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One of the implications of Islamic investment principles is the availability of Islamic financial instruments in the financial market. The main aim of this research is to observe the differences in terms of performance between Islamic and conventional mutual fund in the context of Malaysian capital market.

To achieve the major objectives of this paper standard methods wereused for evaluating the mutual funds performance, for example, Sharpe index and adjusted Sharpe index, Jensen Alpha, Timing and selectivity ability. The scope of the paper is to measure the relative quantitative performance of funds which was managed based on two different approaches.

The basic finding of the paper is that Islamic funds performed better than the conventional funds during bearish economic trends while, conventional funds showed better performance than Islamic funds during bullish economic conditions. In addition to that finding, both conventional and Islamic funds were unable to achieve at least 50 per cent market diversification levels, though conventional funds are found to have a marginally better diversification level than the Islamic funds. The results also suggest that fund managers are unable to correctly identify good bargain stocks and to forecast the price movements of the general market.

The main limitation is that the samples of conventional and Islamic mutual funds were from one developing market. The findings could be better validated if the sample included the mutual funds from other developed and developing economies, where both Islamic and conventional funds are available.

The findings suggest that having Islamic mutual funds in an investment portfolio helps to hedge the downside risk in an adverse economic situation.

So far there is no published evidence on the relative performance of Islamic and conventional mutual funds in Malaysia as well as other developing countries. Therefore, this paper adds new knowledge to the mutual funds literature.

This study aims to explore the evolution of the Islamic capital market (ICM) from the perspective of research publications.

A bibliometric analysis was applied based on selected publications from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database from 2000 to 2021. The study adopted VOSviewer software which was developed by Leiden University.

This study has some implications that need urgent action. Firstly, there are some areas that have received little attention among researchers, although they are relevant to the industry, for instance, in fintech and blockchain in ICM. Secondly, the inconsistent frequency of publications in some niche areas may suggest that there are unprecedented events that hinder further research; probably, the researcher may anticipate more information and progress in the industry. Thirdly, the need to strengthen the collaboration between industry and academia to advance research.

This study considered only the WoSCC database. The provider of WoSCC is Clarivate (formerly known as Thomson Reuters), where access to publications is limited to institutional subscribers. The implications of this study are to identify and propose future research trends in the field of ICM.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is among the pioneer studies in analysing bibliometric focusing on ICM. Previous research has focused on Islamic finance and banking, and not specifically on ICM. Accordingly, this study sheds light on research gaps in ICM.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk-adjusted performance of rated funds and determine the usefulness of Lipper Leader rating of unit trusts in Malaysia during the period 2000 to 2010.

The paper utilizes the Sharpe ratio, Treynor ratio, Jensen’s alpha and Fama-French three-factor model to measure performance.

During the period of study, the performance of the market index and risk-free rate outperformed that of 68 equity unit trust funds in the 3-year, 5-year and 10-year investment horizons. The ranking, based on four performance measures, corresponds to Lipper rating for the lowest rated and leader funds, but not for the three- and four-key rated funds. Further, there is a significant difference in the performance of the five-key, four-key and three-key rated funds which outperform the lowest rated funds, indicating that Lipper rating is able to distinguish superior and inferior unit trust funds.

Some of the limitations in this study are that the indexes could be self-constructed. The existing index might not represent the asset allocation of the funds concerned. Additional variables might have to be considered when examining fund performance as they should correspond to the characteristics of a fund.

The results indicate that Lipper rating classification could identify the highest and lowest performing funds. Therefore, investors could use this rating to make informed investment decisions without undertaking time-consuming analysis to ascertain the good- and bad-quality funds in the market.

The findings of this study could be used by the academia as another source of reference to enhance their understanding of the applicability of Lipper rating for unit trust funds in an emerging market.

The contribution of this study is that it analyzes the effectiveness and capability of Lipper Leader rating in identifying quality funds in the context of an emerging market. Performance comparison between Lipper Leader rating and methods used in the portfolio theory bridges the theory-practice gap between practitioners and academics. To date, there have been no attempts to study and compare the ratings of advisory firms with theoretical performance measures, particularly in the context of Malaysia.

Najib Mahfuz is the first Arab‐language author to win the Nobel Prize in literature. Born in 1911 the son of a middle‐class Jamaliyah merchant, he became the most popular novelist in Egypt and the Arab countries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of Islamic work ethics (IWEs) on the job satisfaction, commitment and loyalty among the bank employees in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan.

Data for this study was collected using the purposive sampling from 354 bank employees of Azad Jammu and Kashmir region.

The findings of this study support all the three proposed hypotheses, with IWEs demonstrating significant positive relationships with job satisfaction, organisational commitment and employee loyalty.

Because of the nature of operations, banks need energetic employees who can participate actively in work activities. The implementation of IWEs enables banks to improve their employees’ satisfaction, commitment and loyalty, which will benefit the organisation in the long term through improved performance.

By encouraging the adoption of IWEs, organisations can increase job satisfaction, employee’s commitment and loyalty in the workplace, especially in an Islamic banking context. Therefore, managers should strengthen the mutual understanding among employees regarding IWE principles. They should be consistently applied and disseminated by Islamic banks’ management in the form of a formal code of ethics that applies to all actions within the organisation. Besides, this study contributes in terms of divine command theory which was yet to be tested with employee’s behaviour. Loyalty was another behavioural attribute which is providing novelty while testing with IWEs in banking context.

This paper aims to analyze intention for applying blockchain-based technology in zakat management regarding the readiness of zakat institutions and muzakki in Indonesia.

This research is a mixed method, namely, using qualitative research to examine the readiness of practitioner and academics in welcoming blockchain-based financial technology and using quantitative research to measure people’s knowledge and intentions to adopt zakat using blockchain technology based on UTAUT theory (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology).

The findings indicate that performance expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions and sentiment positively affect the intention to adopt blockchain technology in zakat payments, while effort expectancy do not. Additionally, interviews reveal that practitioners and academics support blockchain technology but are unprepared for its implementation.

The implications of this study suggest important directions for policy makers, notably zakat institutions, supporting the application of blockchain technology and the adaptation of user-friendly information system services to meet the requirements of zakat service users.

This study fills the gap in previous research by offering a more comprehensive analysis of the collaboration between zakat and blockchain technology through three different perspectives, namely, practitioners (BAZNAS), academics and users of zakat services (muzakki).