This study employed a quantitative research design using a mail survey to explore leadership style in Islamic schools in the United States. The purpose of the study was to describe levels of transformational and transactional leadership of American Muslim principals. Correlational analyses were used to determine the relationship between principal and teacher reports of principals' use of transformational leadership and the relationship of demographic variables to perceptions of transformational leadership. Multiple regression analyses showed that none of the six demographic variables were significant predictors of the variance in principal- or teacher-reported use of transformational leadership. Thirty-three principals responded to the MLQ 5X selfrating form and 143 teachers responded to the MLQ 5X otherrating form. Principals rated themselves higher than their teachers on transformational leadership and lower than their teachers on transactional leadership. Both principals and teachers ranked principals highest in Inspirational Motivation and lowest in Management-by-Exception Passive. Principals rated themselves as being more intellectually stimulating and less often using contingent reward. In schools where teachers were more congruent in their ratings of the principal, they tended to perceive the principals as more transformational than did teachers in schools where teachers were less congruent in their ratings. It appears that where principals are more consistent in their interactions with teachers, teachers have higher opinions of the principal as a transformational leader. Both teachers and principals rated principals of American Muslim schools as fairly high in the use of both transformational and transactional leadership. Comparisons of these findings to other research in the U.S. suggest that American Muslim principals exhibit leadership characteristics very similar to those of other U.S. principals.

abstract: Historically, colonizers, immigrants, and enslaved Africans served as carriers of Islamic culture to Puerto Rico, and today, that Islamic element is often unassumingly intertwined with the Puerto Rican culture. Using Bourdieu's concept of habitus as the framework, this dissertation engages customs and mannerisms of Puerto Ricans to reveal the imprint and legacy of Muslim Spain and the Islamic heritage of West Africa in Puerto Rico. It makes a study of the Spanish language to include vocabulary, proverbs, songs, and games that carry vestiges of Arabic language and culture. Most importantly, it also addresses an inherited religious and cultural tradition rooted in the history and legacy of Islam and Christianity and the human experience of cultural and religious phenomena of conflicts within Medieval Spain. Of particular focus, Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol in Loíza, Puerto Rico (a Moor and Christian celebration in honor of St. James, the Moor Slayer) offer a uniquely different expression. The celebration not only displays remnants of cultural and religious practices influenced by several world traditions such as folk Catholicism, Santería, Espiritismo, and Islam, but embraces the Vejigantes character which symbolizes the Muslim. The implications of these celebrations attest to a historically covert Muslim presence or at least a less biased conceptualization by the Puerto Rican people regarding Muslims. Unlike Medieval Spain, where Muslims were deemed invaders from 711-1600's, the religious, cultural, and political history of Puerto Rico does not suggest a deeper legacy of conflict that includes Islam as an adverse religious and cultural tradition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2017

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Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Three questions command even greater attention today, as over forty countries, including many Muslim-majority states, unite against Daesh (the so-called ‘Islamic State'): How do Muslims relate to the Muslim ‘other'? How do Muslims relate to the religious ‘other'? What role can Muslim religious education play in fostering peace? Islam and Muslim education are suspected of promoting intolerance. This thesis investigates a group of Shia Ismaili Muslim trainee-teachers' attitudes to plurality in their religious education programme. The Secondary Teacher Education Programme (STEP) is a two-year postgraduate course of the Ismaili Muslim community to train religious education teachers. STEP, a novel development in Muslim education, experiments with an innovative pedagogical approach to plurality. The research spanning over three years involved in-depth interviews, focus group, observations and textual analysis. 21 trainee-teachers from 13 different countries participated in the study. Alan Race's (1983) typology ‘inclusivismexclusivism- pluralism' serves as a key theoretical lens through which to examine attitudes to religious others. The thesis argues that a ‘rooted religious pluralisation' is taking place in the Ismaili community facilitating the emergence of the ‘tradition' of pluralism in the community. The study shows that initially, the participants were inclusive of other religious communities and worldviews on ‘theological', ‘humanistic' and ‘instrumental' grounds, but were selective about how they embraced it. Many of them believed that their religious perspective exceptionally equipped them over their religious ‘other'. Gradually, STEP's ‘civilizational, normative and humanistic' approach cultivated an ‘academically informed pluralism' in most trainee-teachers. It strengthened their Ismaili Muslim identity on the one hand and generated an appreciation for diversity on the other. The individuals developed not only greater socio-cultural and historical awareness of religion, but also their ability to make a space for faith academically. It cultivated in the participants a degree of ‘inter-tradition competence' and ‘intra-Islam competence'. The individuals were not ‘pluralist angels', but they discursively participated in pluralism. The present study makes three key contributions. Firstly, this is the first study to propose the thesis of ‘rooted religious pluralisation'. It identifies the key features and tendencies inherent in a religious community's engagement with diversity through a five-dimensional working framework. Moreover, as a study of the socio-cultural process of ‘intra-faith pluralisation' in Muslim religious education setting, it is unique. It is about making sense of the everyday experiences of the Muslims who encounter diversity within their own faith. The thesis identifies various stages involved in the process of developing intra-faith competence and provides tools and vocabulary to discuss them meaningfully. Moreover, the study suggests the possibility of a Muslim education that can play a vital role in combating extremism and sectarianism. Current scholarship does not sufficiently take account of new and thought-provoking pedagogical developments in Muslim education. There is a dearth of studies on Muslim faith communities' efforts to build ‘intra-Islam competency' in their followers through faith-based education. The literature is also silent about how Ismaili Muslims handle differences among themselves regarding matters of faith, how they view differences within Islam and relate to wider religious plurality. Thus, the study contributes to a niche in the existing literature on religious pluralism.

This study seeks to determine whether the regulatory basis and operational structure of the Islamic financial model position it as the front-runner in terms of sustainability and resilience to financial crises. A critical review of the extant literature reveals that Islamic banks have performed better than conventional banks during economic shocks because Islamic banks are less exposed to risks. However, this study maps the profile of financial institutions that are generally resilient to financial crises, and notes that Islamic banks do not match this profile. Nonetheless, an assessment of the risk management strategies of Islamic banks reveals that they are in fact less likely to trigger instability when using profit-loss sharing schemes. The study utilises existing statistical data as part of the inter-disciplinary understanding of the effects of financial crises. The data is derived from various surveys and reports that chart overall performance considering the stressful financial environment of 2007-09 and beyond. This is complemented with original qualitative data that has been collected through surveys that identify the perceptions of key stakeholders in the banking sector on the resilience of their respective banking systems and how those systems could ultimately be improved. The traditional tripartite analysis of knowledge is adopted. The analysis at a generic level reveals that banks using the profit-loss sharing schemes match the profile of institutions that are generally more resilient to financial crises. The analysis at the level of the State reveals that where Islamic banks are accommodated within the same regulatory framework as conventional banks, the former are more resistant to financial shock. Lastly, the analysis at the level of individual banks reveals that the stress testing frameworks of the conventional banks may be rated as less effective than those of Islamic banks.

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The concept of a Sharia compliant financial system has been a frequently discussed topic among scholars, bankers and media since the 1960th. It origins from the prohibition of interest, riba, which is stated in the Quran. Islamic banking is spread across the Muslim world and also exists in some western countries. This paper will try to create an image of what Islamic banking is in theory and in practice. This will be done by looking into the different methods of interest free banking, the Quran and the annual reports of four Islamic banks in different countries. The examined banks are Islamic Bank of Britain, Al Salam Bank-Bahrain, Al Rajhi bank (Saudi-Arabia) and Bank Islam (Malaysia). The study shows that there are few, if any, religious symbols in the annual reports. Instead, focus lies on progress, science and modernity. All of the banks have Sharia councils that ensure that the products are Sharia compliant. The banks are no longer using the profit and loss sharing systems as their primary products, which is indicated by the theoretical framework. Instead, they have developed different ways to efficiently provide Sharia compliant financial services according to their own conditions. An important lesson to learn is to avoid seeing the Islamic banks as religious charity organizations and start looking at them as profit maximizing companies that specialize in a sharia compliant financial product.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Committee on Human Development, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Thesis advisor(s): Anna Simons, James Russell. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-59). Also available online.