This paper investigates whether an Islamic screened benchmark index shows a different risk adjusted performance in comparison to a non-screened benchmark index. In contrast to other papers this study analyzes daily observations in the years from 2007 to 2012, a period heavily affected by the financial crisis. The Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Jensen measure of abnormal returns are used to estimate and compare the indexes mean risk-adjusted returns. The results show that the Islamic index does not reveal any different level of daily mean risk-adjusted returns compared to the conventional non-screened index. Hence, Muslims who align their investments according to the teachings of Islam are not worse off than non-restricted investors following the screened Islamic index.

Construction industry leaders who neglect to implement appropriate project funding strategies harm business operations and lose profits. Inadequate funding is also a significant cause of project failures in the global construction sector. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies construction project owners use to secure sustainable funding for the successful conclusion of infrastructure projects. The population comprised 5 leaders of organizations owning construction projects in the Middle Eastern Gulf Cooperation Council states, with successful strategies to acquire adequate funding for completing infrastructure projects. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with the business leaders and reports published by prominent organizations involved in funding infrastructure projects. The modern portfolio theory formulated the conceptual framework. Through thematic analysis, 5 themes emerged: address project funding issues promptly, select projects with high returns and low risks, use project financial management processes to manage project funds, apply a project finance structure for large-scale projects, and implement an Islamic finance scheme for eligible projects. The potential contributions of the study include communities benefitting from improved well-being and construction business employees enjoying higher job security, enhanced working conditions, and better standards of living for their families.

Within the South African banking environment, mainstream bank clients earn interest on their investments and receive a tax exemption. However, Islamic banking clients, in keeping with the principles of Shari‘a law, do not receive interest. They are paid a profit share on their investments, and hence do not enjoy the tax exemption. The new section 24JA of the Income Tax Act has introduced tax treatment for the following Islamic financing transactions effectively removing 'interest' from the equation: <ul> <li> Mudarabah – Investment account</li> <li> Murabahah – Cost plus financing</li> <li> Diminishing Musharakah – Joint ownership</li> </ul> This study attempts to compare the tax treatment of Islamic financing products between the United Kingdom and South Africa. Moreover, this study also investigates the issues of the new section 24JA of the Income Tax Act as well as the United Kingdom‘s tax legislation, regarding Islamic financing, as to how far they ensure tax parity between Islamic financing products and conventional financing products. The case of tax regimes in Islamic finance operating in a conventional system was demonstrated in the two countries. The study is supported by a literature review related to Islamic finance tax background and Islamic finance products between the two countries. The major revelation of the study shows that the degree of parity of the Islamic income tax legislation leaves a lot to be desired in order to ensure a sense of confidence in the conventional financing environment. Its biggest challenge lies in its degree of simplicity and flexibility in order to address issues in tax that may be complex and fall between its requirements and the conventional and already popular systems. AFRIKAANS : Binne die Suid-Afrikaanse bankwese, verdien kliënte van die hoofstroom banke rente op hulle beleggings. Hierdie rente-inkomste is belasting vry. In teenstelling hiermee verdien kliënte van Islamitiese banke ʼn winsdeling in plek van rente, op hulle beleggings. Hierdie winsdeling beginsel word verplig deur die Shari‘a wetgewing. Bogenoemde winsdeling is nie belasting vry nie en word dus ten volle belas. Artikel 24JA van die Inkomstebelasting wetgewing behandel die hantering van Islamitiese Finansiering transaksies in fyner besonderhede: <ul> <li> Mudarabah – Beleggings rekening</li> <li> Murabaha – Koste plus finansieringskoste</li> <li> Diminishing Musharaka – Gesamentlike eienaarskap</li> </ul> Hierdie artikel verwyder effektiewelik die 'rente' komponent. Hierdie studie be‘oog om die belasting hantering van Islamitiese Finansierings produkte in Suid-Afrika en die Verenigde Koninkryk te vergelyk. In hierdie studie word die moontlike probleme ten opsigte van die nuwe artikel 24JA oorweeg. Spesifieke aandag word ook geskenk aan die belasting hantering tussen Islamitiese Finansierings produkte en die konvensionele finansierings produkte. Die studie word ondersteun deur literatuur wat handel oor Islamitiese belasting agtergrond en finansierings produkte tussen twee verskillende lande Die belangrikste uitkoms van hierdie studie, het bewys dat die Islamitiese Inkomstebelasting spesifiek met betrekking tot finansierings opsies steeds baie ontwikkel moet word. Bo en behalwe die uitkoms geïdentifiseer, is die grootste uitdaging daarin dat die Islamitiese belasting wet moontlik nie komplekse situasies sal kan aanspreek nie. Dit word toegeskryf aan die feit dat die wetgewing baie simplisties is. / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Taxation / unrestricted

This thesis aims at understanding the impact of Islamic banking development on economic growth and international trade in countries with a dual banking system. For this purpose we use a sample of twenty countries mainly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia during the time period from 1999 through 2014. We employ commonly used panel data estimators such as Pooled OLS and Fixed Effects, as well as the generalized method of moments (GMM) to address a possible endogeneity of the banking development indicators. Our findings show that on the one hand Islamic banking development in countries with a dual banking system hinders economic growth while on the other hand it boosts international trade. The study further discusses why Islamic banking might actually obstruct growth.

The non-interest and profit-loss sharing schemes of Islamic finance (IF) are attracting increasing global attention. Despite exposure to the similar opportunities as other Western countries that have adopted the financial business model there is little evidence of Islamic finance windows operating in the conventional institutions in Canada. This thesis takes a qualitative approach to bring the issue forward in Canadian social science literature by exploring the perceived challenges to, and the potential of, the development of IF offerings with a focus on factors affecting the supply and management decisions in the industry. The study used an inductive approach with archival data and critical survey of literature to arrive at the hypotheses surrounding the challenges. These were tested deductively by semi-structured interviews and panel discussions both in Canada and the US on a sample of senior officials involved in both IF and conventional financial institutions. Using a thematic analysis the study arrived at findings supporting the hypotheses related to awareness, regulation, management intent and internal resources. In the external environment, factors affecting strategic decision on offering IF services are mainly due to regulation, lack of awareness, even among Muslim communities, or misgivings about Sha’riah authenticity. Internally, highly customized IT infrastructures, lack of funds and foreign investment make it unfeasible. Management interest when proposed with the concept is high but not in a top-down manner and there is an overall uncertainty avoidance culture and little proactivity with market research. Access to specific Sha’riah knowledge is not considered a hurdle anymore. It is apparent that investments in Sha’riah compliant stocks would be easiest to set up. Mortgage structures can be affected by the capital market structure, even if not tax structures. Knowledge on this can have implications for banks seeking to expand their investment portfolios and aid government policies.

Si le recours au crédit est devenu aujourd’hui une banalité, la réglementation de ce secteur s’avère cependant une nécessité. Des réglementations ont donc été mises en place concernant non seulement les opérations de crédit proposées par les banquiers mais également le comportement de ceux-ci à l’égard de leurs clients lors de l’octroi de ces crédits. Le droit saoudien et le droit français ne portent pas, en la matière, les mêmes regards. Ceci est dû au fait que le droit saoudien, fondé sur le droit musulman, est tenu de respecter ses exigences lors de la distribution de crédit. Parmi celles-ci, se trouve l’interdiction du prêt à intérêt, ou du riba, ayant pour conséquence la création d’un régime original de distribution de crédit, marque de la différence essentielle avec le droit français libre de toutes exigences d’ordre religieux. Cependant, si cette divergence est inéluctable, une convergence est constatée entre le droit saoudien et le droit français quant aux obligations mises à la charge du banquier dispensateur de crédit. Toutefois, contrairement au droit français, ces obligations en droit saoudien manquent de précision et d’évolution. Ainsi, la convergence devrait encore être consolidée, et cela en s’inspirant des solutions dégagées par le droit français en la matière, notamment par la mise à la charge des banquiers dispensateurs de crédit d’un certain nombre d’obligations assurant le juste équilibre entre les intérêts du banquier et ceux de son emprunteur. / If the appeal on credit today has become somewhat trivial, the regulation of this sector however proves to be a necessity. Regulations have therefore been set up concerning not only the operations of credit offered by the bankers, but also their behaviour concerning their clients during the conferment of credits. Saudi law and French law differ in this field. This is due to the fact that the Saudi law is based on the Charia, which influences its requirements concerning the distribution of credit. Among these requirements is the ban of loans with interest, or of the riba, creator of an original regime of credit distribution, which marks the major difference to French law, free from any religious requirements. On the other hand, although this divergence is ineluctable, a convergence can be found between Saudi law and French law concerning obligations put payable to the banker providing the credit. However, contrary to French law, these obligations in Saudi law lack in precision and evolution. Therefore convergence should once again be consolidated by drawing inspiration from the solutions given by French law in the field, notably by putting obligations on bankers in order to assure a fair balance between the interests of the banker and those of his borrower.

L'investisseur islamique diffère de son homologue de type homoeconomicus, dans son approche de l'acte d'investissement. Le premier ne se base pas exclusivement, sur un critère financier pour hiérarchiser ses choix d'investissements, mais utilise aussi un critère moral et éthique afin d'évaluer l'efficacité de ses allocations financières. Ce comportement s'explique par le fait que réaliser des actes d'investissements compatibles avec l'éthique économique islamique génère un plaisir de piété chez cet investisseur. La théorie financière néo-classique ignore l'existence du plaisir de piété et son éventuel impact sur le processus de choix des investissements. Aussi, la théorie du portefeuille et son corollaire, la théorie du MEDAF, ne prennent pas en compte toutes les préférences de l'investisseur islamique. Ce dernier ne peut donc pas les utiliser pour évaluer l'efficacité de ses choix d'investissements. Afin de pallier à cette insuffisance théorique, nous proposons, à travers notre travail de recherche, de développer un modèle d'évaluation des actifs financiers, qui tient compte des spécificités de l'investissement islamique, à l'image de la réalisation des ventes à découvert, formellement interdites, ainsi que la prise en compte des aspects éthiques et moraux des portefeuilles d'investissements. Ce modèle doit permettre à l'homo-islamicus de réaliser une allocation optimale de ses ressources financières. Les principaux résultats de notre recherche montrent qu'à la différence de l'investissement socialement responsable conventionnel, l'investissement islamique est de type éthique et altruiste. Cette spécificité impose aux agences de notation Charia, de prendre en compte les niveaux de dons charitables que réalise chaque entreprise, lors du calcul de sa note éthique. Nous développons par conséquent, un modèle de notation des entreprises et des portefeuilles d'investissements qui prend en compte cette spécificité de l'investissement islamique. Par la suite, nous proposons des choix qui permettent aux investisseurs islamiques de contourner l'interdiction de réaliser des opérations de ventes à découvert conventionnelles et un modèle d'évaluation des actifs financiers islamiques. / The Islamic investor differs from its counterpart type, the homo-economicus, in its approach to the act of investment. Indeed, the first is not based solely on financial criteria to prioritize its investment choices, but also uses moral and ethical criteria to assess the effectiveness of its financial allocations. This particular behavior is explained by the fact that, performing acts of investments consistent with Islamic business ethics generates a pleasure of piety to this type of investor. The neo-classical financial theory ignores the existence of the pleasure of piety and its potential impact on the process of selecting investments. Also, portfolio theory and its corollary, the theory of CAPM do not take into account the preferences of the Islamic investor. Therefore, it is not able to use them to assess the effectiveness of its investment choices. To overcome this theoretical failure, we offer through our research, a model of asset pricing that takes into account the specificities of Islamic investment, for example, the inability to achieve a short selling and taking into account ethical and moral aspects of investment portfolios. This model should allow the homo-islamicus to achieve optimal allocation of its financial resources. The main results of our research show that unlike conventional socially responsible investment, Islamic investment is ethical and altruistic types. This specificity requires Islamic rating agencies, to take into account the levels of charitable giving that makes every business, when calculating its ethical note. We therefore develop a rating model for companies and investment portfolios that takes into consideration the specificity of Islamic investment. Subsequently, we propose two alternatives that enable Islamic investors to circumvent the prohibition to perform conventional short selling transactions. Finally, we build our Islamic assets pricing model.

La tentative d'introduction de la finance islamique en droit civil nécessite une démarche analytique comparative entre droit musulman et droit civil. La gestion islamique introduit des contrats inconnus en droit civil : la mudâraba et la wakala. Ces contrats de représentation s'opposent au régime général des FCP en marquant une divergence remarquable avec le régime du mandat en droit civil. L'admission de ces contrats nécessite un aménagement du régime des FCP reposant sur la création d'un comité de représentation des souscripteurs. La qualification du fonds en copropriété par le législateur libanais et français plaît bien à la doctrine islamique. L'analyse du régime de propriété et de copropriété prouve l'absence de divergences fondamentales entre le droit civil et le droit musulman. Cependant, le régime des fonds s'approche de la nature du patrimoine d’affectation d'après la doctrine civiliste. Cette qualification est inadmissible en droit musulman adoptant une théorie personnelle du patrimoine. Notre conceptualisation du régime d'une notion juridique de droit musulman dite de Jiha assure l'admission du patrimoine d'affectation et de la personnalité morale en droit musulman. La gestion islamique renforce la gouvernance du fonds et impose des obligations supplémentaires au gestionnaire. Elle nécessite la présence des organes spécialisés dans le contrôle de la conformité de la gestion au droit musulman, ce qui dégage une structure propre au FCPls inexistante dans la pratique. La gestion islamique aboutit à un « filtrage » des titres financiers. Une première analyse juridique du filtrage islamique élabore ainsi les fondements juridiques de ce filtrage. / Any attempt to introduce lslamic finance in civil law requires an analytical approach comparing Islamic law and civil law. Islamic management services rely on types of contracts, which do not exist in civil law: namely the mudâraba and the wakâla. These agency agreements differ from the general scheme of mutual funds as the exhibit a marked difference with the civil Iaw mandate contract. In order to allow these contracts, the current regime of mutual fonds must be amended by creating a representation committee of subscribers. Classification of the mutual funds by the Lebanese and French legislators as joint ownership sound well to Islamic doctrine. Even a detailed analysis of the ownership and joint ownership regimes proves there is no fundamental difference between civil Jaw and Islamic law in this matter. However, the fund’s ownership regime is close to what is called "special-purpose assets" in the civil law doctrine. This classification is unacceptable in Islamic law, which has a persona! theory of patrimony. Our conceptualization of the regime of a legal concept of Islamic law called Jiha make it possible to acknowledge the notions of special purpose assets and legal personality in Islamic law. Islamic management services put strong requirements on the governance of the funds and additional duties for the agent. Islamic management services require the presence of specialized entities monitoring compliance of management to Islamic law: such specific entity does not exist in practice. Islamic management services then leads to a "screening" of securities. Le1rnl analysis of Islamic screening el a borates the legal basis of this screening.

The dissertation consists of two essays. In the first essay we compare the performance of Islamic and conventional stock returns in Saudi Arabia in order to determine whether the Saudi market exhibits characteristics that are consistent with segmented markets and investor recognition effects. We sample the daily stock returns of all Saudi firms from September 2002 to 2015 and calculate important measures, including idiosyncratic volatility (Ang et al, 2006), market integration (Pukthuanthong and Roll, 2009), systematic turnover (Loughran and Schultz, 2005), and stock turnover and liquidity (Amihud, 2002). Integration tests report that Islamic stocks are more sensitive to changes in global and local macroeconomic variables than conventional stocks, supporting the hypothesis that the Islamic and conventional stock markets are segmented in Saudi Arabia. In addition, our results show that Islamic stocks have larger number of investors, lower idiosyncratic risk, higher systematic turnover, and more liquid than conventional stocks, which supports the investor recognition hypothesis. Our results provide new evidence on asset pricing in emerging markets, the evolving Islamic financial markets, and the potential impact of other implicit market barriers on global financial markets. In the second essay we examine the effects of shared beliefs and personal preferences of individual investors on their trading and investment decisions. We anticipate that the process of classifying stocks into Shariah compliant (Islamic) and non-shariah compliant (conventional) has an effect on investibility and acceptance of the stock especially by unsophisticated or individual investors. The wide acceptance of Islamic stocks between individual investors promote and facilitate the circulation of firm-specific information between certain groups of investors. Our results indicate that stock classification has an effect on the stock price comovement through increased stock trading correlation between the groups of Islamic investors. The commonality in preferences between Islamic stocks’ holders generate commonality in trading activity and in stock liquidity. We find that classifying a stock as an Islamic stock increases its price comovement with other Islamic stocks and also increases its commonality in liquidity.

La finance islamique est un secteur à fort potentiel, il ne connaît pas de crise, et sa ‎croissance augmente à deux chiffres ! Au Maroc comme partout dans le monde, cette ‎industrie financière éthique est en plein effervescence, elle ne cesse de gagner du terrain ‎notamment dans les secteurs touchant l’économie réelle, à l’instar de l’immobilier.‎ En effet, force est de constater, que le secteur immobilier s’adapte parfaitement aux ‎exigences éthiques de cette finance à caractère morale. À vrai dire cette dernière, offre une ‎panoplie de techniques juridiques allant du simple au plus complexe permettant l’accès au ‎logement et l’investissement immobilier.‎ Cette thèse examine selon une approche juridique moderne ces techniques contractuelles, ‎qui offrent des alternatives intéressantes et sans intérêts aux solutions de financement ‎actuelles / Islamic Finance is a sector of big potentials, it knows no crisis and its ‎growth is increasing with a double-digit rate! In Morocco, like ‎everywhere in the word, this ethical financial industry is buzzing, it ‎keeps gaining ground in sectors of real economy such as real estate.‎ In fact, it is clear that the sector of real estate adapts perfectly to the ‎ethical requirements of this finance of moral features. As a matter of ‎fact, it offers a panoply of juridical techniques ranging from simple to ‎complex and gives access to housing and real estate investment.‎ This thesis, probes with a modern juridical approach these contractual ‎techniques that give interesting alternatives and without bank interest ‎to the problems of the current financing