Fasting during the month of Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, a recurring annual ritual, which is passionately practiced by most Muslims across the world. It is obligatory on every healthy Muslim; however, the Qur’an and Islamic teachings specifically exempt people with acute or chronic illnesses from this duty, especially if it might have harmful consequences. Muslims with diabetes ...

There is a deepening crisis between oppressed and disaffected religious groups such as Muslims in western societies and some of the principal sources of anti-oppression doctrines and movements.The centre-left seems not only to be dividing between those who see the contemporary minority–majority relations challenge to be the egalitarian inclusion of groups like Muslims, and those who see Muslim ...

Whilst E-Commerce is spreading world-wide, many Muslims are wondering whether this new form of commerce is acceptable from the Syariah (Islamic Law) point of view. Thus, this research paper is meant to study the Islamic perspectives in e-commerce, particularly in its transaction, as well as the rights of the producers and customers. Issues on the legality of E-Commerce in Islam are examined to ...

Despite the enormous number of documents and the huge amount of information contained in the Internet, the information search process is still difficult and unsatisfactory. The main reason behind this is that the search engines use the traditional search which depends on the keywords not on the concepts as semantic search engines. Tim Berners-Lee invented the Semantic Web in 2001 and until now ...

In India, Muslims face significantly lower child mortality rates than Hindus, despite Muslim parents being poorer and less educated on average. Because observable characteristics would predict a Muslim disadvantage relative to Hindus, previous studies documenting this robust and persistent pattern have called it a “puzzle” of Muslim mortality. This paper offers a simple solution to the puzzle i...

Islamic banking is a growing phenomenon which came into existence to satisfy the nan-cial needs of devout Muslims who observe the prohibition of interest-based transactions. Many economists have studied the macroeconomic properties of this institution in the framework of an isolated and ideal Islamic economy. In this age of integrated global nancial markets, the instantaneous transformation of ...

My aim in this paper is to carve out a political understanding of the Muslim identity. The Muslim identity is shaped within a religious mold. Inseparable from this religious understanding is a political one that is valuable in its own right in order to secure any sustainable possibility of participating politically as Muslims within a democratic liberal democracy, such as the United States. Her...

At least three traditions in sociological thought address the question of social inclusion. In the systems theory proposed by Luhmann, inclusion means that individuals are able to adapt and gain access to functional subsystems, such as the labor market or the welfare state. In the tradition of Simmel, social inclusion is seen as an outcome of “cross-cutting social circles”. Both perspectives ar...

This article surveys the beliefs concerning the supernatural characteristics and powers of sacred trees in Israel; it is based on a field study as well as a survey of the literature and includes 118 interviews with Muslims and Druze. Both the Muslims and Druze in this study attribute supernatural dimensions to sacred trees which are directly related to ancient, deep-rooted pagan traditions. The...