Afkham Azeez

I am a committer & Project Management Committee (PMC) member of the Apache Web Services project. I work as a software architect at WSO2 and am the Product Manager of WSO2 Web Services Application Server (WSAS). I also lead the WSO2 Carbon framework project. My areas of interest include distributed computing, SOA, Highly Available & Highly Scalable applications & J2EE technologies. My current research area is cloud computing and am currently trying to make Web services autoscale on Amazon EC2. I am the author of the clustering implementation for Apache Axis2. I hold a B.Sc. first class honors degree in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and am currently reading for a Masters Degree in Computer Science specializing in Software Architecture.

Islam, Poverty and Micro Finance “Best Practices” Dr. Mohammed Obaidullah

How does one go about reducing poverty levels and providing micro finance (MF) in Muslim societies? How does one make a choice between the Islamic model of MF and the MF "best practices" that reflect wisdom and lessons learnt from decades of "real-life" MF experiments. The former is normative and largely an untested proposition in the context of a modern …

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Takaful- Its Origins, Definition, Justification and Present Status By Capt. Jamil Akhtar Khan

Capt.Jamil Akhtar Khan is the CEO of Takaful Pakistan. With a background in the Merchant Navy, Capt.Jamil commanded vessels of the national flag carrier PNFC before switching over to insurance. Before joining Takaful Pakistan he served with New Jubilee Insurance where his interest in Takaful was evoked. He is regarded as a pioneer in the introduction of Takaful to Pakistan, …

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IJARA – A more compassionate form of Leasing Suresh R. I. Perera LLB, Attorney at Law, ACMA Director Tax & Regulatory KPMG Sri Lanka

The nature of Ijara The literal meaning of Ijarah is “to give something on rent”. As per Islamic jurisprudence the term connotes two distinct situations. 1)  The services of human beings for wages –  the “Musta’jir”(employer) employing the services of an “Ajir” (employee) on wages  or “Ujrah”  in lieu of hired services. An “Ajir” for this purpose could be anyone …

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Global Sukuk Market – by By Faisal Hasan, Head of Research – Global Investment House, Kuwait

Fast attracting Muslims & non-Muslims alike…. The global Islamic financial sector has witnessed an encouraging growth over the last decade and is currently estimated to be at around US$1trillion. It is predicted to be the world’s fastest-growing financial sector for the coming years with an estimated global potential of US$4trillion. Sukuks have turned out to be an important driver to …

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Sukuks – The emerging trend in Islamic Finance Suresh R. I. Perera, LLB, Attorney – at – Law Director Tax & Regulatory, KPMG Ford Rhodes Thornton & Co.

Introduction Are you a finance or capital markets specialist ? Then you must be familiar with the latest trend in the capital markets! It’s Sukuk ! Well if you are not, you need to be concerned !. We Sri Lankans, in a small island in the Indian Ocean, recently read in the daily papers about the first Sukuk being structured …

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