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In this introduction to the special issue, ‘Marxist Thought in South Asia’, we detail the long history of Marxist politics and theorizing in South Asia and highlight the unique contributions and perspectives of South Asian Marxists to global Marxism. Three contributions we find particularly significant are (1) South Asian Marxists' approach to thinking about questions of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, (2) the treatment of agrarian and feudal continuities in Marxist theories from South Asia and (3) unique South Asian contributions to theorizing caste from a Marxist perspective.

The unique characteristic of Islamic bank leads in governance and disclosure. Using stakeholder, signaling, and market discipline theory, governance and adequate disclosure may increase bank soundness. This study aims to investigate the relationship of sharia disclosure and Sharia Supervisory Board in influencing Islamic bank soundness in the different regulatory framework of the country. Using purposive sampling, the research covered 84 Islamic banks in 16 countries during the period 2013–2015 with lag data of Islamic bank soundness. The result shows sharia disclosure influences on Islamic bank soundness for management efficiency, capital adequacy ratio, asset quality, and liquidity. The results also show that sharia disclosure mediates the indirect effect of SSB on Islamic bank soundness. The regulatory framework (sharia accounting standard and SSB regulation) shows moderating effect of regulation framework proved on the association of sharia disclosure with management efficiency, capital, and liquidity. The effect is indirectly depending on the regulatory framework for proxy management efficiency, capital, and liquidity. The implication of the research suggests that sharia disclosure could increase the market discipline mechanism of Islamic bank stream. The Islamic bank can increase the transparency using sharia disclosure as a branding for increasing public trust, even though in the deficient Islamic bank regulation countries.

This paper examines the Pakistani state's shift from the accommodation to exclusion of the heterodox Ahmadiyya community, a self-defined minority sect of Islam. In 1953, the Pakistani state rejected demands by a religious movement that Ahmadis be legally declared non-Muslim. In 1974 however, the same demand was accepted. This paper argues that this shift in the state's policy toward Ahmadis was contingent on the distinct political fields in which the two religious movements were embedded. Specifically, it points to conjunctures among two processes that defined state–religious movement relations: intrastate struggles for political power, and the framing strategies of religious movements vis-à-vis core symbolic issues rife in the political field. Consequently, the exclusion of Ahmadis resulted from the transformation of the political field itself, characterized by the increasing hegemony of political discourses referencing Islam, shift toward electoral politics, and the refashioning of the religious movement through positing the “Ahmadi issue” as a national question pertaining to democratic norms.

The study aims at reviewing a synthesis of disclosure, transparency, and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) implementation in an attempt to provide directions for future research. Prior research overwhelmingly supports that the IFRS adoption or effective implementation of IFRS will enhance high-quality financial reporting, transparency, enhance the country’s investment environment, and foreign direct investment (FDI) (Dayanandan, Donker, Ivanof, & Karahan, 2016; Gláserová, 2013; Muniandy & Ali, 2012). However, some researchers provide conflicting evidence that developing countries implementing IFRS are probably not going to encounter higher FDI inflows (Gheorghe, 2009; Lasmin, 2012). It has also been argued that the IFRS adoption decreases the management earnings in countries with high levels of financial disclosure. In general, the study indicates that the adoption of IFRS has improved the financial reporting quality. The common law countries have strong rules to protect investors, strict legal enforcement, and high levels of transparency of financial information. From the extensive structured review of literature using the Scopus database tool, the study reviewed 105 articles, and in particular, the topic-related 94 articles were analysed. All 94 articles were retrieved from a range of 59 journals. Most of the articles (77 of 94) were published 2010–2018. The top five journals based on the citations are Journal of Accounting Research (187 citations), Abacus (125 citations), European Accounting Review (107 citations), Journal of Accounting and Economics (78 citations), and Accounting and Business Research (66 citations). The most-cited authors are Daske, Hail, Leuz, and Verdi (2013); Daske and Gebhardt (2006); and Brüggemann, Hitz, and Sellhorn (2013). Surprisingly, 65 of 94 articles did not utilise the theory. In particular, four theories have been used frequently: agency theory (15), economic theory (5), signalling theory (2), and accounting theory (2). The study calls for future research on the theoretical implications and policy-related research on disclosure and transparency which may inform the local and international standard setters.

This chapter draws upon empirical data collected with former violent extremists in the UK to address the phenomenological attractions of engaging in terrorism. We argue that there needs to be more consideration of the attractions of belonging to a terrorist organization and a more thorough appreciation of the experiences that attract people to acts of terrorism. This chapter begins to address these issues by engaging with Jack Katz's (1988) research on the phenomenological foreground, the compelling and seductive qualities of engaging in criminal acts. Katz's highly original and influential research shifts attention away from traditional criminological approaches that emphasize structural background factors such as class, unemployment, gender, poverty, or education. As Katz argues, this structural level of analysis overlooks the subjective phenomenological feelings that accompany criminal behavior. We argue that this is a serious omission as it is precisely the search for thrill, risk, and intense excitement that can serve to motivate further acts of criminality.