The issue of riba, that is, interest/the "excess" or "surplus" on loans is crucial for both Islamic and non-Islamic countries. Western economic systems use interest to distribute financial resources efficiently for investment and/or consumption, while Islamic economies pursue a completely different strategy for financing loans, which adheres to Islamic laws and prohibits the activities of conventional banking systems with regard to interest. This book argues that there is scope for new definitions and analysis based on alternative concepts which respect Islamic values and principles, yet pave the way for modification and debate.

The book comprises of two parts. Theoretical issues are dealt with in the first section. The first two chapters examine conventional Islamic views on the prohibition of riba, while Chapters 3 and 4 contain unprecedented and alternative theoretical analysis based on concepts such as "earned" (halal-permitted-legal) vs. "unearned" (haram-impermissible-illegal) income and SUKUK, that is, Islamic interest-free bonds. The second part of the book tackles another unconventional aspect of Islamic finance, that is, the concept of NAS. The book considers whether the NAS-influenced anti-inflationary interest policy was a success or failure. Empirical data is evaluated in terms of bank incomes, inflation rate, interest rate, and the distribution of income.

This book will be a useful guide for students, scholars, and researchers of Islamic banking and finance.

This title demystifies arti?cial intelligence (AI) and analytics, upskilling individuals (healthcare professionals, hospital managers, consultants, researchers, students, and the population at large) around analytics and AI as it applies to healthcare.

This book shows how the tools, techniques, technologies, and tactics around analytics and AI can be best leveraged and utilised to realise a healthcare value proposition of better quality, better access and high value for everyone every day, everywhere. The book presents a triumvirate approach including technical, business and medical aspects of data and analytics and by so doing takes a responsible approach to this key area.

This work serves to introduce the critical issues in AI and analytics for healthcare to students, practitioners, and researchers.

This is the book for professionals in the payments industry. Written in an engaging and accessible style, it enables new and experienced payments practitioners alike to understand the fundamentals of the various payment ecosystems, and to quickly get up to speed on developments in the industry.

From cards to bank and alternative payments, the jargon is debunked and myths are busted. For each ecosystem, a simple framework is used: mechanics, economics, risks, and future outlook, enabling comparison and the evaluation of the best applications in different scenarios. The book also provides an overview of the global regulatory landscape. Drawing on real examples throughout, it weaves together the underpinning ecosystem principles, legislation, and key stakeholders. It offers readers practical advice regarding, and insights into, the key disciplines and equips them with an understanding of the key issues and opportunities. Also including an extensive and comprehensive glossary of terms - the first of its kind in the payments industry - this book will be used as an essential reference for years to come.

Understanding Payments will enable payments practitioners, private sector corporations, and regulators to keep up with a fast-evolving and extremely competitive industry. It can be used across businesses to help train staff and as part of continuing professional development, and will be useful to those involved in mergers and acquisitions, investors wanting to understand the industry, professional services firms, law firms and consultants, and policy makers.

The financial sector is witnessing rapid technological innovations, leading to the emergence of Fintech (financial technologies), revolutionizing national and international financial landscapes. Fintech is expanding and enhancing financial products and services, making them more accessible and affordable while transforming customer relationships, payment methods, financing, and transfers.

Advances in Emerging Financial Technology and Digital Money provides a platform for collective reflection, bringing together institutions, policymakers, digital and financial service providers, professionals, and academics from various disciplines. The aim is to clarify the challenges, opportunities, and socio-economic impacts of innovations in finance and technology on citizens and businesses in Morocco, Africa, and worldwide. This comprehensive collection offers valuable insights into the current state and prospects of financial technology and digital money.

This book covers all the essential topics, including:

• AI and Machine Learning in Fintech and Beyond
• Financial Inclusion, Literacy, and Behavior
• Fintech Ecosystems, Collaboration, and Analysis
• Blockchain, Security, and Sustainability
• Fintech Innovations and Applications

In this new book, the authors share their experiences to provide a comprehensive and well-researched overview of the technologies and concepts that will transform the banking industry as we know it. It aspires to be a useful reference for executive managers, CIOs, Fintech professionals, and researchers interested in exploring and implementing an efficient Fintech strategy. The book also presents selected papers from International Fintech Congress (IFC 2022).

Banks play the most vital role in the economy by acting as financial intermediaries and providing the necessary credit to fund consumption and investment, thereby effecting real economic activity. Banks have been in existence for centuries and while the core of their function remains the same, their business model has changed dramatically over the years. Most notably, banking internationalisation has gained prominence in the last three decades.

This book offers a comprehensive understanding of the business model, challenges and benefits of international banks.

It features banks that are global and highlights their overseas activities. It documents the recent trends in international banking activity and serves as a one-stop-shop for students and scholars. Furthermore, in the post-financial crisis of 2007-09 there has been a surge in the FinTech industry where banks have sought an opportunity to expand and compete, the core of which is the provision of services via the newly established online technology as well as the green finance initiative. The book brings together the issues and opportunities ahead as global banks respond to market and environment conditions in these arenas.

The text will be a useful resource for students, researchers and scholars of banking, international finance and international economics as well as students wishing to pursue a professional career in banking. Given the vital role banks play in the economy, their structure and activities are of great interest to policy makers also.

This book provides an introduction to sustainable aquaculture practices, focusing on how we develop social, economic and environmental resilience.

Aquaculture has seen phenomenal worldwide growth in the past 50 years, and many people view it as the best solution for the provision of high-quality protein to feed the world's growing population. This new edition has been fully revised and updated to reflect new developments in the field and includes new case studies. Focusing on developing more sustainable aquaculture practices and aquatic food systems, the book provides a toolbox of approaches to support widespread adoption and appropriate adaptation of regenerating aquaculture strategies, ensuring that it has practical relevance for both students and professionals. Drawing on a range of case studies from around the world, the book shows where progress, in terms of developing ecologically sound and socially responsible forms of aquaculture, has been made. The book is based on extensive evidence and knowledge of best practices, with guidance on appropriate adaptation and uptake in a variety of environmental, geographic, socio-economic and political settings. Concentrating on low-impact aquaculture systems and approaches, which have minimal adverse effects on the environment, the book also emphasizes socially responsible and equitable aquaculture development to enhance the natural resource base and livelihoods.

Principles of Sustainable Aquaculture is essential reading for students and scholars of aquaculture, fisheries, marine and water resource governance, and sustainable agriculture and sustainable food systems more broadly. It will also be of interest to professionals working in the aquaculture and fisheries industries.

Recording the history of the belief in the existence of Satan, this book draws from the Bible, the poetry of Dante and Milton, the legend of Faust, and from modern novels and plays such as the works of Mark Twain and G.B. Shaw, and the spiritual writing of C. S. Lewis. Fintan Lyons O.S.B. chronicles the decline of that belief through the centuries as well as the attempts to treat the problem of evil philosophically, using the insights of thinkers such as Karl Barth.

At the heart of this book is the attempt to synthesise or reconcile traditional belief with contemporary concern or even alarm regarding evil in the world. Lyons argues that evidence for the persistence of evil has been striking in modern times in wars and atrocities, while phenomena such as Satanic Cults and possible or real diabolical possession have continued to increase. The Catholic Church reacted to this situation in 1998 with a revision of the 1614 Rite of Exorcism, analysed in this book from both theological and psychological standpoints. By arguing that the transition from belief in Satan to personification of evil in historical regimes and characters brings contemporary culture into sharp focus, this book chronicles the history of humanity's attempt to understand the disturbing and mysterious reality of evil.

A revealing account of the lives and work of Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims in sixteenth-century Rome, examining how this African diasporic community navigated the challenges of religious pluralism in the capital of Latin Christianity.

Tucked behind the apse of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome is the ancient church of Santo Stefano. During the sixteenth century, Santo Stefano hosted an unusual community: a group of Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims whose faith and culture were both like and unlike those of Latin Europe. The pilgrims of Santo Stefano were the only African community in premodern Europe to leave extensive documents in their own language (G???z). They also frequently collaborated with Latin Christians to disseminate their expert knowledge of Ethiopia and Ethiopian Christianity, negotiating the era's heated debates over the boundaries of religious belonging.

Translating Faith is the first book-length study of this community in nearly a century. Drawing on G???z and European-language sources, Samantha Kelly documents how pilgrims maintained Ethiopian Orthodox practices while adapting to a society increasingly committed to Catholic conformity. Focusing especially on the pilgrims' scholarly collaborations, Kelly shows how they came to produce and share Ethiopian knowledge-as well as how Latin Christian assumptions and priorities transformed that knowledge in unexpected ways. The ambivalent legacies of these exchanges linger today in the European tradition of Ethiopian Studies, which Santo Stefano is credited with founding.

Kelly's account of the Santo Stefano pilgrim community is a rich tale about the possibilities and pitfalls of ecumenical dialogue, as well as a timely history in our own age marked by intensive and often violent negotiations of religious and racial difference.

Featuring a range of scholars in the field of religion and ecology, over 95 images, and a glossary of key terms, this book provides a survey of the key topics and religious traditions in the study of religion and nature in the North American context. Students are introduced to the ways in which religions have shaped our thinking about the many dimensions of nature and affected the socio-political and ecological landscapes of North America.

This overview explores the impacts of European colonialism on indigenous peoples, and the enslaving of black peoples, that still reverberate in contemporary issues of environmental justice and climate change, and the breadth of intersectional environmentalisms that include race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and place. Contributing authors also explore the range of religious and spiritual values and sentiments that shape human engagement with the more-than-human natural worlds.

With guidance for further reading accompanying each chapter, the book is divided into three parts: Traditions, Embodiments and Identities, and Themes and Issues. Individual chapters include topics such as animals and religion, indigenous language and ecology, Asian religions, petrocultures and Christianity, and globalization and ethics.

The chapters in this book were first published in the digital collection Bloomsbury Religion in North America. Covering North America's diverse religious traditions, this digital collection provides reliable and peer-reviewed articles and ebooks for students and instructors. Learn more and get access for your library at www.theologyandreligiononline.com/bloomsbury-religion-in-north-america

Buddhism is often the religion that teachers have the least confidence in teaching despite being the sixth largest religion in the UK and being commonly regarded as one of the six major religions to be taught in schools throughout the country. This book explores the beliefs and practices of Buddhism as a lived religion in the UK. This book engages with Buddhist beliefs and practices and provides students and teachers with the confidence to address misconceptions and recognise the importance of beliefs in the lives of believers, in a way that will enable readers to go forward with confidence. Aspects of Buddhism explored include the concepts that form the central beliefs of Buddhism, and then the expression of these beliefs in worship, daily life, and the ethics of Buddhists in the modern day. Each chapter includes authentic voices of believers today and provides opportunities for the reader to consider the concepts and how they can be respected and taught and in the classroom.

The book forms part of the Teaching Religions and Worldviews series of guides, each one designed to build teachers' confidence and expertise in teaching a different religion or worldview in the classroom..

An indispensable resource for readers investigating how religion has influenced societies and cultures, this three-volume encyclopedia assesses and synthesizes the many ways in which religious faith has shaped societies from the ancient world to today.

Each volume of the set focuses on a different era of world history, ranging through the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Every volume is filled with essays that focus on religious themes from different geographical regions. For example, volume one includes essays considering religion in ancient Rome, while volume three features essays focused on religion in modern Africa. This accessible layout makes it easy for readers to learn more about the ways that religion and society have intersected over the centuries, as well as specific religious trends, events, and milestones in a particular era and place in world history.

Taken as a a whole, this ambitious and wide-ranging work gathers more than 500 essays from more than 150 scholars who share their expertise and knowledge about religious faiths, tenets, people, places, and events that have influenced the development of civilization over the course of recorded human history.

Consciousness Mattering presents a contemporary Buddhist theory in which brains, bodies, environments, and cultures are relational infrastructures for human consciousness. Drawing on insights from meditation, neuroscience, physics, and evolutionary theory, it demonstrates that human consciousness is not something that occurs only in our heads and consists in the creative elaboration of relations among sensed and sensing presences, and more fundamentally between matter and what matters. Hershock argues that without consciousness there would only be either unordered sameness or nothing at all. Evolution is consciousness mattering.
Shedding new light on the co-emergence of subjective awareness and culture, the possibility of machine consciousness, the risks of algorithmic consciousness hacking, and the potentials of intentionally altered states of consciousness, Hershock invites us to consider how freely, wisely, and compassionately consciousness matters.

William C. Hackett provides a renewed reading of Christian theology by evaluating the role of anthropomorphism in shaping negative theology. Through this theological history, he addresses the fear of anthropomorphism that prompted early philosophers and theologians to adopt abstract understandings of God.

Hackett charts the wide-ranging importance of anthropomorphism to theology through figures including Balthasar, Bultmann, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Cyril of Alexandria. He argues that anthropomorphism highlights the unique conceptual problem between divine presence and absence. By exploring the turn away from practical and embodied views of God in Scripture, this book focuses on anthropomorphic views of God in symbols, images, and narratives. Emphasising these forms promotes an intellectual vision of Christianity that challenges theoretical and conceptual abstraction. Anthropomorphism in Christian Theology further traces the nuances between human and angelic intellect, modern philosophy and theology, negative theology and the concept of transcendence.

This book documents the structure of religious diversity in Australia and examines this diversity in the context of the law, migration, education, policing, the media and interfaith communities.

Focusing on Melbourne and Tasmania, it articulates the benefits and opportunities of diversity, alongside the challenges that confront religious and ethnic minorities, including discrimination and structural inequalities generated by Christian and other
forms of privilege. It articulates constructive strategies that are deployed, including
encouraging forms of belonging, structured ways of negotiating disagreement and respectful engagement with difference.

While scholars across the West are increasingly attuned to the problems and promises of growing religious diversity in a global age, in-depth empirical research on the consequences of that diversity in Australia is lacking. This book provides a rich, well-researched, and timely intervention.

Emmanuel Falque, one of the foremost philosophers working in the continental philosophy of religion today, takes us by the hand into the very heart of 12th-century monastic spirituality.

Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Experience weaves together contemporary phenomenological questions with medieval theology, revealing undiscovered dialogues already underway between Hugh of St. Victor and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, between Richard of St. Victor and Emmanuel Levinas, between Aelred of Rievaulx and Michel Henry, and not least between Bernard of Clairvaux and the trio of Descartes, Heidegger, and Jean-Luc Marion, consummating in a masterful phenomenological reading of Bernard's sermons on the Song of Songs.

Whether it is a question of 'the idea that comes to God' (Anselm of Canterbury) or actively 'feeling oneself fully alive' (Aelred of Rievaulx or Bernard of Clairvaux), Falque uses these encounters to shed light on both parties, medieval and modern, theological and philosophical.

Leading us through works of art, landscapes, architectures, and liturgies, this major contemporary philosopher of religion clarifies mysteries and discovers experience lying at the heart of the medieval tradition.

Through a rigorous analysis of original scriptures and later commentaries, this open access book unearths a cornucopia of idiosyncratic motifs pervading the famous Tibetan sky-gazing meditation known as "Skullward Leap" (thod rgal). Flavio Geisshuesler argues that these motifs suggest that the practice did not originate in the context of Buddhism, but rather within indigenous Tibetan culture and in close contact with the early Boen tradition. The book argues that Dzogchen once belonged to a cult centered on the quest for vitality, which involved the worship of the sky as primordial source of life and endorsed the hunting of animals, as they were believed to be endowed with the ability to move in between the divine realm of the heavens and the world of humans.

The book also traces the historical development of the Great Perfection, delineating a complex process of buddhicization that started with the introduction of Buddhism in the 7th century, intensified with the rise of new schools in the 11th century, and reached its climax in the systematization of the teachings by the great scholar-yogi Longchenpa in the 14th century. The study advances an innovative model of meditation as an open-ended practice that animates practitioners to face the most challenging moments of their lives with courage and curiosity, imagination and creativity, and playfulness and excitement; qualities that are oftentimes overlooked in contemporary descriptions of contemplation.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

In the first scholarly biography of Minister Farrakhan, leader of the controversial religious movement, the Nation of Islam (NOI), Dawn-Marie Gibson challenges popular portrayals of Farrakhan in American media.

Placing Farrakhan's life and leadership in historical context, she traces his evolution from a fiery Black Nationalist in 1960s Harlem to a respected leader in sections of the USA and abroad, and uncovers Farrakhan's work in rebuilding the NOI's reputation following Malcolm X's assassination.

Archival material includes FBI's files on the NOI and its leaders, Farrakhan's writings in the Muhammad Speaks and The Final Call newspapers, and lectures and interviews from the late 1970s to the present day. Excerpts from first-hand interviews from NOI officials, pastors, imams, and community groups provide important insights into Farrakhan's religious life.

This book addresses topics relating to religion, education, science, and technology, and explore their role in developing a more inclusive and sustainable future. With discussions viewed through the lenses of religious and Islamic studies, education, psychology, social science, economics, and natural science, the book is interdisciplinary. It also brings together a range of diverse work by academics around the world including Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States, Australia, Kenya, Germany, and the Philippines.

The papers are derived from the 5th International Colloquium on Interdisciplinary Islamic Studies (ICIIS 2022), a prestigious event designed to provide a global forum for academicians, researchers, practitioners, and students to present their research findings to global experts. ICIIS was hosted by (State Islamic University/UIN) of Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta's School of Graduate Studies, Indonesia in collaboration with UIN Sultan Thaha Saifuddin Jambi, Indonesia, UIN Mataram Nusa Tenggara Barat, Indonesia and Umma University Kajiado, Kenya.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Funded by UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta.

Through a systematic analysis of the conflicts emerging when the public church encounters the public world, The Scandal of Pentecost argues that the public advent of the church stands in continuity with the public scandal of the incarnate and crucified Christ.

The book traces the contours of this scandal in the confrontation of the dominant ruling hermeneutic of authority with a Christian hermeneutic of resistance. This highlights the brokenness of the human condition manifested by the church in the drunkenness of the disciples, the speaking in other tongues, the baptism with the Spirit, the empowerment of the flesh, and its public witness to a scandalized world.

The effects of the scandal transform both the disciples' individual and communal witness and their public recognition as the church. Through the lens of a symbolic hermeneutic, the public witness of the church at Pentecost reveals a Christian scandal of anthropological proportions: with the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh the church emerges as the symbol of humanity.

Interrogating Barth's discipleship-shaped vision of sanctification, this book investigates both Lutheran and Calvinian source material to develop an account that differs markedly from other Lutheran and Calvinist perspectives. Highlighting the robustly theological and Christ-centred character of Barth's account, Chris Swann demonstrates that, far from merely valorising human activity, Barth advances an understanding of human moral agency, action, and suffering that is real but relative to the agency of God in Christ to which it corresponds analogously.

With a focus on the role the image of discipleship plays in giving conceptual structure and shape to Barth's distinctive account of the correspondence between divine agency and sanctified human agency, this book evaluates the ramifications of his discipleship-shaped vision of sanctification. In doing this, it gives special attention to Barth's own personal mixed record with regard to Christian discipleship. Ultimately, Swann retrieves a number of important resources for contemporary theological ethics from Barth's theology of discipleship.

This open access book undertakes a self-critical reinterpretation of European modernity and responds to the need for a global understanding of the development of Western thought. Showcasing contemporary Latin American approaches that align modernity with colonialism, and European theories of modernity, Hans Schelkshorn reassesses the origins of modernity. He brings neglected Renaissance thinkers into the narrative, discussing the work of Nicholas of Cusa, Pico della Mirandola, Francisco de Vitoria, and Michel de Montaigne, and critiquing the views of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke.

Across a series of historical studies, Schelkshorn presents modernity as a complex process. His use of the concept 'de-limitations' (Entgrenzungen) shows how the new idea of an infinite universe and the discovery of the Americas deeply influenced the foundations of modern science, politics and economies in the 17th century. Making a major contribution to scholarship on early modern philosophy, Schelkshorn paves the way for a more cosmopolitan account of European thought.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Hans Schelkshorn/University of Vienna.

Insofar as Christian theology aims to make truthful claims about the nature of reality, it is necessarily involved in the enterprise of metaphysics. Pentecostals, precisely as Christians, are thus obliged to participate. Through this study it becomes evident that pentecostals aim to participate in the metaphysical discipline in the same way they theologize - that is, informed by the norms, practices, and speech acts that constitute their spirituality.

This book aims to construct a Christian metaphysics that is at once attuned to pentecostal spirituality/theology and informed by the classical tradition of Christian metaphysics.

Ultimately, this work offers a constructive and critical engagement with pentecostal spirituality, and with pentecostal theology via the larger ecumenical, creedal, and dogmatic metaphysical tradition. Thus, this book is explicitly and intentionally limited to understand metaphysics in conversation with the historical Christian tradition, and to understand a pentecostal vision of it.