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This paper aims to examine the existing practices and pertinent issues affecting Islamic banks and their customers in abandoned housing projects (AHPs) to ensure compliance with Sharīʿah and statutory requirements.

This study employs the qualitative research method using the inductive approach to analyze both primary and secondary data and sources. Data collection involved a series of semi-structured interviews with five volunteering Islamic banks and a representative of Abandoned Property Owners Association Malaysia (Victims). Statutory acts, regulatory policies, guidelines, directives and standards were also analyzed.

The result indicates developer’s default, underlying contracts, regulatory arbitrage and bureaucracy, attitudinal disposition of customers and sell-then-build approach as major factors of AHP’s conundrum.

This study has suggested both short- and long-term solutions based on the principles of justice, public interests and removal of hardship to resolve and effectively manage financial hardship indebtedness arising from housing abandonment. Further, part of the proposed solutions would also reshape housing development policies and home financing transactions.

The quest for this research demonstrated Islamic banking industry’s initiatives to find lasting solutions to perennial issues of AHPs.

This paper aims to analyse the concept of form over substance and introduces the term substance gap to the literature. The substance gap is defined as the difference between the way a concept is expressed and its intended result. Besides, the study investigates the issue from both classical and contemporary viewpoints.

The methodology adopted in this paper is descriptive research.

This paper has depicted the substance gap in contemporary contracts and found that form is equally important as substance in Islamic finance contracts. This paper offers a fresh outlook on form and substance to highlight the importance of the issue and its significance. The findings of the study will help researchers address the issue at its roots and help them to bridge the gap between the form and substance of Islamic finance contracts.

This paper investigates the substance gap in contemporary contracts that exists between the fiqh rules and conditions of an Islamic contract, and their development and construction. Further, the gap could also be attributed to the pressure to cope with a complicated modern finance environment.

Micro-enterprises, like any other business entity, face financing challenges. However, micro-enterprises often cannot access financial institutions as they cannot fulfill the conditions to obtain financing facilities from a formal financial institution. As such, they have to rely on family or friends for financing needs. The most critical challenge faced in this regard to Muslim micro-enterprises is finding out a way in which family and friends could give a financial helping hand without the involvement of riba (interest). At the same time, the person giving the financing can enjoy a profit. This paper aims to propose the Tawarruq Fardi Financing (TFF) model that Islamic micro-enterprises could use to fulfill their financial needs. It becomes a solution when obtaining financing from friends and family or any other third party who could be a private investor who does not want to engage in an equity relationship.

This study adopts a qualitative research methodology, combining descriptive and content analysis using the inductive reasoning approach.

The paper's outcome shows that the proposed TFF could assist Islamic micro-enterprises in obtaining Shariah-compliant financing without engaging in an equity partnership. It allows them to fulfill their financing needs bearing in mind the interest of both parties involved in the transaction.

This research will assist Islamic micro-enterprises to find out a Shariah-compliant financing facility from family, friends and any other private investors without entering into an equity relationship. The proposed model would be a Shariah-compliant alternative to interest-free loans and engaging in an equity relationship for the sake of getting benefits for both parties involved in the transaction.

Actions of incumbent politicians and firms’ managers during election years have been cited as sources of many problems that afflict economies and business entities. Given the controversies surrounding the impact of elections on firms’ soundness, this paper poses a question of whether banks should be averse to elections. Specifically, this study aims to investigate the impact of elections on the profitability and efficiency of banks.

Based on the authors’ knowledge, this is maiden analysis in this context for Ghana where relatively advanced appropriate GMM technique has been used on annual data from 2012 to 2016.

This study reveals that banks make higher returns in election years. Additionally, the authors report that government’s economic policies in election years are detrimental to management efficiency, though insignificant.

From an emerging economy perspective, this study would guide policymakers in designing policies that respond to, or minimize, the impact of elections on bank performance. The result of this analysis would also substantiate the market reaction to the changes in the economic, political and financial conditions.

This analysis suggests that firms’ performances in an election year depend on policies and political institutions in place. The authors argue that Ghana, with its exemplary democratic credentials and strong institutions, living alongside a high perception of corruption, is different. The contribution to literature is, first, by limiting this work to the banking sector of Ghana and, second, by incorporating the behaviors of incumbent governments and individuals in the regression specification model.

This paper examines the national solidarity in Brunei Darussalam during the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequential impact on younger generations. Utilising Emile Durkheim's solidarity theories, I examine how young people's social media use builds on state discourse in the pandemic. I contend that a shift towards an organic society is visible through a social cohesion that is based on differentiated roles. I argue that the citizenry plays a vital role in the forward momentum toward Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0, which illustrates that solidarity cannot be forged as a top-down directive. By prompting economic and creative divisions of labour, the local use of social media in a public health crisis has shown the government a new way to foster solidarity. Significant implications for youth as future leaders of the nation are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the economic feasibility of a three-echelon Halal Meat Supply Chain (HMSC) network that is monitored by a proposed radio frequency identification (RFID)-based management system for enhancing the integrity traceability of Halal meat products and to maximize the average integrity number of Halal meat products, maximize the return of investment (ROI), maximize the capacity utilization of facilities and minimize the total investment cost of the proposed RFID-monitoring system. The location-allocation problem of facilities needs also to be resolved in conjunction with the quantity flow of Halal meat products from farms to abattoirs and from abattoirs to retailers.

First, a deterministic multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model was developed and used for optimizing the proposed RFID-based HMSC network toward a comprised solution based on four conflicting objectives as described above. Second, a stochastic programming model was developed and used for examining the impact on the number of Halal meat products by altering the value of integrity percentage. The ε-constraint approach and the modified weighted sum approach were proposed for acquisition of non-inferior solutions obtained from the developed models. Furthermore, the Max-Min approach was used for selecting the best solution among them.

The research outcome shows the applicability of the developed models using a real case study. Based on the computational results, a reasonable ROI can be achievable by implementing RFID into the HMSC network.

This work addresses interesting avenues for further research on exploring the HMSC network design under different types of uncertainties and transportation means. Also, environmentalism has been becoming increasingly a significant global problem in the present century. Thus, the presented model could be extended to include the environmental aspects as an objective function.

The model can be utilized for food supply chain designers. Also, it could be applied to realistic problems in the field of supply chain management.

Although there were a few studies focusing on the configuration of a number of HMSC networks, this area is overlooked by researchers. The study shows the developed methodology can be a useful tool for designers to determine a cost-effective design of food supply chain networks.