The entire banking systems in the western societies is based on the use of interest. The bank charges the borowers interest on its loans and pays its depositors interest on their deposits. On the other hand, the Middle Eastern banking system is an interest free system that prohibits the use of interest, either in receipt or in payment.

The main objective of American foreign policy in the Middle East, during the post-War period of 1946-1958, was to safeguard the area against Soviet intrusions. This thesis attempts to examine the causes for the failure of the United States to achieve this objective. It concludes that this failure is the result of an alienation of the major national forces in the Middle East. The United States alienated the Arab world by openly and unreservedly supporting Zionist aims in Palestine. She alienated newly independent states by establishing close cooperation with Britain and France, their former colonial masters. She alienated revolutionary nationalists by supporting reactionary and traditional rulers against them and by opposing their ideals of neutrality and revolutionary change. In doing so, the United States opened the way for the Soviet Union to challenge her position and threaten her interests in the area. By emphasizing the military aspects of containment, she demonstrated a lack of understanding of the nature of the Soviet threat. The revolutionary nationalists sought to obtain military, economic, and technical aid without conditions or political strings. By insisting on imposing her conditions of alliance against communism and securing concessions and guarantees, including the safety and security of Israel, the United States made it impossible for the nationalist forces to cooperate with her. They, therefore, were forced to deal with the Soviet Union, whose aid was offered with no conditions or strings attached. The American response to isolate and weaken those states which accepted Soviet aid, through such means as the Eisenhower Doctrine, brought on a most serious deterioration in relations never before encountered by the United States and the most spectacular successes ever realized by the Soviet Union in the Middle East.

Due to the nature of war, persons are killed with various types of weapons. Throughout the history of humanity, weapons were used in this regard and these weapons left injuries on the victims that are distinguishable. The type of force conveyed by the ancient weapons effected injuries that enable modern-day bioarchaeologists to extrapolate which weapons caused which injuries. The Assyrians depicted their wars and battles on reliefs. An analysis of these depictions, with an extrapolation of the lesions expected in skeletal remains, could contribute to better understanding of the strategies of war in ancient times. This dissertation will discuss how the evaluation of human remains in comparison to Assyrian reliefs may contribute to the chronological knowledge of war and warfare in the Iron Age Ancient Near East – especially at Lachish. A discourse of the approaches available to researchers regarding access to data in the forensic bioarchaeological field will be presented. / Biblical and Ancient Studies / M.A. (Biblical Archaeology)

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The concept of geopolitics - is reconsidered as a viable framework in analyzing the power relationship between nation states and then applied to the Middle East. After reviewing the historical development of geopolitics, it is modified, and then set against alternative approaches in explaining Middle Eastern alliances. Ultimately, geopolitics is used in order to rationalize America's alliance network within the region. / Master of Arts

This thesis attempts to answer the question ‘What e-democracy strategy, if any, is most suitable for Bahrain?’. Based on a qualitative case study for the country, an e-Democracy strategy is synthesised and presented in this thesis. The literature review includes the forms, ideals and values of democracy. The researcher supports and argues for the assertion that any attempt to implement e-Democracy must not undermine the basic values and ideals of democracy. In the review on Islam and democracy, the author argues that Islam is not against democracy. However it is asserted that e-Democracy implementation must consider the cultural and religious context of Bahrain. The process of democratisation and how it is taking place in Bahrain and Gulf countries are also discussed. A strategy formulation framework is adopted after reviewing literature on how to formulate a strategy. E-Government strategies of reading players in the e-Government are reviewed with an objective of learning lessons prior to formulating e-Democracy strategy. The literature review on e-democracy helped to understand the theory and practice of e-Democracy elsewhere in the world and identify issues that required further investigation. The issues identified from the literature were investigated using empirical data. Data from multiple sources were collected and analysed. The methods included interviews, focus groups and analysis of documents. The results confirm that most of the issues identified as part of the literature review are relevant to the case under investigation. However, there were issues that were not present in the literature. This includes the need to consider democracy’s human, social and cultural aspects as well as factors pertaining to the political divide in Bahrain. This, if not tackled properly, may pose some challenges to the implementation of e-Democracy. The results also disprove the assumption held by the government of Bahrain, as well as by the researcher at the beginning of the study, that e-voting is a more plausible type of e-democracy than other forms. The author adapts and presents an e-Democracy model for Bahrain based on Chadwick and May (2003) along with the e-Democracy strategy for Bahrain. The author also argues that the model and the strategy can be tailored to use in other GCC countries. The study fills a gap in the literature, namely the lack of e-democracy studies pertaining to the Middle East. It also provides a framework and lessons for other countries in the region for the creation of an e-democracy strategy.

This thesis presents an analysis of the political discourse and strategies of the MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi-Nationalist Movement Party) between 1965 and 1980. It particularly focuses on the role of young militants in the development of the nationalist movement in Turkey during this period. The 1960s and 1970s in Turkey saw military coups, street clashes, violence perpetrated by university students, and the rapid proliferation of civil organizations. Yet this turbulent period in modern Turkish history has received no systematic historical investigation. The MHP was one of the principal actors of this period. The study argues that the change in the profile of the CKMP-MHP leadership and the recruitment of young nationalist students, who became increasingly involved in physical confrontations with the socialists, had multiple effects on nationalist discourse and strategies. Retired soldiers involved in the 27 May 1960 military coup sought to develop a nationalist party based on secular-Kemalist principles, but those people who held conservative views of nationalism started to join the CKMP-MHP. The anti-Republican discourse of this current of thought involved the re-appropriation of Ottoman history and culture and certain religious themes into nationalist discourse. This ideological orientation appealed to most of young nationalists organized around the ülkü ocakları. However, the thesis demonstrates that there were various channels of ideological indoctrination in the nationalist movement, a diversity of positions that sometimes stirred conflicts among the nationalists themselves. The question of political strategy involved paradoxical aspects as well. Young nationalists were willing to take on the mission of becoming the future elites of the country yet were simultaneously involved in violent confrontations with socialists. Most of the party leadership, on the other hand, was preoccupied with parliamentarian goals and the long-term administrative success of nationalist activists in the state apparatus. The thesis shows that viewing the party activities and paramilitary operations in the same framework gave rise to serious tensions within the nationalist movement. The findings of this study also shed light on the institutional and ideological evolution of the nationalist movement after 1980.

The application of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to desert sand dunes has allowed accumulation histories to be used as tools to infer past environmental change. In response to issues facing the interpretation of these records, two research questions are addressed in this thesis. (i) Are dune chronologies representative of dune stratigraphies? And (ii) how can we most appropriately interpret dune chronologies as records of Quaternary environmental conditions? Five dune profiles were sampled for OSL dating at two sites in the northeastern Rub’ al Khali in the southern Arabian Peninsula. The visible stratigraphy was used to guide sampling for three of the profiles and the effectiveness of this approach is assessed. A key finding is that bounding surfaces are not always identifiable as chronological hiatuses by OSL dating, given the level of precision that can be achieved. Using hierarchical relationships visible in two-dimensional exposures is therefore not guaranteed to identify the depositional units necessary to reconstruct dune histories. Comparison of the depositional records from three sampled profiles shows that there is significant variability in chronologies at both the dune and dunefield scales. In light of these findings, the use of ‘range-finder’ OSL dating was investigated as a method of increasing sample throughput in the laboratory. It is concluded that the use of partially prepared samples and shortened measurement techniques can be used to rapidly assess the chronological context of samples and target those units most useful in constructing dune profiles. A new method of presenting dunefield OSL datasets as net accumulation rates, incorporating accumulation thickness rather than relying on the frequency of ages, is presented. Within the last 30 ka, regional accumulation and preservation occurred at ~30-26, 22.5-18, 16-9, 6-2.7, 2.1-1.6, 1.1 and 0.7 ka. In conjunction with numerical model results and a review of other palaeoenvironmental archives, the regional aeolian record is interpreted as a response to changing forcing factors. High rates of net accumulation between ~16-9 ka are attributed to coeval increases in sediment supply and transport capacity. A hiatus in accumulation between ~9-6 ka is interpreted as a result of reduced sediment availability due to high moisture levels. The importance of both external forcing factors and local controls on dune accumulation processes is recognised, and therefore the importance of sampling at multiple locations to distinguish these factors is emphasised.

Banks as the most evident financial institutions which provide a range of financial services in their primary role as intermediary from lenders and borrowers of money to sophisticated tools concerned with credit and liquidity provision, risk management and remittance of funds play a vital role in the economy of countries. Measuring the performance of banks, and identifying the factors which impact it, is an issue of major interest for regulators, policy makers, stakeholders, investors and the general public. Oil price movement as an external factor influencing the performance of banks, may affect macroeconomic events which, in turn, influence cash flows significantly in the finance and banking industry. Examining the performance of banks and how oil price movement impact their performance significantly those operating in oil exporting countries, is of interest of bank managers and policy makers. It will help top level managers of banks to be aware of relationship between oil price movement and the performance of their banks and will help them in formulating better policies and strategies in taking on opportunities and avoiding possible risks which this movement may cause. Moreover, it will help policy makers in oil exporting countries to understand how the banking industry of an oil exporting country can reap benefits from economic booms as a consequence of an increase in the price of oil. Therefore, this thesis attempts to investigate the impact of oil price movement on the performance of banks under different operational styles in oil exporting countries. The sample is consisting of 98 commercial, investment and Islamic banks in eight Middle Eastern oil exporting (MEOE) countries during the period 2000-2011. The research applies a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis to examine the impact of oil price movement on performance of banks. In the first stage, four different efficiency scores of banks operating in the MEOE countries are derived and compared. The empirical results suggest that overall, MEOE banking industries mostly suffer from poor usage of and mal-location of resources by management to produce outputs, rather than a failure in operating at the most productive scale. A low level of overall technical efficiency in the MEOE banking industry means that management has poor skills in controlling operating expenses, marketing activities, absorbing deposits and the monitoring and effective screening of borrowers. In the second stage, to find out the impact of oil price movement on the performance of banks, technical efficiency scores obtained from the first stage are regressed over the oil price movement variable and environmental variables. The empirical results show that while oil revenue impacts the efficiency of the banks directly, positive oil price shocks impact efficiency of banks indirectly, and through inflation and economic growth. These findings suggest that when there is an increase in the price of oil, banks operating in oil exporting countries will derive benefit from the surplus income injected into the economy and their performance will be enhanced.

In 2001 when this research commenced, there was little understanding in Saudi Arabia of the opportunities digital art could provide for artists, how it could be integrated with or used instead of painting, and the effects the enlarged vocabulary could have in communicating difficult social issues. As a result, this study aimed at filling a gap in knowledge through reviewing contemporary Saudi art. This, in turn, helped me to understand the position of my practice. The study also aimed at developing a means of expression in which traditional art can be combined with digital media and showing how this combination provides a new direction for Saudi art by raising awareness in Saudi Arabia about complex issues. In addition, the study aimed at determining the acceptability of this new form of art to artistically literate Saudi artists through gathering audience’s reactions to the developed artefacts. This study comprised of several stages: discovering the state of art in Saudi Arabia and where it fits into the global stage; documenting my journey as an artist and understanding my practice; the creation of the installation and its reception, all of which was documented in a reflective journal. Through reflecting on my practice, I transformed my work from simple traditional pieces of art to more complex installations concerning everyday gender politics. I interviewed 20 practicing artists, noting that the majority of their work used traditional forms of art rather than digital art. A week-long exhibition on gender differences in Saudi Arabia was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The feedback from the exhibition showed that, although there is not a strong appreciation of digital art in Saudi Arabia, the audience was able to understand the different components of the installations and the underlying issues being portrayed. They were able to bring their own experiences to the situation and reflected on the installations accordingly. The study contributes to knowledge by providing a review of contemporary Saudi Artists as there is no significant literature that documents this in Saudi Arabia. It also contributes to knowledge by exploring and developing artefacts that incorporate different technologies and by showing that digital media and traditional art can be used together to articulate complex social issues arising in everyday Saudi life. Finally, it fills a gap in knowledge of how Saudi audiences engage with works that use a combination of traditional and new art to express such issues.