— This essay focuses on two questions: How do the current economic systems and institutions of Muslim countries differ from those of other countries at the same stage of economic development? What is the impact of Islam on the economic and social performance of these countries? Employing a cluster analysis I find that there is no special Muslim economic system; moreover, few economic institutio...

Out of the total population of Sri Lanka, the Muslim community constitutes about 8%, while the Buddhist majority makes up 69,1%. Still, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, a Muslim political party, has been a significant player in the Sri Lankan political arena since the early 1990s. This article explores how they managed to gain support as quickly as they did, from the early 1980s to the present, a...

Is Islam compatible with modern economic development? The poor development record of predominantly Muslim countries during the past century has led to claims that only a return to medieval Islamic institutions will produce economic growth in a manner that is compatible with Islamic culture. Using data from the thirteenth century Islamic Levant, this paper examines how one medieval Islamic insti...

The Islamic necropolis discovered in Tauste (Zaragoza, Spain) is the only evidence that a large Muslim community lived in the area between the 8th and 10th centuries. A multi-isotope approach has been used to investigate the mobility and diet of this medieval Muslim population living in a shifting frontier region. Thirty-one individuals were analyzed to determine δ15N, δ13C, δ18O and 87Sr/86Sr ...

Providing analytical and social tools, critical discourse analysis (henceforthCDA) can be used to unravel the hidden ideologiesas well as biases in the websof discursive practices involved in texts. In this paper, the van Leeuwen’s (1996)CDA framework is used to analyze an article from a British broadsheet newspaper,the Guardian. To have a more detailed analysis, eleven elements are chosen from...

Priming with race-typed names and religious concepts have been shown to activate stereotypes and increase prejudice towards out-groups. We examined the effects of name and religious word priming on views of a specific and well-known person, President Barack Obama. We predicted that politically conservative participants primed with President Obama's middle name (Hussein) would rate him more nega...