Islamic Finance for European Muslims: The Diversity Management of Shari`ah-Compliant Transactions

This Article argues that developments in Islamic finance must be analyzed within a broader framework. First, Islamic financing transactions must be integrated with and adapted to the overall legal and regulatory framework of the prospective jurisdiction in which the transaction will take place. Islamic financial services, in most jurisdictions, are subject to state law. Integrating and adapting transactions is of particular importance with regard to retail products that are based on an industrialization of the banking business. In Germany, regulation works differently from the UK and may be less susceptible to catering to the needs of ethnic and religious minorities. Second, and perhaps more inportantly, Shari\u27ah-compliant retail products must also mirror the needs of the respective Muslim communities they serve. While there may be a global market for big ticket Islamic financing transactions, this is not the case for retail products, which are not based on globally uniform standards. What is deemed to comply with Islamic principles will depend on who interprets them and in which jurisdiction the transaction is implemented. Therefore, the success of Islamic retail products depends on a double cultural accommodation: adjusting the respective product to both the requirements of local laws and the specificities of local Muslim communities. This depends on certain institutional arrangements that, in the past, have been more favorable in the UK than in Germany

Asiaten sehen Asiaten: die Region als Teil nationaler Identität in Japan und Südostasien am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts

Um die Wende zum 20. Jahrhundert läßt sich in der südostasiatischen Welt eine beginnende Japanrezeption feststellen, die ihren Höhepunkt im Sieg Japans über Russland im Jahre 1905 findet. Zeitgleich entwickelte sich in Japan Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts eine selektive Rezeption des südostasitischen Raumes, die sowohl auf pan-asiatische Diskurse zurückgriff, gleichermaßen jedoch auch Vorläuferformen späterer Asiendiskurse in Japan hervorbrachte. Es ist der Frage nachgegangen worden, ob die in kolonialen Emanzipationskursen entwickelten Japanbilder in einem Zusammenhang mit pan-asiatischen Konzeptionen japanischer Politiker und Gelehrter standen. Betrachtet wurden die philippinisch-japansichen sowie die vietnamesiche-japanischen Beziehungen. Dass es in der gegenseitigen Wahrnehmung nicht zu einem kulturellen Austausch kam, dies lag an der grundsätzlich unterschiedlichen Lesart dessen, was als asiatisch betrachtet wurde. Methodisch geht die Arbeit vergleichend vor, soweit es die unterschiedlichen Quellenlagen der drei Länder und deren spezifische Emanzipationsdiskurse zulassen

Human rights, the rule of law, and the construction of tradition

Few issues have generated a greater body of literature in recent years than Islam and human rights.Both increasing human rights awareness throughout the Arab world, and human rights rhetoric entering international politics have fuelled the debate on whether « Islam » is incompatible with, or at least hampers, the development of « human rights » as defined in international conventions.While some studies emphasize areas of conflict between « Western » and « Islamic » conceptions of human rights..

Human rights, the rule of law, and the construction of tradition

Few issues have generated a greater body of literature in recent years than Islam and human rights.Both increasing human rights awareness throughout the Arab world, and human rights rhetoric entering international politics have fuelled the debate on whether « Islam » is incompatible with, or at least hampers, the development of « human rights » as defined in international conventions.While some studies emphasize areas of conflict between « Western » and « Islamic » conceptions of human rights..

The structure of freight flows in Europe and its implications for EU railway freight policy

We analyse the potential for shifting freight transports to the railways in Western and Cen-tral Europe. This potential arises for large and concentrated freight flows over long distances of about 300 km or more. However, we show that there are only few such freight flows in Europe, and that they are concentrated or connected to the central European population centers, sometimes called the “Blue Banana”. As a consequence, the European railway freight corridors according to EU Regulation 913/2010 should be divided into two distinct groups: first tier and second tier corridors. Substantial innovations should be introduced on the first tier corridors first, in order to increase efficiency and reduce noise. This refers to core innovations for rolling stock like the introduction of automatic couplings, electronic or electro-pneumatic brakes, and modern bogies

Intermodal competition between intercity buses and trains – A theoretical model

The intercity bus market in Germany was deregulated in 2013. As a consequence, there is now a dense network of intercity bus lines. For the first time, the German state-owned railway company Deutsche Bahn AG faces intermodal competition in public intercity passenger land transport on a large number of lines. This paper examines market entry factors for intercity bus companies and price reactions of the incumbent railway company from a theoretical perspective. Our model builds on Salop's circular city model to describe the horizontal product differentiation among the bus companies. At the same time, the railway company occupies the center of the circle and offers a higher product quality than the buses. It dominates the market, while a number of bus companies constitute an oligopolistic competitive fringe. In the subsequent comparative statics analysis, it is shown that the quality differential between the train and bus services have a considerable effect on market entry decisions by buses as well as on price reactions by the incumbent railway company. In particular, on routes where the quality advantage of railway services is rather small, buses are more likely to enter and the railway company will respond with a stronger price reduction than on other routes

Reasons for and developments in international scientific collaboration: does an Asia-Pacific research area exist from a bibliometric point of view?

This paper describes the different forms of and tries to give reasons for international scientific collaboration in general. It focuses on eleven countries in the Asia-Pacific region by evaluating their national research output with the help of bibliometric indicators in particular. Over two million journal articles published by these countries between 1998 and 2007 in ISI-listed periodicals are analyzed. Discipline-specific publication and citation profiles reveal national strengths and weaknesses in the different research domains. The exponential increase in publication output by China over the last few years is astonishing, but in terms of visibility, i.e. citation rates, China cannot keep up with leading science nations, remaining below the world average. A discipline-specific analysis shows that Chinese authors took an active part in more than a quarter of all articles and reviews published in the field of materials science in 2007, while their contribution to medical research is very low. Co-publication networks among the eleven countries are generated to observe the development of cooperation bonds in the region. Applying Salton's measure of international collaboration strength, an above-average strengthening of scientific collaboration in the Asia-Pacific region can be observed