity is rendered institutionally legible, conditionally tolerable, or professionally problematic across the ordinary spaces of school, work, leisure, and public life, and how women respond when the continuity between faith, body, and public presence is repeatedly subjected to regulation. Drawing on a reflexive thematic analysis of seven in-depth interviews with young Muslim-background women in Paris, the article shows that hijab emerges in the core narratives as an ethical form of composure, governed self-presence, and dignity; that schools, workplaces, and recreational sites act as visibility filters that classify which forms of Muslim femininity can appear as acceptable, neutral, and professionally credible; and that these pressures are negotiated aesthetically through ongoing acts of bodily calibration and respectable self-presentation. To capture this practical labor, the article develops the concept of embodied boundary-work and situates it explicitly in dialogue with Foucauldian accounts of disciplinary normalization and feminist scholarship on the ambivalence of agency under norm-governed conditions. The argument is that the French hijab question is most productively understood through the gendered management of Muslim visibility enacted through institutional norms of fit, neutrality, and appearance, whereby the female body becomes the site where secular governance, moral selfhood, professional sorting, and public belonging concretely intersect. Full article

Punjab, Pakistan, is experiencing severe groundwater depletion due to excessive and unplanned extraction, declining surface water availability, rapid population growth, and increasing climate variability. Groundwater has become the primary source of irrigation and drinking water across the province, contributing about 50%, 90% and 95% of the requirements of agricultural, domestic, and industrial water demands. Natural recharge rates have been reduced due to construction, pavements, and the lining of irrigation channels. This study presents the first pilot-scale Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) initiative implemented by the Irrigation Research Institute (IRI) of the Punjab Irrigation department. Floodwater has been diverted into the bed of the abandoned Old Mailsi Canal (OMC), which off-takes from Islam Headworks. About 144 recharge wells have been constructed in the bed of the OMC. During the 2025 flood season, approximately 12,000 acre-feet of floodwater was diverted and stored through engineered ponding, canal-bed rehabilitation, and recharge wells. A comprehensive monitoring program was established, including piezometers, automated data loggers, groundwater quality sampling, pumping tests, geophysical surveys, and sediment analyses. The results indicate a maximum groundwater level rise of up to 11 ft., with average increases ranging from 2.6 to 5.2 ft across the recharge ponds. Groundwater quality also showed an improvement following MAR implementation; electrical conductivity decreased from 900 to 650 μS/cm in Pond-I and from 850 to 750 μS/cm in Pond-III. These findings demonstrate that repurposing abandoned canal infrastructure for floodwater-based MAR provides a technically feasible, environmentally sustainable, and climate-resilient strategy for enhancing groundwater availability for sustainable management in Punjab and other water-stressed regions. Full article

This study offers a critical re-examination of contemporary euthanasia debates through an Islamic legal lens, with particular focus on requests for euthanasia arising from psychological suffering within the context of mental disorders. Within bioethical discourse, advocates of euthanasia predominantly justify their position on the grounds of individual autonomy and the alleviation of unbearable suffering, framing it as consistent with modern medicine’s aspiration to optimize quality of life. Yet, by elevating autonomy and self-determination as supreme moral values, it risks reducing the human condition to its cognitive and volitional dimensions, thereby overlooking the existential, spiritual, and affective aspects of suffering. In contrast, Islamic law regards life as a divine trust bestowed by God. Human beings are understood as stewards—rather than absolute proprietors—of their lives and are thus accountable before God for their preservation. From this perspective, psychological pain—akin to physical pain—may serve as a means of moral refinement, spiritual purification, and divine testing. Methodologically, the study conducts a textual and analytical examination of Islamic legal sources, complemented by practical examples that illustrate how psychological suffering transforms into requests for euthanasia, thereby examining how these sources ought to be understood through concrete cases. Furthermore, the study aims to examine whether appeals to a “right to die,” grounded in experiences of psychological suffering, can find any juridical legitimacy within the framework of Islamic law. Full article

Background: Family-centered care (FCC) is a foundational principle in pediatric healthcare, yet its implementation in culturally specific contexts remains poorly understood. In Saudi Arabia, Islamic values, collective family structures, and gendered caregiving norms shape how mothers engage with pediatric intensive care in ways that existing Western-derived FCC models do not fully capture. The aim of this study was to explore Saudi mothers’ experiences of family-centered care during their children’s pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admissions, focusing on perceived barriers, cultural negotiations, and evolving advocacy strategies. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted with 17 Saudi mothers whose children had been admitted to PICUs across major hospitals in Saudi Arabia within the preceding 12 months. Semi-structured interviews lasting 40–70 min were conducted in Arabic using a pilot-tested, 15-item guide. Data were analyzed through Braun and Clarke’s six-phase reflexive thematic analysis. Trustworthiness was strengthened through member checking, reflexive journaling, negative case analysis, and investigator triangulation. Reporting adheres to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ). Result: Five interconnected themes emerged: (1) confronting crisis and uncertainty, (2) renegotiating maternal identity, (3) brokering culture within biomedicine, (4) forging trust with care teams, and (5) evolving into advocates. These themes trace a developmental arc from initial disorientation through progressive empowerment, shaped at every stage by culturally grounded resources and constraints. Mothers functioned as cultural brokers performing invisible labor that healthcare systems neither recognized nor supported. Conclusions: Saudi mothers in PICUs engage in sophisticated cultural mediation between family systems and biomedical institutions under conditions of acute stress. Findings underscore the need for structurally embedded cultural responsiveness in PICU policy, including continuous cultural assessment, care-team continuity, and family advocacy support. Full article

Increased debates over the higher objectives of Islamic law (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa) have emerged in recent decades, with considerable attention devoted to their potential for intellectual and legal reform. Nonetheless, a very prolific contemporary contributor to the maqāṣid debate, the Moroccan scholar Aḥmad al-Raysūnī (b. 1953), has received very limited attention in Western scholarship to date. Therefore, this article offers a comprehensive critical analysis of al-Raysūnī’s interpretation of the maqāṣid and its implications for contemporary Islamic normativity. Aiming to assess the relationship between al-Raysūnī’s theoretical elaborations of the maqāṣid and their practical implications, both his publications and his legal opinions (fatwas) are considered and analysed. Thus, methodologically, the article combines textual analysis of al-Raysūnī’s works with an analytical evaluation of his legal reasoning in practice. The study demonstrates that while al-Raysūnī stresses the importance of a structured maqāṣid-reasoning and suggests models for their organisation, his fatwas rarely implement these concepts directly; instead, they rely predominantly on a broader notion of public welfare (maṣlaḥa). By choosing al-Raysūnī as an example, the article argues that this tension highlights both the reformist potential and the practical limitations of contemporary maqāṣid discourse, thereby contributing to broader discussions on Islamic legal reform. Full article

Klebsiella pneumoniae is an opportunistic pathogen associated with both community-acquired and nosocomial infections. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains are increasingly implicated in urinary tract infections (UTIs), traveller’s diarrhoea, bacteraemia, and sepsis. β-lactam antibiotics are commonly used for treatment; however, antimicrobial resistance has emerged largely due to the production of extended-spectrum β-lactamases (ESBLs), which confer resistance mainly to penicillins, oxyimino-cephalosporins, and monobactams, while cephamycins and carbapenems usually remain stable to ESBL-mediated hydrolysis and compromise therapeutic efficacy. ESBL-producing strains represent a major cause of severe Gram-negative infections. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae among UTI patients in Jordanian hospitals (Al Mafraq, Ma’an, and Islamic Hospitals), evaluate their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns, and detect antimicrobial resistance genes at the molecular level. A total of 450 urine isolates of K. pneumoniae were collected from UTI patients between November 2023 and May 2024. Isolates were identified in hospital laboratories using standard microbiological methods. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed, and molecular characterisation of ESBL-associated genes was conducted using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Out of 450 K. pneumoniae isolates collected from UTI patients across three Jordanian regions, 72 (16%) were confirmed as ESBL producers. Among the 72 ESBL-positive K. pneumoniae isolates, 34 (47.2%) were recovered from the Central region, 20 (27.8%) from the North, and 18 (25.0%) from the South. Molecular analysis revealed that 41.7% of ESBL-producing isolates carried the blaCTX-M gene, while 33.3% harboured the blaOXA gene. All ESBL-producing isolates demonstrated antimicrobial resistance to third-generation cephalosporins. A significantly higher proportion of ESBL-producing isolates was identified in female patients (84.7%) compared with males (15.3%). A significant association was observed between blaOXA gene distribution and geographic region (p = 0.016), whereas blaCTX-M gene distribution showed no significant regional association. ESBL-producing K. pneumoniae accounted for a substantial proportion of UTI isolates in Jordan, with blaCTX-M identified as the predominant resistance gene. The higher burden observed in the Central region and among female patients highlights notable distribution patterns in this cohort. These findings emphasise the necessity for sustained molecular surveillance and strengthened antimicrobial stewardship strategies to limit the dissemination of ESBL-producing strains in Jordanian healthcare settings. Full article

Cairo’s Islamic architectural heritage represents one of the world’s most significant concentrations of pre-industrial environmental ingenuity. For over a millennium, an integrated suite of passive climate-control systems—the Mašrabiya latticework screen, the open courtyard (Ṣaḥn), the wind-scoop (Malqaf), and stalactite vaulting (Muqarnas)—has moderated temperature, humidity, and airflow with remarkable effectiveness. Today, these inherited solutions are under unprecedented stress from urban densification, chronic particulate pollution, climate-driven temperature rise, and growing visitor footfall. This study investigates indoor environmental quality (IEQ) in six Fatimid- and Mamlūk-era buildings in Historic Cairo through the integrated IQAD-IAH framework, combining IoT field monitoring (January–December 2023) of temperature, relative humidity, CO₂, and PM2.5 with CNN-based deterioration image analysis and Random Forest predictive modeling. Results document critical summer thermal buffering failures reaching 28% of occupied hours above the ASHRAE 55 adaptive comfort limit; hygrothermal stress cycles exceeding the EN 15757 ±10% RH safe threshold for up to 38% of annual hours; and PM2.5 courtyard concentrations of 40–61 µg/m³ under normal conditions, surging to 180–320 µg/m³ during Ḫamāsῑn-seasonal wind events. Machine-learning projections indicate all three principal passive elements will cross the critical deterioration threshold of 70/100 under RCP 8.5 before 2050. A precautionary intervention window is identified between 2025 and 2032. Evidence-based management recommendations compatible with UNESCO World Heritage obligations are presented. Full article

This article examines the ethical and aesthetic stakes of cultural borrowing in fashion through the case of Yves Saint Laurent’s sustained engagement with Moroccan visual and material traditions. Drawing on postcolonial theory, fashion studies, and aesthetic philosophy and supported by visual analysis and qualitative research, this study interrogates the tension between cultural appreciation and appropriation that structures Saint Laurent’s legacy. His designs amplified global visibility for Moroccan craftsmanship, yet this visibility was mediated through Western systems of authorship that privileged the couturier while obscuring the cultural, spiritual, and artisanal labor underpinning the motifs he reinterpreted. Saint Laurent’s own positionality, born within the colonial milieu of French Algeria, further complicates this dynamic, enabling both cultural intimacy and the exercise of hierarchical distance from the traditions he transformed for Parisian haute couture. This discussion also requires acknowledging that Moroccan cultural heritage, shaped by the intertwined influences of Amazigh, Arab, Islamic, and Jewish traditions, embodies religious meanings that extend beyond the purely aesthetic. By considering the religious, symbolic, and communal values embedded within Moroccan aesthetic forms, this article foregrounds the ethical dilemmas that arise when culturally and spiritually situated practices are reframed within Western fashion. This study ultimately contends that acts of borrowing can serve both as homage and erasure, suggesting that the relationship between appropriation and appreciation is better understood as a flexible spectrum rather than a rigid binary. Full article

This review develops a configurational account of the relationship between religion and transnationalism by addressing a specific analytical limitation in the existing literature: its tendency to oscillate between substantializing religious traditions as already constituted entities that move across borders and segmenting transnational religion into disconnected domains such as networks, migrant communities, diasporic identities, institutions, political mobilization, digital mediation, social support, or pilgrimage. While these approaches have generated substantial empirical insight, they leave undertheorized the relational formation through which religious authority, practice, identity, material circulation, symbolic boundary-making, institutional organization, and mediated presence are assembled and made socially effective across multiple scales. To clarify this problem, the review reconstructs scholarship on religion and transnationalism through five major thematic domains: transnational religious networks, religious identity in transnational contexts, religion as a catalyst of transnationalism, the embedding of religion in transnational social practices, and distinctive forms of transnational religion. This reconstruction shows that transnational religious phenomena are inadequately understood as the spatial extension of pre-given traditions, as residual expressions of ethnicity or migration, or as discrete networks, movements, institutions, or diasporic communities. They are better grasped as historically contingent and relationally ordered formations whose temporary coherence is produced through the interaction of actors, authorities, practices, discourses, infrastructures, legal-regulatory environments, memories, obligations, and material flows. Building on the concept of social configuration, the review therefore proposes transnational religious configurations as a more precise unit of analysis for studying how the religious and the transnational are mutually constituted rather than externally connected. It defines such configurations as historically specific formations in which religious categories, institutions, practices, authorities, material resources, symbolic boundaries, and cross-border conditions of possibility are articulated across local, national, transnational, and global scales. The review operationalizes this approach through three analytical levels—conditions of possibility, construction and characteristics, and social realities and consequences—and illustrates its explanatory purchase by examining a new phenomenon within the contemporary transnational revival of Shi‘i Islam. Full article

Background: Rayeb milk and yogurt provide lasting energy and maintain hydration during fasting. The surge in demand during Ramadan (the holiest month of the year across the Islamic world) increases production to meet consumer needs, potentially compromising strict adherence to safety standards. Data on the prevalence and characterization of Escherichia coli (E. coli) in fermented dairy products during Ramadan, a model of increased batch turnover, remain to be investigated. Objectives: This study aimed to identify the AMR profile and molecularly characterize the AMR and virulence traits of E. coli isolates prevalent in fermented milk products. Methods: A total of 34 E. coli isolates, representing eight distinct serotypes, were recovered from 150 fermented milk samples; rayeb milk (n = 75) and yogurt (n = 75) collected from densely populated towns in the Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt. Results: The most prevalent serotypes were O153:H2, O125:H21, and O119:H6, followed by O111:H2, O26:H11, and O127:H6. The virulence genes stx1 and stx2 were detected in 76.47% of isolates, while eaeA and hlyA were found in O26:H11, O119:H6, and O55:H7 serotypes. In total, 73.53% (25/34) of E. coli isolates were classified as MDR, while 26.47% (9/34) exhibited XDR. Resistance was most prevalent against penicillin, tetracycline, ciprofloxacin, ampicillin, kanamycin, chloramphenicol, and trimethoprim. The kan, dfrA, blaOXA-1, tetA(A), and van(A) AMR genes were positive in 70.59%, 67.65%, 61.76%, 100%, and 47.06% of isolates, respectively. Conclusions: Identified E. coli AMR and virulence panels reflect that production pressure can challenge strict adherence to hygiene control measures and cold-chain maintenance. Subsequently, authorities must enforce proper quality assurance protocols to minimize the risk of food poisoning. Full article