Using Blockchain and Smart Contracts for Waqf Institutions

Author(s):  
Farrukh Habib ◽  
Abu Umar Faruq Ahmad

The institution of Waqf always played a pivotal role of sustainable economic development in a Muslim society throughout the history of Islam. However, recently, even with the introduction of the modern Islamic finance a few decades ago, the institution has been struggling to rejuvenate its past glory. The key issues are lack of availability of data and historical records, weak transparency and public disclosure, improper audit and compliance practices. The advent of the blockchain has offered a ray of hope for the revival of the Waqf institution. The blockchain has already proved itself as a game changing breakthrough. Similarly, the Waqf institution could be invigorated with the innovative and efficient use of the blockchain. Moreover, the use of smart contracts on blockchain could further enhance the performance and efficacy of the Waqf institution. It is strongly believed that with the firm Islamic jurisprudential foundations of the Waqf, blockchain, and smart contracts will ensure that the Waqf institution could partake in the economic development of the whole Muslim world.

Author(s):  
Paul Stevens

This chapter is concerned with the role of oil and gas in the economic development of the global economy. It focuses on the context in which established and newer oil and gas producers in developing countries must frame their policies to optimize the benefits of such resources. It outlines a history of the issue over the last twenty-five years. It considers oil and gas as factor inputs, their role in global trade, the role of oil prices in the macroeconomy and the impact of the geopolitics of oil and gas. It then considers various conventional views of the future of oil and gas in the primary energy mix. Finally, it challenges the drivers behind these conventional views of the future with an emphasis on why they may prove to be different from what is expected and how this may change the context in which producers must frame their policy responses.


Slavic Review ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 694-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild

This paper argues for greater integration of considerations of women and gender in the history of the 1917 Russian Revolutions. Two key issues have long been discussed by historians: the spontaneity/consciousness paradigm, and the role of class in the revolution. Neither has been adequately analyzed in relation to gender. Women's suffrage has been largely neglected despite the fact that it was a significant issue throughout the year and represented a pioneering advance won by a countrywide coalition of women and men from the working class and intelligentsia, and from almost all political parties. In this centennial year, accounts of the Revolution remain one-dimensional; women remain the other.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 327-337
Author(s):  
Svetlana A Kirillina ◽  
Alexandra L Safronova ◽  
Vladimir V Orlov

The article analyses the historical role of the movement for defenсe of the Caliphate, which emerged in various regions of the Muslim world as a response to weakening and fall of the Ottoman Empire. The authors also focus on the social and political discussions of the 1920s - 1930s about the destiny of Muslim unity and the role of the future Caliphate. The article also deals with the transformation of conceptions of the Caliphate in the works of eminent ideologists and politicians of the Muslim world - Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Muhammad Rashid Rida and Abul Kalam Azad. The authors give an overview of the history of Caliphatist congresses and conferences of 1920s - 1930s. The aims and tasks of the Caliphatist movement among the Muslims of South Asia are also under study. The article examines the reaction of the South Asian princely elites to the weakening of the Ottoman state and explores the interrelation between pro-Ottoman sentiments of Caliphatists and the radicalization of anti-colonial struggle of Indian Muslims. A special attention is given to the role of leaders of Indian Caliphatists in preparation of the antiBritish uprisings in North-Western Hindustan. The authors also examine common and specifi c features of views and political actions of advocates and supporters of the Caliphate in the Middle East and in the Islamic communities of South Asia. The analysis of the source data reveales several patterns of reaction of Muslims in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia to the repudiation of the Caliphate by the Republican Turkey.


Author(s):  
Ben Kei Daniel

Regardless of any approach taken for examining social capital, researchers continuously converge on some key issues such as trust and yet diverge on several others about concrete and consistent indicators for measuring social capital. Many researchers believe that presence or absences of social capital can be solely linked to trusting relationships people build with each other as well as social institutions of civil engagement. It is not clearly known however, whether trust itself is a precondition for generating social capital or whether there are other intermediary variables that can influence the role of trust in creating social capital. In addition, similar to social capital, the definition of trust is problematic and it remains a nebulous concept and equally, with many dimensions. Interests in the analysis of trust are wide spread among many disciplines, notably policy analysis, economic development, reliability and security of distributed computational systems and many others. The variety of approaches currently employed to investigate trust and different interpretations of its role in fostering social capital has resulted into a diverse array of knowledge about the concept and its relationship to social capital. This Chapter provides a broader overview of work on trust. It discusses how researchers have used trust as a proxy for measuring social capital.


Author(s):  
Karen Radner ◽  
Nadine Moeller ◽  
D. T. Potts

With the emphasis of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East firmly placed on the political, social, and cultural histories of the states and communities shaping Egypt and Western Asia (including the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), this introduction to the five-volume series seeks to place the region in its environmental context. It discusses the lay of the land between the North African coast and the Hindu Kush, including the role of tectonics and geomorphology. It also considers some key issues regarding climatic conditions, focusing in particular on the significance of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and the potential impact of megadroughts and pandemics.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Carol S. Steiker ◽  
Jordan M. Steiker

This review addresses four key issues in the modern (post-1976) era of capital punishment in the United States. First, why has the United States retained the death penalty when all its peer countries (all other developed Western democracies) have abolished it? Second, how should we understand the role of race in shaping the distinctive path of capital punishment in the United States, given our country's history of race-based slavery and slavery's intractable legacy of discrimination? Third, what is the significance of the sudden and profound withering of the practice of capital punishment in the past two decades? And, finally, what would abolition of the death penalty in the United States (should it ever occur) mean for the larger criminal justice system?


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1 (460)) ◽  
pp. 33-43
Author(s):  
Piotr Koryś

The article discusses the role of plants in Poland’s economic development over the last 500 years. The author presents the role of five plants in the history of Poland’s development: cereals (wheat and rye), potatoes, sugar beet and rape. The specificity of the economic development of modern Europe has made Poland one of Europe’s granaries and an important exporter of cereals. This shaped the civilization of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and contributed to its fall due to institutional specificity. In the 19th century, potatoes played an important role in the population development of Polish lands, as they helped feed the rapidly growing population. The spread of sugar beet cultivation created the conditions for the development of modern sugar industry in the second half of the 19th century. It became one of the first modern branches of the food industry in Poland and contributed to the modernization of the village. Quite recently, oilseed rape was to become a plant that would bring back the times of agricultural sheikhs – no longer the nobility would trade in cereals on the European markets, but entrepreneurs producing a vegetable substitute for diesel oil.


Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 412-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUCE BEECKMANS ◽  
LIORA BIGON

ABSTRACTThis article traces the planning history of two central marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa, in Dakar and Kinshasa, from their French and Belgian colonial origins until the post-colonial period. In the (post-)colonial city, the marketplace has always been at the centre of contemporary debates on urban identity and spatial production. Using a rich variety of sources, this article makes a contribution to a neglected area of scholarship, as comparative studies on planning histories in sub-Saharan African cities are still rare. It also touches upon some key issues such as the multiple and often intricate processes of urban agency between local and foreign actors, sanitation and segregation, the different (post-)colonial planning cultures and their limits and the role of indigenous/intermediary groups in spatial contestation and reappropriation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-207

Georg von Krogh of ETH Zurich reviews “The Comingled Code: Open Source and Economic Development” by Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins: Explores the role of open source software in economic development. Discusses software and growth; the history of open source; the supply side--comingling open source and proprietary software; the demand side--assessing trade-offs and making choices; assessing government policies toward software; and the takeaways. Lerner is Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School. Schankerman is Professor of Economics and Research Associate with the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Glossary; index.


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