Abstract

This article intends to present the significance of mortgage financing in emerging markets and explain how mortgage financing affects positively the economies of emerging countries. It will also show the legal foundations of the real-estate mortgage law and the prerequisites for a successful mortgage financing system. This article intends to define the main challenges that some consider a hindrance to the development of the mortgage market in the Arabian Gulf countries. From this perspective, a brief comparative analysis of mortgage financing will focus on varying laws and regulations that apply to real-estate mortgages in the Gulf region. Implications for the development of the mortgage market in Arabian Gulf countries will be based on challenges in the mortgage market.

Abstract

The post-colonialist academic discourse blames colonialism for the marginalisation of Sharī‘a in the legal systems of Sunnī Muslim-majority countries. However, an analysis of some juristic debates around the Sunnī doctrinal theories of uṣūl al-fiqh and maqāṣid al-sharīʿa exposes few of the theories’ internal problems accounting for the marginalisation. In uṣūl al-fiqh, disputes regarding ijmāʿ and qiyās virtually bring their effectiveness as legal doctrines for positive law legislation to a halt. With regard to maqāṣid al-sharīʿa, an Ašʿarī adherence to a literal reading of the text reduces its potential to produce new Sharī‘a-compliant laws. Such problems render uṣūl al-fiqh and maqāṣid al-sharīʿa ineffective instruments for regulating accelerated legal changes demanded by fast-paced societal and scientific developments and deem the application of Sharīʿa in Sunnī Muslim-majority countries a task neither possible nor even recommended.

Abstract

Although e-commerce is growing at a dramatic rate, there are still areas of concern that need to be addressed adequately by the legislation in order to promote trust in e-commerce and remove any barriers to its full development. This paper thus explores the existing legislation in UAE to determine whether or not this legislation gives due attention to consumer protection in an online environment. Furthermore, this paper briefly addresses the issue of what the law ought to be in order to enhance legal certainty as well as maintain the credibility of the Internet as a market place for consumers.

Social networks are crucial factors for refugees and consequently have become an important area of research. They are complex social phenomena that should not be regarded simply as the mere sum of relationships but should rather be seen as the structure of interrelating ties. By combining sociological approaches with methods of biographical research, this study explores the meaning structure of networks built by three Austrian refugees who fled to Australia in 1938/1939. It describes empirically how their expectations influenced transactions, how networks emerged out of dyadic relationships, the role the individual refugees played in that process, and how interwar networks influenced the refugees in setting up networks in Australia. The article also questions how refugees used their networks to cope with their escape and their integration into a new homeland, and how their forced migration influenced identities and relationships in networks.

In 1962, the Federal Republic of Germany (frg) agreed to negotiate a guestworker agreement with Morocco in order to create guidelines for handling 4,000 so-called illegal Moroccan migrants, most of whom lived in North Rhine-Westphalia. Unlike other guestworker agreements, this one was not about recruitment, but rather it was designed to restrict migration from Morocco, legalise the stay of Moroccans already in the country, and establish guidelines for future deportations. Looking at the history of the West German-Moroccan Agreement from its start until its termination in 1973, this article provides a discussion of Moroccan labourers access to and legal status in West Germany, demonstrating how international and economic interests as well as cultural stereotypes of both Moroccans and Arabs shaped West German migration policies. In so doing, the article emphasises the West German federal and the North Rhine-Westphalian state governments’ different goals, revealing that the West German government was not a monolithic entity; it was in fact defined by multiple, sometimes contradictory, viewpoints and pressures.

Abstract

Focusing on the province of Damascus, this study shows that individuals of the ʿaskarī class were obligated to pay village taxes in proportion to the amount of property they owned, and that it was the village cultivators who had the primary authority for individuating and collecting these taxes. Providing a detailed picture of the relations between the ʿaskarī class and peasant communities before the rise of the a’yān in the eighteenth century, the study explores how peasants sought to enforce their decisions on these powerful individuals and to what extent they were successful in doing so.

Abstract

Ponnāni was a port in southwestern India that resisted the Portuguese incursions in the sixteenth century through the active involvement of religious, mercantile and military elites. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Ponnāni was the only place where the Dutch East India Company had commercial access into the kingdom of the Zamorins of Calicut. When the Dutch gained prominence in the coastal belt, this port town became the main centre for their commercial, diplomatic, and political transactions. But as a religious centre it began to recede into oblivion in the larger Indian Ocean and Islamic scholarly networks. The present article examines this dual process and suggests important reasons for the transformations. It argues that the port town became crucial for diplomatic and economic interests of the Dutch East India Company and the Zamorins, whereas its Muslim population became more parochial as they engaged with themselves than with the larger socio-political and scholarly networks.