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The chapter aims to investigate the link between COVID-19 and Islamic finance, investigating how Islamic countries respond to the impact of the pandemic and how Islamic banks have responded in consideration of their financial statements. The study proposes a novel perspective based on thematic analysis of blogs and newspapers to validate the relevant literature. Moreover, the documentary analysis will allow researchers to investigate Islamic banks' financial statements. We find that Islamic countries have used extraordinary Sukuk issuances both at government and cross-border level. Moreover, traditional instruments such as the Zakat have been converted for even more social uses. Concerning the literature, we find that there have been temporary tax suspensions and commodity supply measures to deal with the pandemic crisis's uncertainty. Finally, financial statements analysis reveals prudent behaviour with decreases in profits aimed at increasing risk provisions. The results provide theoretical evidence to researchers and practical evidence to policymakers, public policy investors and citizens.

Leadership is basically about influence and ability to cultivate followership. This chapter examined the nature of indigenous socio-political leadership in Africa using Zimbabwe, Sudan and Nigeria as caselets and compared this with the post-colonial or modern-day leadership realities. A survey was conducted among senior executives at Lagos Business School, Nigeria, with a sample size of 200 persons, to find out their perception of the African indigenous leadership system. An overwhelming 90% believe that culture plays a big role in shaping African leadership style. However, two-thirds of the respondents agreed that Africa lacks proper institutional structures to support good leadership, thus encouraging corruption (97% of the respondents) and non-accountability among the leaders. Also, only 5% thought cultural orientation was the reason why the African followers do not hold their leaders accountable. In other words, it is not in the African culture not to hold leaders accountable for their actions. So, what went wrong? We attempted a deeper look at the effect of colonial rule and the attendant militarisation of the African continent. Our conclusion is that the colonisation of the continent by Europe brought significant distortion to the traditional African indigenous leadership institutions and the psyche of the African leader and the followers alike. Post-colonial Africa has witnessed 133 recorded coups d’etat between 1952 and 2016. This chapter is recommended to all those who seek a deeper understanding of the nature of the African indigenous leadership practices and the factors that have shaped these over the years.

Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is exposed to several natural hazards, among which flash floods are most common and frequent. Expanding development and higher intensity of rainfall are the primary causes of flash floods. As the urbanisation is growing, the number of exposed properties, people and business premises are also increasing. This may have a detrimental impact on the socio-economic state of the city. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to investigate the frequency and intensity of flash flood occurrences between 2011 and 2016 and to delineate how it is impacting the urban livelihood. For this study, several news reports of flash flood events, previously published and reports were reviewed to elicit information so that the frequency and intensity of flash floods can be analysed for identifying flash flood risk areas. Along with the information from newspapers, Google map was used to identify the spatial locations of flash flood events, thus identifying the risk zones. This study found the City Centre as the most risk prone to flash floods. It was noted that 39% of flash floods occurred in this place. The Damansara-Penchala area comes in the second position with 20% of flash floods occurring in this place. Most of the people of these zones are exposed to flash flood and the affected people suffer from road blocking and heavy traffic jam. This study will help researchers and policymakers to understand the impact of flash floods in the city. This will also help to identify the most flood-prone areas of the city.

This chapter offers a symbolic perspective on the Egyptian Revolution. It does so by analyzing the transformation of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Egyptian man beaten to death by police on June 6, 2010, into a key visual injustice symbol. Activists were motivated by a horrifying cell phone photograph of Said taken by his family at the morgue and uploaded on the web. Although the postmortem photograph had a powerful emotional impact in itself, the transformation of Said from local/particular incident to injustice symbol with society-wide repercussions cannot be explained by its mere availability in the public sphere. The transformation required intervention and appropriation by activists who creatively and strategically universalized the case, linking it with existing injustice frames in Egypt. This chapter analyzes this interplay between photographs, activism, and society in two steps. The first provides an analysis of the genesis of the Said symbol and identifies three levels of agency in its formation. The second step analyzes the process through which Said was infused with injustice meanings by activists. Providing the first systematic analysis of Said from a social movement perspective, the chapter draws on several data sources that are subjected to interpretive analysis: visual material available on the internet, Facebook pages, and interviews with and accounts by key activists. And it calls for more attention to photographs and symbols in the analysis of activism and points to several historical and present cases with relevance for such an approach.