Islam and Human Rights: A Growing Rapprochement?

Can Islamic thought provide a basis for a fully developed theory of human rights? This article begins with an examination of the tensions between religion in general and the secular framing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). From a historical perspective, it then delves into the history of the relationship between Muslim political and religious leaders and the UDHR. With that background in mind, the author analyzes the positions of three influential Muslim scholars on human rights: Khaled Abou El Fadl's emphasis on ethics and law; Abdulaziz Sachedina's recent book Islam and the Challenge of Human Rights (2009), in which he urges the traditionalists to develop a “public theology”; and finally, Abdullahi An‐Na'im's focus on shari'a and the secular state. He concludes that the majority of Muslims worldwide remain more conservative than these authors, and yet they overwhelmingly support the notion of human rights. This bodes well for the growing influence of such reformist thinking and, as a result, for the retooling of traditional Islamic jurisprudence in addressing human rights.     

Response for ILA worldviews panel papers

Leadership is about knowledge, skills, and abilities for transformation. It is also increasingly about worldviews or visions of life—beliefs, values, and principles. But worldviews are also ways of life, for beliefs direct us, values guide us, and principles motivate us to certain kinds of action and behavior. How, then, do worldviews have an impact on leadership for transformation? If worldviews are glasses or filters by which we view the world, mental models of the bigger picture, frameworks by which we make sense of the world, and narratives by which we orient our lives, then how do they influence human thoughts, ideas, and behaviors when it comes to transformative leadership? This was the subject matter of an International Leadership Association Conference panel discussion held in November 2009 in Prague, entitled Leadership for Transformation: The Impact of Worldviews. It is also the subject matter of this issue's symposium, in which we bring you the four papers and the response presented at the conference. Members of the panel were characterized by gender, disciplinary, religious, and global diversity. Nathan Harter, organizational leadership professor at Purdue University in the United States, begins the discussion with some preliminary remarks about worldviews. Ali Mohammed Mir, medical doctor and director of programs of Population Council, Pakistan, speaks of leadership from an Islamic perspective. Michael Jones, accomplished composer, pianist, and leadership educator, writer, and speaker from Orillia, Canada, reflects on how a “marriage of mythos and logos” can transform leadership today. Lisa Ncube, originally from Zimbabwe and currently assistant professor of organizational leadership at Purdue University, speaks about Ubuntu as an alternative leadership philosophy emerging from Africa. John Valk, associate professor of worldview studies at Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Canada, speaks of leadership for transformation from a Christian worldview perspective. Jonathan Reams, associate professor in the Department of Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, responds to all of the papers and opens a venue for further discussion. We hope that you will find this symposium engaging. We hope it will give food for thought and that it might stimulate further thinking regarding the role worldviews play in leadership for transformation.     

Guest editorial

Leadership is about knowledge, skills, and abilities for transformation. It is also increasingly about worldviews or visions of life—beliefs, values, and principles. But worldviews are also ways of life, for beliefs direct us, values guide us, and principles motivate us to certain kinds of action and behavior. How, then, do worldviews have an impact on leadership for transformation? If worldviews are glasses or filters by which we view the world, mental models of the bigger picture, frameworks by which we make sense of the world, and narratives by which we orient our lives, then how do they influence human thoughts, ideas, and behaviors when it comes to transformative leadership? This was the subject matter of an International Leadership Association Conference panel discussion held in November 2009 in Prague, entitled Leadership for Transformation: The Impact of Worldviews. It is also the subject matter of this issue's symposium, in which we bring you the four papers and the response presented at the conference. Members of the panel were characterized by gender, disciplinary, religious, and global diversity. Nathan Harter, organizational leadership professor at Purdue University in the United States, begins the discussion with some preliminary remarks about worldviews. Ali Mohammed Mir, medical doctor and director of programs of Population Council, Pakistan, speaks of leadership from an Islamic perspective. Michael Jones, accomplished composer, pianist, and leadership educator, writer, and speaker from Orillia, Canada, reflects on how a “marriage of mythos and logos” can transform leadership today. Lisa Ncube, originally from Zimbabwe and currently assistant professor of organizational leadership at Purdue University, speaks about Ubuntu as an alternative leadership philosophy emerging from Africa. John Valk, associate professor of worldview studies at Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Canada, speaks of leadership for transformation from a Christian worldview perspective. Jonathan Reams, associate professor in the Department of Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, responds to all of the papers and opens a venue for further discussion. We hope that you will find this symposium engaging. We hope it will give food for thought and that it might stimulate further thinking regarding the role worldviews play in leadership for transformation.     

Leadership in Islam

Leadership is about knowledge, skills, and abilities for transformation. It is also increasingly about worldviews or visions of life—beliefs, values, and principles. But worldviews are also ways of life, for beliefs direct us, values guide us, and principles motivate us to certain kinds of action and behavior. How, then, do worldviews have an impact on leadership for transformation? If worldviews are glasses or filters by which we view the world, mental models of the bigger picture, frameworks by which we make sense of the world, and narratives by which we orient our lives, then how do they influence human thoughts, ideas, and behaviors when it comes to transformative leadership? This was the subject matter of an International Leadership Association Conference panel discussion held in November 2009 in Prague, entitled Leadership for Transformation: The Impact of Worldviews. It is also the subject matter of this issue's symposium, in which we bring you the four papers and the response presented at the conference. Members of the panel were characterized by gender, disciplinary, religious, and global diversity. Nathan Harter, organizational leadership professor at Purdue University in the United States, begins the discussion with some preliminary remarks about worldviews. Ali Mohammed Mir, medical doctor and director of programs of Population Council, Pakistan, speaks of leadership from an Islamic perspective. Michael Jones, accomplished composer, pianist, and leadership educator, writer, and speaker from Orillia, Canada, reflects on how a “marriage of mythos and logos” can transform leadership today. Lisa Ncube, originally from Zimbabwe and currently assistant professor of organizational leadership at Purdue University, speaks about Ubuntu as an alternative leadership philosophy emerging from Africa. John Valk, associate professor of worldview studies at Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Canada, speaks of leadership for transformation from a Christian worldview perspective. Jonathan Reams, associate professor in the Department of Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, responds to all of the papers and opens a venue for further discussion. We hope that you will find this symposium engaging. We hope it will give food for thought and that it might stimulate further thinking regarding the role worldviews play in leadership for transformation.     

Ubuntu: A transformative leadership philosophy

Leadership is about knowledge, skills, and abilities for transformation. It is also increasingly about worldviews or visions of life—beliefs, values, and principles. But worldviews are also ways of life, for beliefs direct us, values guide us, and principles motivate us to certain kinds of action and behavior. How, then, do worldviews have an impact on leadership for transformation? If worldviews are glasses or filters by which we view the world, mental models of the bigger picture, frameworks by which we make sense of the world, and narratives by which we orient our lives, then how do they influence human thoughts, ideas, and behaviors when it comes to transformative leadership? This was the subject matter of an International Leadership Association Conference panel discussion held in November 2009 in Prague, entitled Leadership for Transformation: The Impact of Worldviews. It is also the subject matter of this issue's symposium, in which we bring you the four papers and the response presented at the conference. Members of the panel were characterized by gender, disciplinary, religious, and global diversity. Nathan Harter, organizational leadership professor at Purdue University in the United States, begins the discussion with some preliminary remarks about worldviews. Ali Mohammed Mir, medical doctor and director of programs of Population Council, Pakistan, speaks of leadership from an Islamic perspective. Michael Jones, accomplished composer, pianist, and leadership educator, writer, and speaker from Orillia, Canada, reflects on how a “marriage of mythos and logos” can transform leadership today. Lisa Ncube, originally from Zimbabwe and currently assistant professor of organizational leadership at Purdue University, speaks about Ubuntu as an alternative leadership philosophy emerging from Africa. John Valk, associate professor of worldview studies at Renaissance College, University of New Brunswick, Canada, speaks of leadership for transformation from a Christian worldview perspective. Jonathan Reams, associate professor in the Department of Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, responds to all of the papers and opens a venue for further discussion. We hope that you will find this symposium engaging. We hope it will give food for thought and that it might stimulate further thinking regarding the role worldviews play in leadership for transformation.     

Sismondi's principles of liberty and economic progress

The Swiss-born liberal thinker Jean-Charles-Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842) rejected metaphysical systems of thought in favour of historical and social analysis. However, in his mature writings, he offered an organising, although a never explicit, set of principles guiding his political and economic disquisitions. I identify Sismondi's essential principles of social study, namely, the effect of political organisation on the character of the people, the need for a ‘national reason’, along with the weight of tradition over individual representation. Subordinate principles of liberty are examined, such as respect for minorities, freedom of public debate, and engagement in local affairs. I argue that, when the political idea of a slowly matured national reason guiding the constitutional progress of liberty is applied to a rapidly changing economic domain, tension is created within Sismondi's understanding of social sciences.     

FEMALE ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN EARLY ISLAM

The absence of female leaders in business and public life is conspicuous in Islamic societies. One explanation may be that Islam imposes legal and social inequality on men and women. However, a comparison of female entrepreneurship in pre‐Islamic society and in Mohammed's era shows that women occupied leadership roles before and after the establishment of Islam. Mohammed's wives were commercially astute, and Mohammed and his contemporaries respected the rights of women to make decisions regarding finances, matrimony and religious affiliation. The right of women to assume public leadership roles is compatible with Islam.     

城市居住空间的分化、排斥与整合——以南京市东山新区为例

在城市化与居住郊区化的进程中,居住空间分化是难以避免的社会与地理现象。试图将居住社区的空间分化与社会排斥勾连起来,从空间可及性控制角度切入探析社会排斥问题,并结合实证调研的成果对这些问题加以描述和分析。最后在借鉴新城市主义社区规划思想的基础上,提出居住社区空间整合的对策。     

Governmentality and Spatial Strategies: Towards Formalization of Street Vendors in Guangzhou,China

A new policy approach that seeks to formalize street vendors by immobilizing them in designated places has been taken as an alternative to exclusion in Guangzhou, China. This article develops an analytical framework for understanding this spatial formalization by drawing upon Foucault's concept of governmentality. Formalization can be understood as a form of spatial governmentality that seeks to guide the behaviour of informal economic individuals towards officially desired norms by creating bounded spaces. While the formalization programme reflects a moral form of political rationality that directs modern governments towards principles of social justice, it is fundamentally founded on a dispositional spatial rationality that imagines the dependence of social control on the ordering of space. However, this spatial rationality entails a tension between the goal of formalization and its practical effects, resulting in a failure to respect vital attributes of street vending and vendors’ counter‐responses to it. The article concludes by questioning the government's formalization approach, given its ignorance of the reality of informality, and opens up the question of what might be good formalization.     

Tackling Social Exclusion in the European Union? The Limits to the New Orthodoxy of Local Partnership

This article is based on recent transnational research on partnership‐based initiatives to promote local development and regeneration and combat social exclusion in the EU. The increasing reliance on partnership as the basis for local policy initiatives is first situated in the context of contemporary debates about social exclusion. The main part of the article then draws on the literatures on local governance and urban regime theory to examine three issues critical to the impact of the ‘new orthodoxy’ of local partnership: the capacity of partnerships as interorganizational forms of local governance; their inclusiveness; and the extent of outcomes which can be attributed to partnership as a distinctive mode of local governance. On all three issues, the evidence points to the limited claims that can be made for most local partnerships as ‘inclusion coalitions’ capable of effectively tackling social exclusion, and suggests that structural features of the currently dominant version of partnership entrench a model of elite rather than inclusive governance. Local partnership is associated with weak rather than strong discourses of social exclusion and inclusion, and its significance lies as much as anything in the way in which the practice of partnership tends to foreclose the sphere of debate and action, excluding more radical options. Cet article se fonde sur une récente étude transnationale concernant l'UE et portant sur les initiatives de partenariat visant à promouvoir le développement et la régénération sur le plan local, tout en combattant l'exclusion sociale. Le recours croissant au partenariat comme base des initiatives de politique locale est d'abord resitué dans le cadre des débats contemporains sur l'exclusion sociale. L'article, qui s'inspire des travaux sur la gouvernance locale et les régimes urbains, examine trois points essentiels pour l'influence de la ‘nouvelle orthodoxie’ du partenariat local: la capacité des partenariats en tant que formes de gouvernance locale inter‐organismes, leur nature inclusive, ainsi que la part des résultats qui leur revient au titre de mode distincif de gouvernance locale. Sur ces trois aspects, les faits soulignent la portée limitée que peuvent revendiquer la plupart des partenariats locaux comme ‘coalitions d'inclusion’ capables de traiter efficacement l'exclusion sociale; les résultats suggèrent en outre que les caractéristiques structurelles du partenariat, dans sa version dominante actuelle, enracinent un modèle élitiste plutôt qu'une gouvernance inclusive. Le partenariat local est associéà des propos sur l'exclusion et l'inclusion sociale plus complaisants que percutants, et sa place tient tout autant à la manière dont son exercice tend à figer la sphère de débats et d'actions, excluant toute option plus radicale.     

Non-native accents and stigma: How self-fulfilling prophesies can affect career outcomes

This article proposes a framework examining the impact of non-native accents on speakers' work and career outcomes, namely, career advancement and career satisfaction. Drawing on stigma theory, we present a conceptual model to assess cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions towards non-native accents. We contend that speaking with a non-native accent is linked with (i) managers' perceptions of speakers' fluency, (ii) expectations concerning non-native speakers' performance abilities, (iii) positive regard in social interactions and (iv) supervision style towards speakers with non-native accents. Moreover, we suggest that speaking with a non-native accent may lead speakers to (i) feel excluded and devalued at work, and (ii) assume an avoidance approach at work. Together, these effects can create a self-fulfilling prophecy that negatively affects non-native speakers' work and career outcomes. We also suggest that the strength of accents' consequences depend on the presence of particular person-related (accent prestige, exposure to the non-native accent, and non-native speakers' goal orientation) and job-related factors (nature of the job and company ethnocentrism). Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Improving telephone fundraising by use of self‐prophecy

The self‐prophecy phenomenon served as the basis for a simple, inexpensive technique aimed at increasing donations in a telephone fundraising drive. Self‐prophecy is predicated on two psychological effects. First, asking people to make predictions about normatively influenced behaviours results in biased responses—people respond as they think they should. Secondly, when later asked to perform those same behaviours, people tend to be consistent with their predictions. In an experiment, asking people to make a prediction increased the success rate from 30.4 per cent to 49 per cent, relative to a control group. Although it may be limited to occasional use, the self‐prophecy technique appears a simple and economical tool for increasing donations. Copyright © 2000 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Social influence on software piracy

In this paper, we extend the basic principles of Michel's model to a dynamical setting that allows us to study the effect of social influence on software piracy. We consider that social dynamics affect the decision-making process in two different ways: producing a positive network externality on individual consumers' preferences for the product but at the same time providing the knowledge and ability to pirate. We obtain that, on one hand, permeability of society accepting piracy culture has no significant effects on sales. On the other, scenarios with a positive ‘optimal’ value of piracy exist when there is a slight quality differential between originals and pirate copies. This can explain some interesting cases present in the real-world software industry.     

Do Islamic Banks Employ Less Earnings Management?

In this article, we examine whether Islamic banks are less likely to manage their earnings than non‐Islamic banks and how Islamic banks’ unique corporate governance system, especially Shari'ah Supervisory Boards, impacts earnings management behaviors within Islamic banks. Using a sample of Islamic banks and their matched non‐Islamic banks in 15 countries, we find that, first, Islamic banks are less likely to conduct earnings management as measured by both earnings loss avoidance and abnormal loan loss provisions. Second, there are no significantly different earnings management behaviors between Islamic banks with and without Shari'ah Supervisory Boards. Third, several Shari'ah Supervisory Board characteristics, such as size and the presence of members from Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, are important determinants of the earnings management of Islamic banks who have Shari'ah Supervisory Boards.     

Remaking Equality: Community Governance and the Politics of Exclusion in Bogota's Public Spaces

Bogota's public space policy is often credited with promoting inclusionary principles. In this article, I explore critically the content of Bogota's articulation of equality in public space policy. In so doing, I present a critical view of the work Bogota's insistence on equality does to mediate class relations in the city, relying on deeply held conceptions of both social extremes. This results in the construction of a version of social harmony in public space that at once depoliticizes the claims to public space of subjects such as street vendors and the homeless and claims a new role for the middle class in the city. The analysis focuses on two examples of community governance schemes, documenting the logics and methods used by communities to implement official visions of equality and justify the exclusion of street vendors and homeless people from the area. By looking at the articulation of these exclusions in local class politics through seemingly inclusionary rhetoric, the article accounts for ‘post‐revanchist’ turns in contemporary urban policy, while anchoring its production in local processes of community governance.     

Karl Mittermaier and the hands of classical liberalism

Karl Mittermaier (1938–2016) completed a work in 1987 titled The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand: Dogmatic and Pragmatic Views on Free Markets and the State of Economic Theory, published for the first time in 2020. Here I treat Mittermaier's rich meditation, which I interpret as a pursuit of greater coherence in classical liberal thought. Mittermaier emphasises the moral, cultural, and institutional preconditions of a liberal market order, and argues that some of the preconditions depend on people feeling that they have reason to embrace such classical liberal principles. The preconditions, then, depend in part on the perception of coherence and appeal of the liberal order.     

Building,Marketing and Living in an Islamic Gated Community: Novel Configurations of Class and Religion in Istanbul

This article analyses the development and marketing of Islamic gated communities in Basaksehir, Istanbul. It demonstrates how a blueprint of public–private urban development was appropriated by middle‐class Islamists. The gated communities in Basaksehir—which, at the outset, were not explicitly religious—gradually became attractive to religious actors searching for enclosed urban enclaves where Islamic communities would be protected against perceived moral‐urban threats. While urban‐religious enclaves appear to bear similarities to pre‐modern Ottoman Islamic urban enclaves, the rise of contemporary Islamic gated communities should be understood in light of the recent coming to power of the Islamist Turkish government. In cooperation with this government, housing development agencies approached Islamic investors to find capital for their public–private housing projects. One of the results of this form of urban development is that, contrary to pre‐modern Ottoman Islamic urban enclaves, the Islamic gated communities are homogenous in terms of economic class, catering specifically to the Islamic middle classes. Moreover, people who invest in Basaksehir desire an urban‐religious lifestyle that differs from the ‘traditional' religious lifestyle experienced in ‘traditional' Islamic neighbourhoods. The specific urban‐religious configuration generates a new type of Islam that better fits middle‐class values and a middle‐class lifestyle.