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This study aims to investigate and propose the potential practice of hibah al-ʿumra as a Shari‘ah-compliant policy that would encompass the disbursement of death benefits and facilitate their smooth distribution among the projected beneficiaries of the family Takāful.

This study uses a qualitative approach. It conducts semi-structured interviews with different Takāful practitioners in Malaysia. This study also consulted a few Shari‘ah scholars regarding their opinions on the application of hibah al-ʿumra in disbursing family Takāful benefits. The thematic analysis is carried out to analyse qualitative data.

From both Shari‘ah and the relevant industry perspectives, the notion of hibah al-ʿumra has a great potential to disburse the family Takāful benefits to the Takāful participants or nominated beneficiaries. Given the conditional nature of hibah in Takāful, it is argued that there is a scope for imposing some conditions to make hibah al-ʿumra a life grant gift. This is expected to play a significant role in resolving the issues relating to the disbursement of family Takāful benefits among the beneficiaries, where it becomes irrevocable.

In the current practice of family Takāful, in the event of the recipient’s death or divorce, the application of absolute hibah results in the disbursement of Takāful benefits among undesirable beneficiaries. In contrast, in hibah al-ʿumra, it is expected that subject to a condition of withdrawal, its practice would help manage any unwanted situation if other potential beneficiaries are nominated upon signing the agreement at the outset.

This study is expected to contribute to help channel the family Takāful benefits into the desired beneficiaries being the proposed hibah al-ʿumra as a form of conditional hibah. Besides, this type of hiba can be treated as a solution in any adverse situation.

Islamic crowdfunding, an alternative way to finance social projects, is a new development in Malaysia. Little is known about its operation. This study aims to explore the practice of Nusa Kapital, the first Islamic crowdfunding platform in Malaysia.

This study adopted a descriptive approach. The data was collected through document analysis and interviews with two officials of Nusa Kapital. The data gathered was analyzed through the thematic analysis technique.

This research discovered that Nusa Kapital was established considering the financing needs of the growing number of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. It uses the murabahah concept to make financing arrangements for entrepreneurs. Murabahah is a debt-based concept where the investors, instead of giving cash to the entrepreneurs, purchase an asset and sell it to them at a cost-plus profit. The Securities Commission Malaysia (SCM) regulates the crowdfunding operation of Nusa Kapital, which sets guidelines for the different types of investors, entrepreneurs and platforms. Nusa Kapital conducts an extensive background check of the company for its creditworthiness and takes the necessary measures for the transparency of the project's operation.

This study has unique implications for the regulatory authorities and practitioners in Malaysia and global industries. The study explored the practical scenario of the crowdfunding institution, which will be beneficial for similar industries within and outside of the country.

While previous literature provides a theoretical discussion of Islamic crowdfunding, this study contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating its practice.

Considering the popularity of the premium savings certificate (PSC) of the National Savings Bank of Malaysia (Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN)) the paper aims to justify the Shari'ah compliancy of this product by analyzing its underlying contracts and to propose a Shari'ah compliant savings certificate, if the current practice is invalid in the Shari'ah.

Inductive methodology is first used to obtain a basic understanding of this product and the characteristics of Shari'ah approved contracts as well as the views of the jurists. Interviewing method is also used to acquire first‐hand information when the inductive method is not sufficient. Afterwards, an analytical approach is adopted to justify the validity of this contract with the Shari'ah principles. Finally, an innovative methodology is used to propose a Shari'ah compliant savings certificate.

The paper argues that the underlying contract used in PSC violates the conditions of wadi'ah contract, as in wadi'ah, the bank is not allowed to spend the money for investment, but in practice, BSN uses the money for investment. Therefore, the underlying contract in PSC turns into qard (loan) contract. Since the scholars unanimously declare that giving any kind of benefit like prizes to the creditor is riba, then PSC is considered as invalid according to the Shari'ah. On the other hand, although PSC might seem like gambling, it is different from gambling as the prizes given to PSC are from a third party. The paper proposes implementing mudarabah contract in PSC where the bank is allowed to invest according to its interest and the depositors share the profit and loss but the huge fluctuation of profit and loss could be shrunk by a special fund method.

In particular, it attracts the attention of BSN management to change their product's features. In general, it discovers a non‐Shari'ah compliant feature of savings certificates and outlines the feature of a Shari'ah compliant saving certificate for the practitioners of Islamic banking all over the world.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the human capital theory from an Islamic perspective. It studies the primary sources of Islam to discover its contribution towards human capital development.

The paper adopts inductive and analytical method to interpret Islamic viewpoints towards human capital development. It studies the classical and modern sources of Islamic law and analyzes scholars' opinions.

In fact, human capital theory has a different understanding in Islam, due to its different objectives. However, it resembles the conventional theory in the way that it urges the development of human beings in education, skills and abilities. Islamic teachings contribute a lot to foster development among the individuals in every aspect of their lives. The way Islam gives incentive to development is unique; because, with the improvement of education, good skills, work and production, physical health and perfection, it is concerned about the moral and ethical development of employees, which is no doubt having a great effect in the development of the organization. Moreover, Islamic society plays an important role in nurturing enthusiastic and competent individuals.

It is expected that the paper would be of interest to Muslim authorities, as a means to motivate their employees, as well as to share ideas across the academic disciplines.

The study aims to consider wa’dan-based products in Islamic banks in Malaysia and discuss the validity of wa’dan in those products from the perspective of Shari’ah.

Case studies were conducted of three Islamic banks in Malaysia. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with bankers as well as Shari’ah scholars. The document analysis method was adopted to strengthen the findings.

The study shows that three Islamic banking products: Musyarakah Mutanaqisah (MM) home and property financing; Al-Ijarah Thumma Al-Bai’ (AITAB) vehicle financing; and Ijarah rental swap (IRS) use wa’dan in their product structures. After discussing the different views of the scholars, the study concludes that wa’dan should be allowed in the above-mentioned products because it is different from muwa’adah. In wa’dan, every single wa’d is separate from each other, as every one of them is related to different types of events. With regard to the issue of Shari’ah in MM home and property financing, it was concluded that wa’d from the customer to purchase the bank’s share is not a capital guarantee. Moreover, IRS is not a form of gambling but is in line with Maqasid al-Shari’ah.

The study is limited to three Islamic banks in Malaysia that focus on retail and commercial banking products. Therefore, the study excludes application of wa’dan in sukuk and some other Islamic derivatives that are not the practice of these three banks.

This empirical study adds new knowledge by developing the concept and practice of wa’dan. Wa’dan as an innovative tool for product development to overcome Shari’ah issues in conventional banking may be of interest to practitioners all around the world.

In this study, supervision and control of the possible problems among people over a large area with a limited number of drone cameras and security staff is established.

These drones, namely unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will be adaptively and automatically distributed over the crowds to control and track the communities by the proposed system. Since crowds are mobile, the design of the drone clusters will be simultaneously re-organized according to densities and distributions of people. An adaptive and dynamic distribution and routing mechanism of UAV fleets for crowds is implemented to control a specific given region. The nine popular clustering algorithms have been used and tested in the presented mechanism to gain better performance.

The nine popular clustering algorithms have been used and tested in the presented mechanism to gain better performance. An outperformed clustering performance from the aggregated model has been received when compared with a singular clustering method over five different test cases about crowds of human distributions. This study has three basic components. The first one is to divide the human crowds into clusters. The second one is to determine an optimum route of UAVs over clusters. The last one is to direct the most appropriate security personnel to the events that occurred.

This study has three basic components. The first one is to divide the human crowds into clusters. The second one is to determine an optimum route of UAVs over clusters. The last one is to direct the most appropriate security personnel to the events that occurred.

This study aims to explore how hotels adapt their business models as a strategic response to crisis situations. It sheds light on the processes and methods of business model adaptation during severe crisis situations, such as the COVID-19 outbreak.

A single-case study was conducted. Data were collected from the owner/manager of a boutique hotel chain in Chiang Mai, Thailand through an extensive interviewing process. The authors also examined corporate documents. The authors then re-organized the material as a coherent narrative about how the company navigated the COVID-19 crisis.

The findings show that the hotels in the study adapted their business models by cutting costs through stopping non-essential operations, increasing non-room revenues and adding new revenue channels, bringing in cash from advance bookings, securing financial support from creditors, leveraging government support and training staff for the “new normal.”

Few previous studies have focused on business model adaptation during the COVID-19 crisis. The investigation of this largely neglected area provides two main contributions. First, it extends the literature on crisis management in hospitality firms by examining business model adaptation patterns and processes during unprecedented crisis conditions. Second, it provides managerial insights and a business model adjustment framework to help practitioners in urban settings in their efforts toward recovery from the COVID crisis.

This study aims to investigate the effect of fear sentiment with a novel data set on Bitcoin’s (BTC) return, volatility and transaction volume. The authors divide the sample into two subperiods to capture the changing dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors retrieve the novel fear sentiment data from Thomson Reuters MarketPsych Indices (TRMI). The authors denote the subperiods as pre- and post-COVID-19 considering January 13, 2020, when the first COVID-19 confirmed case was reported outside China. The authors use bivariate vector autoregressive models given below with lag-length k, to investigate the dynamics between BTC variables and fear sentiment.

BTC market measures have dissimilar dynamics before and after the Coronavirus outbreak. The results reveal that due to the excessive uncertainty led by the outbreak, an increase in fear sentiment negatively affects the BTC returns more persistently and significantly. For the post-COVID-19 period, an increase in fear also results in more fluctuations in transaction volume while its initial and cumulative effects are both negative. Due to extreme uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, investors may trade more aggressively in the initial phases of the shock.

The authors are convinced that the results in this paper have more far-reaching implications for other markets regulated by the states. BTC provides a natural benchmark to understand how fear sentiment drives and impacts the markets isolated from any interventions. Hence, the results show that in the absence of regulatory frameworks, market dynamics are likely to be more volatile and the fear sentiment has more persistent impacts. The authors also highlight the importance of using micro, asset-specific sentiment measures to capture market dynamics better.

BTC is not associated with any regulatory authority and is not produced by the governments and central banks. COVID-19 as a natural experiment provides an opportunity to explore the pure effects of market sentiment on BTC considering its decentralized and unregulated features. The paper has two main contributions. First, the authors use BTC-specific fear sentiment novel data set of TRMI instead of more general market sentiments used in the existing studies. Next, this is the first study to examine the association between fear and BTC before and after COVID-19.

The purpose of this study is to examine the perception and acceptability of insurance policyholders to introduce takāful in India. The primary focus of this research is insurance policyholders because they currently have insurance policies and it is believed that they are familiar with the concept of insurance, compared to the people who do not have any insurance policy.

New product diffusion theory is used in developing the hypothesis and a questionnaire. In this research, the population is unknown, and hence, the non-probability sample is used. Quota sampling and snowball sampling methods are used in this survey, with a sample size of 909 respondents, including Muslim and non-Muslim policyholders. The external factors that motivate potential policyholders to participate in takāful are the independent variable here; while the respondents’ actual willingness to participate in takāful is the dependent variable. Regression analysis is performed to analyse the data.

Based on 909 respondents, it is found that the factors such as cost vs benefits, marketing and promotion and social and religion play a significant role in a consumers’ decision-making at 1% significant level overall. The attribute of agents can influence the consumers at a 10% significant level overall. However, other factors, namely, accessibility, availability and service quality, product features and reputation of the company cannot pursue the consumers in India.

The questionnaires are distributed in 10 cities from nine states out of 28 states in India. Thus, it covers only one-third of the states. Future research can expand the respondents from other states that have not been researched.

India is opening to foreign investments in the Indian insurance industry, and thus, the findings are useful for industrial players, investors, policymakers for the development of takāful in India.

Limited research has been done in previous studies and this research is the pinnacle within-depth survey regarding takāful in India.