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This chapter uses panel data techniques to analyze the impact of corporate governance and competition on performance of the firms operating in Muslim and non-Muslim economies. Also analyzed the corporate data of 3,158 firms operating in five non-Muslim economies and 1,785 firms operating in five Muslim economies. It is observed from the results that most of the firm-level variables have similar behavior with firm performance irrespective of ownership structure. It is also found that direct majority-owned firms are more profitable as compared to independent firms irrespective of the operating region. Further, it is also observed that operating environment, specifically governance system, has significant impacts on firm performance.

This chapter explores the impact of the seemingly new recognition of non-Muslims in Turkey, a historically marginalized minority. In the 2000s, the ruling AKP party, a religiously and socially conservative party, made a number of symbolic gestures toward the increasing recognition of these communities. This chapter explores this ethnographically and historically by looking at the political effects of AKP’s democratization attempts on the Rum Orthodox (“Greek”) community in Istanbul. It argues that these attempts paralleled a similar language of democracy within the community particularly in the aftermath of the government’s permission to run elections in the non-Muslim community institutions (vakıfs), following a period of time during which no elections had been held in these institutions. At the same time, these attempts occasioned old and new forms of hierarchies within the community, which emerged as a result of the competing claims within it to its representation. These seemingly ambiguous effects of democratization within the Rum community emerged in the gap between the AKP’s democracy discourse that claims universal inclusion and its highly selective practice of democracy. This was so because the AKP preserved the ethnoreligious definition of national identity even while it readopted the historical legacies of the Ottoman millet system that managed society along religious confessional lines. These findings contribute to the existing theories on democratization by highlighting the inextricable link between inclusion and exclusion that emerges in the gap between the discursive claims of democracy toward universal inclusion and the selective actualization of these claims in practice. Such selective inclusion that is inherent to the politics of democracy is managed differently in different contexts due to the hybrid forms of state recognition of the population.

India is a home to the second largest Muslim population in the world. It is equally crucial to understand the attitude of non-Muslim population towards the interest-free banking in India. The firms desirous of entering into this nascent field in India are required to know the aspirations and motivations of both Muslims and non-Muslims with respect to interest-free banking. For a large number of Muslims interest-free banking may be a matter of adhering to their faith, but for the non-Muslim customers it has to address real issues like security, risk minimisation, profitability, etc.

The present study is an attempt to understand the perceptions of Indian customers towards Islamic banking. For this purpose, a representative sample of 259 respondents is surveyed with the help of a structured questionnaire developed for this purpose.

It has been found that there are differences in the attitude of Muslims and non-Muslims towards Islamic banking. Surprisingly both groups have a similar perception about the institutions of Islamic banking. Findings of the study reveal that the attitude of Indian customers can be classified into factors like awareness, ideology, implementation, features and institutions. Therefore, such factors should be considered seriously by the Islamic banks in designing their marketing strategies.

This is a survey-based study. Hence a representative sample is mandatory. Due care has been taken to arrive at a sample size which is representative of the population; however, a large sample size shall lead to better results.

This study can help decision makers to identify the major factors that may shape the attitude of Indian customers towards Islamic banks. This should also be of some help to the management of commercial banks in devising appropriate marketing strategies for reaching and attracting young customers.

The originality of this study lies in the fact that it is a pioneering study in the Indian context which brings out the attitudinal differences between Muslims and non-Muslims with respect to Islamic banking. Further, the classification of attitude of Indian customers into factors like awareness, ideology, implementation, features and institutions adds to the originality of the study. Both these aspects of this study add value to the existing literature in the field of Islamic banking.

Islamic finance and Halal product sectors are thriving successfully. This chapter is a general review of the perception of Asian consumers on Islamic finance and Halal sectors in the global Halal economy.

The first section will briefly describe the Halal concept in both Islamic finance and Halal industries, and the growth of both sectors in Asian countries. The second part highlights the review of Asian consumers’ perception towards Islamic finance products and Halal products.

The review found that the consumers’ perception towards the Islamic finance products and Halal products is distinctive. This is due to the diversity of Asian countries in terms of geography, religion, culture, ethnic, school of thoughts (madzahib), income per capita and government’s involvement.

The third part of the chapter concentrates on planning towards Halal marketing, which involves the move and future challenges in different layers of industries to gear up and strengthen the Halal economy.

Halal food despite its undeniable importance for Muslims is largely absent in the tourism development and planning literature. Given the fact that today Muslims represent more than 20% of world population and the number of Muslim tourists has grown significantly over recent years, there is a dire need to investigate the halal food's potential for both the tourism industry and world trade. Furthermore, it is important to investigate at both Muslim and non-Muslim tourism sites how availability of halal food has influenced the selection of a particular destination for vacation by Muslims.

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.

Purpose – This paper presents a research personal construct experience of the Tionghoa community, shaping the social reality of Aceh enactment. The case of the Tionghoa community in Banda Aceh and Lhokseumawe city, Aceh Province, Indonesia, is studied to evaluate their ability to construct their experience and socialize them.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This research is designed using a phenomenological approach which is oriented to cross-cultural studies.

Findings – The personal construct experience of Tionghoa community includes attitudes, assumptions, self-concept, and interpretation of Aceh reality. Through the construction of their experience, Tionghoa community is able individuals who have a number of unique desires and identities, and also as a social person who is ready to blend in Aceh.

Research Limitations/Implications – This reality is practiced by almost all Tionghoa in Aceh so that the social behavior that appears on the surface tends to make them stable, calm, courageous, and worry-free of Aceh people.

Originality/Value – This personal construct experience of Tionghoa community will have policy making both in Aceh in particular and in Indonesia, as multi-ethnic, religions, languages, and cultural consistency.

There has been much controversy, if not dispute, especially among non-Muslims over the attitude of Islam to tourism. One may claim that this debate is mainly due to non-Muslims' misunderstanding of the true nature of the religion and its Shari'a or Islamic law. This chapter attempts to show in some detail tourism from the perspective of the Islamic creed and to demonstrate that the religion does encourage tourism and regards it as legal. To do this the chapter reviews a number of sources including the holy Qur'an.

This study aims to explore the presumed relationship between religion and purchase behavior of consumers in the context of Bangladesh.

This research is divided into two main parts. In the first one, the authors reviewed some of the most important studies relative to religion and marketing and those specifically relative to Islamic marketing. In the second part, this research shows the findings of a structured questionnaire administered to a sample of Muslim consumers currently residing in the capital city of Bangladesh – Dhaka. The questionnaire also sought to find out the respondents’ attitude towards the modern marketing tactics, in terms of the physical and visual appearance of local products, their perception of religious principles in the purchase decision and their attitude towards imported products of non-Muslim countries.

Results of this study highlight that religion often represents an essential reference point in influencing the perception and purchase behavior of consumers in the context of Bangladesh. This implies that marketing strategies based on Islamic ethics is going to be quite instrumental in order to reach out to the consumers in Muslim countries. As such, there is largely a strong positive relationship between religion and the purchase behavior of Muslim consumers.

The lack of research on Islamic marketing limits the intensity of arguments in this study. For this reason, the literature review is not completely exhaustive. A small sample size has also been used due to time and resource constraints. Future research can be done on a bigger sample size of Bangladesh or other Islamic countries across the world. Other research avenues may include the study of Islamic marketing mix and exploring the factors that can influence non-Muslim consumers to select products and services based on Islamic ethics.

It is very important for businesses to introduce healthy practices in countries like Bangladesh and this can be rightly achieved through the use of Islamic marketing. Furthermore, the use of Islamic ethics in marketing strategies can eventually influence the religious perception of consumers and make them loyal towards any brands, products, and services in the context of Bangladesh.

The chapter draws attention to Bangladesh as one of the potential markets where the concept of Islamic market mechanism can be established. It also highlights the challenges that global marketers can face with Islamic marketing in Muslim countries like Bangladesh. Besides, it is the only study to date that focuses upon the relationship of religion, marketing, and consumer behavior for consumer products of the manufacturing industry.

The impact of internationalisation and globalisation on western universities, together with the growing diversity of local communities, is sharpening a focus on religious difference, and on the responses such difference provokes. This chapter reports on a two-phase U.S. study of Muslim students, a growing but under-researched minority group in the west, in an attempt to explore the effect on such students of external events such as 9/11. The data reveal unforeseen developments such as heightened Muslim engagement and collaboration with fellow-students, suggesting that universities could (re-)consider how they might engage in similarly positive ways with what is perceived as different.