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The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a pilot study conducted in Pakistan, about the barriers perceived by users and non‐users of Islamic banking when selecting Islamic banks.

This study was conducted to include two types of banking customers, users (customers of Islamic banks only and, Islamic and conventional banks both) and non‐users (customers of conventional banks only). The qualitative research included in‐depth interviews with managers of Islamic banks and two focus groups with users and non‐users, respectively. The survey questionnaire that was subsequently designed received 109 responses. The analysis includes hypothesis testing, factor analysis, and cluster analysis.

A narrow branch network, inconvenient branch locations and perception that “Islamic banks do not completely follow Islamic principles” acted as barriers for non‐users when selecting Islamic banks. Further, “a religious ruling against Islamic banks” was not considered an important barrier when selecting Islamic banks.

This research outlines an alternative methodology of looking at bank selection criteria, by measuring the other side of the coin, i.e. the barriers perceived by users and non‐users of Islamic banking when selecting Islamic banks. Compared to the prevailing literature on the subject, such an approach is enlightening and can have enormous potential as it directly measures the perceived barriers towards Islamic banking. Furthermore, this pilot study is also an important contribution to the limited literature on consumer attitudes towards Islamic banking in Pakistan, where the operations of Islamic banks are still in their formative stage.

Both developed and developing countries, Muslim and non-Muslim, have been showing keen interest in sukuk financing. This interest was because of the lesson learned by both Asian and non-Asian economies that having a developed capital market is very essential to enable an economy resilient to the financial crisis. Therefore, this study aims to produce theoretical relationships and identify empirical support for the determinants of sukuk market development.

By using panel data analysis, the study covers the period from 1993 until 2017, and includes 13 sukuk issuing economies as per the availability of data.

The findings of the study revealed that the stage of economic development, banking system, money supply and current account balance are positively associated with sukuk market. Interestingly, economic size and exports appear to be negatively associated with sukuk.

To flourish the domestic sukuk market, authorities need to strengthen the existing financial system and economic development.

The study contributes in a limited body of knowledge on determinants of sukuk market development by exploring novel determining factors of foreign capital inflows as well as macroeconomic and financial factors.

This paper aims to improve the computational efficiency of higher-order accurate Noye–Hayman [NH (9,9)] implicit finite difference scheme for the solution of electromagnetic scattering problems in tunnel environments.

The proposed method consists of two major steps: First, the higher-order NH (9,9) scheme is numerically discretized using the finite-difference method. The second step is to use an algorithm based on hierarchical interpolative factorization (HIF) to accelerate the solution of this scheme.

It is observed that the simulation results obtained from the numerical tests illustrate very high accuracy of the NH (9,9) method in typical tunnel environments. HIF algorithm makes the NH (9,9) method computationally efficient for two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) problems. The proposed method could help in reducing the computational cost of the NH (9,9) method very close to O(n) usual O(n3) for a full matrix.

For simplicity, in this study, perfect electric conductor boundary conditions are considered. Future research may also include the utilization of meteorological techniques, including the effects of backward traveling waves, and make comparisons with the experimental data.

This study is directly applicable to typical problems in the field of tunnel propagation modeling for both national commercial and military applications.