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This study aims to analyse the role of zakat in poverty alleviation and income inequality reduction based on the gender of zakat recipients.

This study used the Centre of Islamic Economic and Business Studies (CIBEST) model as a poverty measure and the Gini coefficient and Atkinson index as income inequality measures to analyse 1,300 zakat recipients in five different areas of West Java, Indonesia.

Based on the CIBEST model, zakat distribution programmes have better salutary effects on male-headed households in terms of material (0.215) and absolute (0.037) poverty indices, whereas female-headed households have better performance on the falah (0.438) and spiritual (0.022) poverty indices, with greater changes in these indices in female-headed households. According to the Gini coefficient and Atkinson index, female-headed households have better income distribution one-year after zakat distribution programmes, whereas the male-headed households have better performance in regards to welfare loss.

The present study only used the poverty line standard published by the Central Board of Statistics from the Republic of Indonesia to identify respondents who live under the poverty line.

This paper can serve as a reference for zakat institutions in the implementation of zakat distribution programmes when the gender of zakat recipients is taken into consideration.

Not many studies have analysed the impact of gender in zakat distribution programmes despite gender being one of the most important determinants of poverty and income inequality. This study attempts to determine the economic impact of zakat from the perspective of gender.

Islam being a revealed religion for humanity as a whole stands for justice and fairness. This can be achieved by way of establishing an exploitation‐free society. Exploitation is a very complex phenomenon that results from the interaction of multiplicity of forces encompassing economic, social, political and cultural, among others. The mutually interacting forces operate in the presence of dominance‐dependence relationship to perpetuate low productivity and low income, thereby giving rise to exploitation of the underpriviliged by the privileged in the society. The dominance‐dependence relationship works through the interrelated nature of production technology, financial allocation, marketing and distribution networks. Here comes the pivotal role of various institutions involved in dealing with the above mentioned networks. Given the highly centralized nature of administration, the role of head of state in Muslim‐majority countries in promoting appropriate institutions as well as mechanisms for ensuring growth with distributive justice can hardly be over emphasized.

The term success in this paper is measured by the yardstick of both material and non‐material ones. This study attempts to examine the success story behind Malaysia's development with evidences drawn from both the conventionally used criteria together with the Islamically motivated universal values and ethos. Of the conventional factors, political consolidation of the first Prime Minister in the presence of dynamic enterprising ability of the Chinese as well as South Indian Community based on family values played a pivotal role in creating a foundation for development. The majority Malays, on the other hand, being the victim of colonial legacies and multi‐farious historical phenomenon were by‐passed. Subsequently, the big bargain of 1957, the year of independence by way of securing Malay special rights in the constitution laid the foundation for new strategy of development based on distributive justice. The New Economic Policy with the twin objetives of eradicating poverty and restructuring society could not have been implemented in the absence of universal values such as loyalty, tolerance, sympathy, caring and sharing being demonstrated by all the races regardless of socio‐economic and political superiority. This paper thus argues that from the very beginning the committed and pragmatic leadership, policy continuation, policy dynamism and policy flexibility, among many others, acted as a catalyst for the success story behind Malaysia's development.

The concept of welfare state gained popularity during the period when the free market mechanism already established its pre‐eminence. The free market mechanism of the west together with the personal freedom being nurtured in an environment of democratic political institutions led to the emergence of the welfare state. The reason why the welfare state gained popularity during the period when the industrialized world was enjoying economic prosperity was because of the growing need for protecting the rights of citizens from any unforseen events regardless of their existing socio‐economic conditions.

The basis of human creation lays the foundation for altruism. Babies, be they human or animal are born helpless. Their very survival depends on the love and affection that are already embedded in the hearts of mothers. No amount of selfish attitude of mothers, not at least from short life span, can help in the growth of their off‐springs. One can argue that it is the self‐interested motive of the parents and most particularly the mothers of getting supports in their old days that drives them to be altruistic rather than selfish. Being altruistic means undertaking a lot of sacrifice in terms of personal pleasure and happiness merely for seeing pleasure and happiness in others regardless of any human bondage. An egoistic person, on the other hand, would never care for others. Personal level satisfaction only dominates the mind of an extremely egoistic or self‐centered man.

Development implying change or progress has now been recognized as a multi‐dimensional concept. But development measured simplistically in terms of certain quantifiable variables such as gross or percapita real GNP was once considered as the be all and end all of the challenges facing the human beings in terms of hunger, poverty, malnutrition and squalid conditions (Aiken & Follette, 1977; Allen & Thomas, 1990). This preoccupation by development theorists, social thinkers, statesmen and philosophers of the past led to the discovery of a magical word, i.e. creation of wealth as a solution to all those human challenges (Ball, 1992). The goal of wealth‐creation as a measure of unidimensional concept of development, in turn, is said to have been achieved by production for profit alone. Again, the production for profit could be pursued only by those producers who would be guided by self‐interested motives of maximizing output and minimizing costs.

This paper aims at examining the past as well as the current issues responsible for the most recent Arab-uprising.

The empirical evidence based on regression and correlation together with tabular presentations suggests that the issue of Arab-uprising can be examined from both theoretical and factual evidence. Both theoretical and empirical findings testify the extremely high interrelationships existing among the determinants and co-determinants of Arab-uprising. Based on the three most fundamental pre-requisites for living a life with satisfaction based on personal honour, dignity, voice, peace, justice and equality of opportunity, the economic, political and socio-cultural components are found to be neglected in the Arab World. The constraint of data limited the scope to use systematically available and reliable independent variables, in particular, warranted by any sophisticated empirical model.

The findings will have policy directions for the policy-makers/politicians to address the serious issues involving empowerments. It is argued that the ad hoc solution based on buying the dissent of the critics using handouts is not a long-term sustainable solution to the problems. The findings are also expected to create social consciousness among those who are most concerned to see the changes in the society for betterment where every citizen can stand for his honour, dignity and voice, justice and equality.

It is expected that the general reader can understand the issues raised in this paper, internalize the ideas and create an overall environment to redirect the policy frameworks for resolving the social problems without conflict.

The issue of democracy and development interrelationship is very complex and debatable. There does not seem to exist any automatic relationship between them and the purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationships of democracy with civil society and development based on Islamic World View.

A theoretical approach has been developed to examine how stable democracies and sustainable human development can be attained only with a balanced combination of the involvement of state and society to ensure socially most desired goods and services based on the theory of choice. The empirical evidence is used to show how the democracy can be promoted in terms of creating proper conditions that can empower the people to form civil society to press for democratization, using self‐expression values compatible to shura.

The paper concludes that democracy must be homegrown and cannot be implanted by external forces by “Iraqi‐style invasion”.

An original study on the interrelationship between state and civil society in the Arab world, within the context of Islam.

This paper aims to develop an integrated waqf-based Islamic microfinance (IsMF) for poverty reduction in Bangladesh. Microfinance institutions (MFIs) have been constrained by the high cost of funds, high interest rate charges and poor human resource quality of the recipients. Islamic MFIs have recently evolved with the hope of overcoming these financial, ethical and human capital deficiencies faced by the conventional financial institutions. Moreover, a good number of integrated models have been proposed to enhance the role played by Islamic MFIs. Most of these models, however, lack empirical justifications.

The research uses survey techniques. A total of 381 respondents were included in the survey. The integrated waqf-based Islamic microfinance model (IWIMM) was earlier on developed using literature and intellectual discussions. There are six constructs presenting the IWIMM, namely, waqf resources, IsMF, takaful, project financing, human resource development and poverty alleviation. In the survey instrument, 45 items represent the six constructs, but only 26 items have been retained after factor analysis. Structural equation modelling has been adopted to examine the relationship among the constructs.

The results show that there are significant relationships between IsMF and takaful, waqf resources and human resource development, takaful and human resource development, IsMF and human resource development and, waqf resources and project financing. The results also indicate that poverty alleviation is possible through the integration of these constructs.

Though the paper has studied conventional and Islamic MFIs in Bangladesh, one of the populated Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries and also where poverty incidence is high, further studies need to be conducted in other OIC member countries to adopt the model in line with practical and regulatory environment of those countries. Similarly, the study is based on the perception of the respondents, which limits the generalization of the result.

The paper proposed a model that has the potential of being applied for poverty alleviation programmes in most of the OIC member states.

The present paper has developed an IWIMM for poverty reduction.

The papers of this session taken together can be divided into a theoretical and applied parts. There are both interconnections and differences among these two categories of papers. The common thread of interconnection is the theme of ethics, which is shown either to be the groundwork of distribution and reorganization of ownership and market‐institutions interlinkages in the political economy, or is shown to be the groundwork of an ethical approach to the study of economic theory to make sense out of political economy in a human setting. The dissimilarity among the papers is due to an institutional‐economic approach in some papers and a straight‐forward treatment of ethical issues in economic theory seen through the classical economic reasoning.