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The purpose of this paper is to draw a map of the general features of epistemological and critical concerns in contemporary Islamic philosophy. This study will not be confined to the domain of academic philosophy or to those who are professionals in the field of philosophy.

The paper adopted the critical rational approach in dealing with contemporary Islamic philosophy in the Arab world. The scope will include scholars from different fields of epistemology who tried to present a “vision” of the attitude that should be adopted in facing the challenges of the age and the problems of the nation on the epistemological level or the political, economic and social levels.

There is a need for a philosophy of action and progress rather than a philosophy that is based on abstract ideas and theories and of words/rhetoric. The ethics required to accomplish this ought to identify the attributes of the citizen who can reach self-actualization through legitimate means based on a progress agenda with theoretical and philosophical foundations.

Because a critical rational approach can be dealt with from different perspectives, this paper will adopt the classification of the principal intellectual trends: the reformist, secular and liberal.

This paper covers a long time span to determine whether the philosophical projects have been effective.

This paper, which criticizes the philosophic projects that are theoretically unsound and that do not address real social problems (like poverty), argues the need for a philosophy of progress and action. This will lead to devising an agenda that addresses the challenges the society is facing and to finding alternative and creative solutions resulting in development.

Our purpose in this paper is three‐fold. First, we shall briefly describe what is almost a truism— that is, the classical (especially the Greek) intellectual heritage of the Arab‐Islamic scholars upon which the latter, imbued by their young faith, developed their own comprehensive synthesis. Second, as part of that synthesis, we shall explore briefly the economic thought of a few early‐medieval Arab‐Islamic scholastics who extended that heritage and wrote on numerous issues of human concern, including economics. Those discourses took place during what is sometimes called the “golden age” of Islam — a period that coincided roughly with the so‐called Dark Age of Europe. Parenthetically, it might be noted that one of 20th century's most prominent economists, the late Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) had, unfortunately for the continuity and evolution of human intellectual tradition, declared that period as “the Great Gap,” representing “blank centuries,” during which nothing of significance to economics, or for that matter to any field, was said or written anywhere — as though there was a complete lacuna over intellectual evolution throughout the rest of the world (Schumpeter, 52, 74; see Ghazanfar, 1991). And finally, we will provide some evidence as to the historically influential linkages of the Arab‐Islamic thought, including economic thought, with the Latin‐European scholastics‐a phenomenon that facilitated the European intellectual evolution. An underlying theme of this paper is predicated on the premise that the classical tradition (i.e., Greek knowledge, though not exclusively) is part of a long historical continuum that represents the inextricably linked Judeo‐Christian‐and‐Islamic tradition of the West. This theme, though not common appreciated, is amply corroborated through the writings of well‐known scholars from the East and the West (see, for example, Durant, Haskins, Myers, O'Leary, Said, Sarton, Sharif, and others).

This paper aims to confront some of the many facets of academic freedom as a whole, including the shared concerns with Western academia, its relationship to the politics of Arab society and the relevance of these issues within local political domains. It attempts to profile the problems hindering societal progress beyond the seemingly defined truth. While this subject has many facets, this article only examines academic freedom within the scope of knowledge and inquiry derived from the revered text of the Qur'ãn, including its relation to democracy and radicalism. It is an effort to refocus Arab intellectual dialogue on its ailing academia. It also argues for Arab society to reclaim its core culture of Islam as an enabler of learning aside from the Eurocentric perspective of academic freedom.

This paper uses an expository and persuasive format in its novel perspective. This expository form sets out the argument of academic freedom as being indigenous to Arab-Islamic heritage and pursues a persuasive statement for its resolution. This format outlines the main familiar aspects of academic freedom and lays out its components within Arab-Islamic history.

This paper provides insights and arguments supporting its main theory. It suggests that Arabs must judiciously consider what their education will look like and accomplish in the next 100 years, considering the sociopolitical status quo and the chances of changing it. It argues that academic freedom is indigenous to Arab-Islamic early history, academia and knowledge governance. Therefore, Arab academia must not ignore its heritage to examine what hinders education and intellectualism. It concludes with the point that reinstalling a culture of knowledge will create a relevant democracy.

The implications for research, practice and society are vast. Further academic freedom research would redefine terms of processes, change the role of academic leadership, debunk locally dominated politics, introduce learning-first policies, balance inequalities in gender, abolish academic tribalism and move past colonialist ideas and predominance. For researchers, this point of view would open doors for new scholastic approaches.

This paper includes practical implications that stem from an approach that would provoke practical possibilities and call for more academic conversations. Further conversations should explore and debate the gaps in Arab-Islamic knowledge history. The Global South of the Arab World or the Middle East and Northern Africa/Southwest Asia North Africa region could consider drafting a contemporary MENA account of a Magna Charta Libertatis Academicae or a Magna Charta Universitatum that is galvanized by Arab revivable heritage. Moreover, It would be productive if Western universities that operate in the Arab World would also take an active role in denouncing undemocratic practices and not merely operate as commercial enterprises.

Realizing academic freedom in Arab institutions will have a positive spillover effect on Arab society, including thriving and free media, freedom of speech and gender issues. Academic freedom is one of the main elements in structuring free political culture that adhere to the principles of tolerance. Academic freedom is necessary for showing all contesting ideas in a better light and, ultimately, achieving a form of intellectual equipoise.

This paper concerns academic freedom in the Arab-Islamic World. The majority of academic freedom scholarship today assumes a Western democratic context in discussing or even arguing against it. The paper's focus is a novel expansion of that literature.

This study aims to investigate the research productivity of library and information science (LIS) authors affiliated with the 22 countries of the Arab League. It also identifies the top countries, organizations, authors, journals, natures of collaboration, and frequently used keywords in LIS research in the Arab world.

Bibliometric methods were used to evaluate the research performance of the authors affiliated with library organizations in the Arab region. The Elsevier Scopus database was selected for data retrieval. A comprehensive search strategy was adopted to retrieve 863 publications contributed by LIS authors affiliated with the Arab countries. VOS viewer, Biblioshiny, BiblioAnalyitics, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel were used for data visualization and analysis.

This paper presents the dynamics and the state of the LIS research in the Arab region published between 1951 and 2021. The results of the study have highlighted an upward trend in the growth of the publications, especially in the past four years. The largest number of studies were published in the year 2020. The country-wise analysis ranked Kuwait and Saudi Arabia as the top LIS research producing countries with five and four researchers, respectively. The Kuwait University, the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University were the three most productive organizations. Academic libraries, social media, bibliometrics, information-seeking behavior, information literacy and knowledge management were identified as the major areas of interest for the researchers. Internet and open access were topics that had gained recent popularity, while the digital library, research data management, green librarianship, link data, cloud computing, library leadership, library automation and artificial intelligence were identified as areas requiring further attention. Furthermore, the single-author pattern was found to be the most preferred pattern.

The findings of this study would help prospective researchers in choosing the neglected areas of research that require further investigation. They would also help policymakers in identifying factors that need more attention and allocation of research funds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive bibliometric study that presents a holistic picture of the LIS research in the Arab region.

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of Omani citizens toward the use of social media by the government for participatory and interactive relationships. More precisely, the descriptive nature of the study resides in its ability to explain how social media users regard the current status and levels of presence, transparency, engagement, responsiveness and trust about the current use of social media by the Omani Government.

A quantitative approach was used to collect data. This was done via a self-administered questionnaire from a return sample of 1,769 citizens drawn from different places in Oman. These citizens were considered as well-informed and regular active users of social media. The reviewed literature provided a basis for the construct of the questionnaire.

The overall results indicated modest levels of agreement in all of the investigated factors. The neutral findings suggest that there is a level of uncertainty among the respondents regarding how the government is determining the potential of social media for participatory and interactive relationships. Findings in this study advocate the outcomes of the recent Arab Social Media Report, plus the few relevant studies included in the literature, which nearly stated that although there is a growing use of social media among citizens, governments are failing to take full advantage of social media. Governments are also failing to engage citizens to design and deliver more efficient and collaborative services, per this study’s findings.

The findings call for the importance of strategically framing the use of participatory social media by the government. In a broader sense, the findings of this study are beneficial to all contexts that share similar political and socio-economic philosophy, especially the Arab states and most of the developing countries. The findings provide insights for governments in need of developing social media strategies to promote more collaborative and interactive governance.

The study aids in understanding the views of citizens who are the current major players in a highly technology-driven environment. This environment is found to be transforming the relationship between citizens and governments. The study adds knowledge to the currently scarce body of literature dealing with issues pertaining to citizen–government relationships in social media in the Arab states, and similar contexts in developing countries. Its findings may provide valuable insights for policy makers to leverage collaborative relationships between governments and citizens.

This is a review article on the effectiveness of cross‐cultural managements of multinational companies. Analysis is based on the relationships between national and corporate culture and these corporate cultures vary across nations and how multinational companies can adopt the national differences.

Academic institutions and their libraries in the Middle East have taken a new turn after the petrodollar boom. Prior to this boom these institutions and their libraries were very poor in many respects. The most noteworthy changes occurred in the Arab OAPEC countries, especially in the Arabian Gulf, and became possible because of the generous budget allocated to the development of education. At present there are 17 universities in the Arabian Gulf and they are divided among six countries, as follows: Saudi Arabia 7, Iraq 6, United Arab Emirates 1, Kuwait 1, Qatar 1 and Bahrain 1. The oldest universities are King Saud University (KSU) (formerly the University of Riyadh) in Saudi Arabia, and the University of Baghdad in Iraq; both were founded in 1957. Most universities came into existence in the 1960s and 1970s (nine universities in the 1960s and six in the 1970s). The most recent is the Arabian Gulf University (AGU) in Bahrain, supported by the Arab Bureau of Education for the Arabian Gulf states. Another university which is under construction is the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman; this will be inaugurated formally in Autumn 1986. In Bahrain a university was announced on May 24, 1986 to be formed by merging the two existing major institutions: University College of Arts, Science and Education (UCB) and the Gulf Polytechnic (GP). Plans have already been approved for the construction of a university library building to merge the collections of the UCB and GP libraries.

This paper aims to examine the functioning and organizational structure of the historic Andalusian water courts, institutions of Islamic origin whose basic model should be considered in light of the regulation of modern Islamic banking and finance.

The methodology of this study has been focused on the contextualization of al-Andalus during the European Middle Ages, highlighting its enormous contributions and implications in the creation of Western knowledge. In the same way, the ordinances of the Castilian-Aragonese kings, aimed at the persistence of the Andalusian water courts in the Southeast of Spain after the Muslim period, have been used as the main sources of reference.

This research has detected that the main features of the Andalusian water courts, i.e. integrity, democracy, transparency, credibility, moral authority or simplicity (among many others), can be conveniently replicated in the scope of the current Islamic banking and finance.

Several implications can be derived from this study: first, it highlights the total resilience of a regulatory model that “it was already there,” given by the history of the Andalusian civilization. This model will be always welcomed by the Muslim community in Western countries as it is a matter of regulating themselves according to the way their ancestors did. The main limitation faced by this research is the relative scarcity of original sources, which is justifiable given that most of the royal ordinances come from the 13th century, having unfortunately lost a good number of sources over time.

This paper seeks a feasible alternative to the controversy arising from the resolution of possible disputes in Islamic banking and finance taking into account that Western judges do not know (nor do they have to) the principles on which this discipline is based. The application of the historical Andalusian model would allow the creation of an independent jurisdiction, while subordinated to the established juridic power, without contravening the principle of “jurisdictional unity.” The last element that gives an added value to this research is spreading the achievements of the Andalusian culture and civilization, unjustly omitted by a great part of the existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the distinctive decision‐making style of Alshura (participative approach) and its role in governance of Muslim states to provide insight of this pioneering democratic approach to decision making. The paper provides further knowledge of an issue that is not so known to many readers outside the Islamic world.

Review of literature of both Western and Muslim countries and exploration and interpretation of Quranic citation and practical life of the prophet of Islam.

Alshura is an essential decision making process initiated by Islam more than 14 centuries ago. It peruses a participative approach to decision making, depending on its practice on consultation in order that more appropriate decisions are made. This system is legislative, comprehensive, flexible, and gives people opportunities to create and develop necessary laws to satisfy the specific needs of a certain period of time.

The paper can be developed further through empirical research to provide a much more focused picture about the practicality of Alshura method.

Understanding the shuratic process to decision making is important to managers operating in Muslim countries. Muslims have a firm belief that Alshura is a more systematic approach to worldly matters that may bring about more fruitful implementation of decisions and results.

The research is important because it extends knowledge of traditional methods of decision making in an Arab/Muslim state.