Tareq Oubrou's Geotheology: Shari'ah of the Minority and the Secularization of Islamic Theology in the European Context

This article introduces the work of the French imam-theologian Tareq Oubrou as a prominent voice of the emerging “European Islamic thought”. It argues that the imam uses Islamic classical jurisprudential devices (such as fatwas), contemporary hermeneutics and critical thought, and personal communion with the divine (spirituality) to renew the understanding of God, Man, and the Qura'n in the European context. In so doing, he (1) “relativizes” shari'ah law by emphasizing the questions of ethics and meaning, (2) “minoritizes” Islam as a religion in a pluralist liberal milieu, and (3) “localizes” its norms, “nationalizes” religious authority, and “institutionalizes” its manifestations. His work is synthesized in this article in three concepts: (1) “geotheology,” (2) “shari'ah of the minority” which are Oubrou's own terms/concepts, and (3) “European Islam”.     

Children's lives in an era of school closures: Exploring the implications of COVID-19 for child labour in Ghana

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Subsequently, governments worldwide implemented strict regimes of lockdowns and school closures to contain the transmission of the virus. Ghana's government on 15 March 2020 also announced a lockdown and closure of schools, lasting up till January 2021. Against this backdrop, the paper examined the implications of school closures on child labour in Ghana. Qualitative data for the study were collected between October 2020 to February 2021 in a small rural community in northern Ghana. Findings from 16 semi-structured interviews with schoolchildren aged 8–13 years show how school closures have meant that children from contexts of poverty: (a) are driven into child labour as they are either forced to accompany their parents to work on farms or sell foodstuff by the roadside; and thus, ultimately (b) engage in no learning during the lockdown period.     

Finite mixture of Burr type XII distribution and its reciprocal: properties and applications

In this paper, the finite mixture of Burr type XII distribution with its reciprocal, is proposed as a failure model. The failure rate (FR) of the new model covers several types of failure rates. It is shown that depending on the parameter values, the model is capable of covering different combinations of failure rates. A study of the behavior of the FR curve of the model is made.     

Economy and Divorces: Their Impact Over Time on the Self-Employment Rates in Spain

The paper used time-series data and examined the effect of economic and social variables on the male and female self-employment rates in Spain. We also employed cointegration analysis (with and without) structural breaks. We thus find strong evidence that long run relationships exist among the variables. More precisely, we find that the unemployment rates and the ratio of self-employment to employees’ earnings have a positive effect on self-employment, whereas, economic development and divorce rates have a negative effect. Importantly, we find that the economic variables have equal or stronger long run impact on females than males, with both groups reacting to changes in family circumstances. Finally, we show that the short run family circumstances are better predictors of self-employment choices rather than economic factors, with self-employment being a means of adjustment to new personal circumstances and economic needs.     

Language effects in cross-cultural management research: An empirical investigation

This study investigates the extent to which language has effects on the responses of bilingual Arabian Gulf students and Arabian Gulf middle managers to questionnaire items in Arabic (their native language) and English (their second language). Findings relating to subjects showed a significant difference in responding to the Arabic and also English versions of the treatment instrument which supports a cultural contingency approach. That is, different levels of English language acquisition resulted in different findings.     

The Impact of Islamic and Customary Laws on Urban form Development in Southwestern Saudi Arabia

Urban form and architecture, whether religious or secular, does not rely only on principles of aesthetics to reflect its essence, but to a great extent reflects a society's religious and social demands. The article reviews Islamic law, shari^cah, and local customary laws, ^curf, and the influence they have had on the structural development of the urban form and architecture of the traditional highland settlements of southwestern Saudi Arabia. Although living conditions in Saudi Arabia are much changed today, the Islamic religion still plays a prominent role in everyday life. The paper argues that the architectural heritage in traditional villages may provide a more satisfactory basis for contemporary community design than the concepts now being implemented since Islamic law continues to influence the organizational characteristics of Saudi settlements. An analysis of physical elements shows how the principles underlying the structure of Islam and the tribal system are pertinent to each settlement's physical development. The conclusion is that the urban form resulted as a response to the Shari^cah and ^cUrf to verify the basic need for defense, climate and the community's social structure.     

A new three-parameter extension of the log-logistic distribution with applications to survival data

In this article, a new three-parameter extension of the two-parameter log-logistic distribution is introduced. Several distributional properties such as moment-generating function, quantile function, mean residual lifetime, the Renyi and Shanon entropies, and order statistics are considered. The estimation of the model parameters for complete and right-censored cases is investigated competently by maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). A simulation study is conducted to show that these MLEs are consistent in moderate samples. Two real datasets are considered; one is a right-censored data to show that the proposed model has a superior performance over several existing popular models.     

Problems in estimating non-linear Engel parameters in the absence of appropriate grouped means and average elasticity of variable elasticity Engel functions

Household Expenditure Survey (HES) data are widely reported in grouped form for a number of reasons. Only within-group arithmetic means (AMs) of the household expenditures on various consumption items, total expenditure, income . and other variables are reported in the tabular form. However, the use of such within-group AMs introduces biases when the parameters of various commonly used non-linear Engel functions are estimated by the Aitken's generalized least squares (GLS) method. This is because the within-group geometric means (GMs)/harmonic means (HMs) are needed in order to estimate unbiased parameters of those non-linear Engel functions. Kakwani (1977) estimated the within-group GMs/HMs from the Kakwani-Podder (1976) Lorenz curve for Indonesian data. We have extended his method to estimate within-group GMs/HMs to a set of variables, based on a general type of concentration curve. It is shown that our estimated within-group GMs/HMs based on concentration curves are not entirely suitable for the Australian HES data. However, these GMs/HMs are then used to estimate Engel parameters for various non-linear Engel functions and it is seen that these elasticities are different for some items of certain non-linear Engel functions than those when the reported within-group AMs are used as proxies for within-group GMs/HMs in order to estimate those non-linear Engel functions. The concept of the average elasticity of a variable elasticity Engel function is discussed and computed for various Australian household consumption items. It is empirically demonstrated that the average elasticities are more meaningful than the traditional elasticity estimates computed at some representative values for certain functions.