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Heritage buildings, as any other buildings are subject to decay and deterioration. This issue increases significantly when a country undergoes complicated circumstances of unrest, as is the case in Iraq. The purpose of this study is to rethink the maintenance approach to heritage buildings in Iraq from a systematic management standpoint. It proposes the development of a management system through the functions of proper planning, organizing, directing and controlling. The study aims to scrutinize the weak areas of performance in the investigated work process in Iraq and provide suggestions to address them.

The paper opted for an exploratory study, using interviews with responsible people in Iraqi heritage buildings administration to investigate the procedures applied on maintenance work for the heritage buildings. Besides, maintenance reports were reviewed and three case studies of buildings recently assigned for maintenance were visited and examined to identify the current course of actions at work and to uncover the points of weakness and strength.

The researchers identified a kind of unreal planning in the maintenance process, which appeared to be a manifestation of corrective maintenance (CM) rather than a preventive one. Such an aspect was highlighted due to several causes, among which most important were as follow (1) the lack of sufficient allocated budgets and (2) the shortage of hand labor and building technicians in this field, including professionals with an architectural training background, who could make practical choices to heritage maintenance thus preventing improper solutions that would harm the authenticity of the asset. Such factors could be mitigated if a good maintenance management system is to be adopted. A proposed system is hereby suggested, upgrading the current guideline and laws by the specialized authorities in addition to recommending the application of digital documentation.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how maintenance management system can be applied for heritage buildings

This study aims to explore and analyze the issues in weightages-based profit distribution mechanism in Islamic banks from Shari’ah, practical and regulatory perspectives.

A qualitative research approach was used in this study based on primary data collected through semi-structured interviews from Shari’ah practitioners and senior industry experts in the field of pool management in the Islamic Financial Services Industry of Pakistan.

The current study found that the weightages-based mechanism conforms to the rules of Mudarabah and; therefore, permissible. However, the elements of exploitation, transparency and fairness require further research, as these elements seem to exist in this mechanism. It was also found that there are many loopholes in the regulatory guidelines for pool management in Islamic banking institutions (IBIs) in Pakistan resulting in practical issues.

The findings of this study may help improve pool management in IBIs, which in turn may cater the objections raised by academicians, customers and industry experts. Moreover, the alternative solution based on the findings of this study can be transformed into a proposal for regulators to take necessary actions against unfair profit distribution and issue further improved guidelines for IBIs in Pakistan.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, very limited studies have been conducted on pool management particularly with issues from different perspectives and alternative solutions have been suggested that may act as a proposal for IBIs as well as regulatory authorities.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the factors that attract (pull) or discourage (push) Palestinian students from Israel (PSI) to study at a Palestinian university, the Arab American University in Jenin (AAUJ), for the first time since the establishment of Israel in 1948.

A qualitative research method using in-depth interviews with 15 PSI who study at AAUJ attempts to define the motivations behind PSI preferring AAUJ, on one hand, and constraints, on the other hand.

The findings of the study show factors that attract PSI to study at the AAUJ and what subjects they choose to study there, the encounter with a similar culture and nationalism in a Palestinian campus in the occupied West Bank; the most significant difficulties and impediments they face there, whether economic or political, are discussed. This paper contributes to an understanding of the new national re-encounter between two Palestinian groups in a university campus, one under Israel’s occupation and the other that has Israeli citizenship.

It is a unique phenomenon in the trends of international students’ mobility in the world.

The purpose of this study was to understand the unique mental health concerns and access barriers experienced by South Asian Muslim youth populations living in the Peel Region of Toronto, Canada.

For this qualitative exploratory study, interviews (n = 15) were conducted with mental health professionals, educators and spiritual leaders (n = 11) who work with South Asian Muslim youth living in Peel Region, as well as with South Asian Muslim youth themselves (n = 4, aged 20–23). Interview transcripts were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Four primary themes emerged from the data: challenges and stressors, barriers, facilitators and hope and recovery. South Asian Muslim youth navigate a number of unique stressors related to the domains of culture, religion and family dynamics, as well as the impact of migration.

The findings stress the necessity of creating culturally safe, multilevel strategies to meet the nuanced challenges and diverse needs of South Asian Muslim youth communities.

This is one of the few papers to the knowledge that addresses the mental health needs and service access barriers of youth populations at the intersections of South Asian diasporic community belonging and Muslim faith in Canada.

Shari’ah provides the basic tenets of the Islamic finance industry and advocates banks to share their profits and losses with investors. But what it means for a firm to be “Shari’ah-compliant” and what form of connections it can have, even in theory, to either the firm’s value or profitability is still an untapped question. This study tries to answer this question. This study aims to find the impact of Shari’ah compliance on firm performance. The results obtained would be useful in helping investors, regulators, companies, government, academicians and practitioners in their decision-making process as to ensure better economic and business gains, both locally and globally.

Panel data on 634 Shari’ah-compliant firms have been used in this study for the period of 2000–2014.

The results indicate that Shari’ah compliance adds to the value of firms as firms perform transactions according to Shari’ah while avoiding non-permissible activities.

This study adds value to the existing literature by showing the statistical results for the impact of Shari’ah compliance on the performance of the listed firms on Bursa Malaysia.

This paper aims to provide useful insights into educational under‐achievement among Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (PAI), investigating the perceptions of local educational administrators (LEAs) towards the education system and its modus vivendi, to uncover difficulties and suggest directions to improve the processes and achievements of the PAI education system.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 stakeholders in local education (mayors, education department managers; school principals and parents’ representatives) in four Arab local governments in Israel to elucidate attitudes toward education.

The small random sample cannot claim to be representative however worrying problems were revealed: deficient resources in comparison to the Jewish education system; an ineffective political culture in local government; inferior status and problematic functioning of Arab education department heads and lack of inclusion of professionals and parents in decision‐making. These factors negatively impact the education system and its products.

The paper suggests local government should determine appropriate local policy, positioning education as a high priority with efficient education departments, more professional staff, and suitable education programs. Additionally state government should provide equal resources for the Arab education system, to lever Arab education in Israel.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the simultaneous effect of corporate governance (CG) of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Islamic banks (IBs) on efficiency and risk.

The authors include Shariah supervisory board (SSB) size, Chief Executive Officer (CEO)-duality and ownership structure as CG variables. Efficiency and risk are measured using the data envelopment analysis (DEA)/stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and Z-score, respectively. This paper also examines the risk-efficiency relationship. To test the hypotheses, the authors used seemingly unrelated regressions on a sample of 56 GCC IBs during the period 2004-2013.

The results indicate that implementing rigorous CG structures correlate with higher efficiency levels. Particularly, the authors show that the governance structure of IBs allows them to take higher risks to achieve a high efficiency level. In addition, results show that bank efficiency and risk are positively related.

This paper gives some insights to policy makers. It points out detail attention toward the importance of CG in IB that influences the efficiency level and risk-taking behavior. Thus, IB should improve governance procedures that can lead to higher efficiency and survival in a competitive environment and sustain financial crisis. Moreover, the economic conditions of a country are the main determinant of an IB’s efficiency and risk relationships.

The simultaneous effect of the CG of the GCC IBs on efficiency and risk is examined, taking into consideration different CG proxies, i.e., SSB size, CEO-duality and ownership structure, and different efficiency estimation techniques, i.e., SFA and DEA.

In artificial intelligence, the optical character recognition (OCR) is an active research area based on famous applications such as automation and transformation of printed documents into machine-readable text document. The major purpose of OCR in academia and banks is to achieve a significant performance to save storage space.

A novel technique is proposed for automated OCR based on multi-properties features fusion and selection. The features are fused using serially formulation and output passed to partial least square (PLS) based selection method. The selection is done based on the entropy fitness function. The final features are classified by an ensemble classifier.

The presented method was extensively tested on two datasets such as the authors proposed and Chars74k benchmark and achieved an accuracy of 91.2 and 99.9%. Comparing the results with existing techniques, it is found that the proposed method gives improved performance.

The technique presented in this work will help for license plate recognition and text conversion from a printed document to machine-readable.

This study explores cybersecurity behavior in the metaverse, focusing on the opportunities, challenges and future trends for libraries. This study aims to assess the evolving threats in virtual environments and the role libraries play in addressing cybersecurity in these immersive digital spaces.

This research uses a narrative review approach, synthesizing existing literature on cybersecurity threats in the metaverse, vulnerabilities of metaverse platforms and user behavior risks. It also examines how libraries can mitigate these risks while leveraging metaverse technologies.

This study identifies significant cybersecurity risks in the metaverse, including data breaches, identity theft and virtual property theft. It also highlights the vulnerabilities of metaverse platforms, such as weak user authentication and system integration challenges. Moreover, user behavior – like weak passwords and susceptibility to social engineering – amplifies these risks. Libraries have an opportunity to enhance digital literacy and cybersecurity education but face technological and skill-based barriers.

This study provides a novel exploration of how libraries can address cybersecurity concerns in the metaverse. It highlights the importance of proactive measures and evolving technologies in ensuring a safe virtual experience.

Greenhouse effects and the need for cost savings necessitate that an organization's information technology (IT) managers design IT equipment acquisition and service provisioning policies to reduce carbon footprint and cost. Analyzing the influencing factors that influence stakeholders' attitudes toward adopting green information technology (Green-IT) is an important input in designing these policies. In essence, the research aims to investigate into the relationship between these factors and how they influence policy-makers' behavior in Nigerian manufacturing industries.

The study develops a model based on the norm activation model (NAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TBP) to investigate the factors that influence decision-makers' intention in adopting Green-IT. A quantitative approach using a survey method is carried out to gather opinions of IT decision-makers using a random sampling technique. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique is applied to test the structural model and measurement model.

The study's findings support the use of the behavior model for Green-IT adoption. The study's finding indicates that subjective norms, perceived behavior control (PBC), manager's attitude, personal norm (PN), awareness of adverse consequences and the ascription of responsibility (AR) positively influence intention to adopt Green-IT.

The development and validation of the model are the study's theoretical contributions. The study reviewed the existing literature on the utilization of Green-IT to better understand the intention to adopt Green-IT in Nigeria. It added to the literature by identifying factors that can influence it as well as theoretical underpinnings that can fit the intentions of decision-makers. The scientific community and the industrial companies would have the chance to investigate how this integrated behavioral intention model promotes the use of Green-IT. The research predictors explained about 70.20% of the variance in the behavioral intention to adopt Green-IT.

Research offers practical implications and recommendations for top management practitioners of the manufacturing industries. Business leaders can use the results of this study to develop an effective strategic IT policy for the successful adoption of Green-IT practices for enhanced productivity. The study found that decision-makers' Green-IT attitudes had a substantial impact on their behavioral intention to adopt Green-IT. The study highlighted the importance of the top management attitude toward green products to facilitate the adoption of Green-IT practices in manufacturing industries in Nigeria. Thus, the positive and significant attitude of policy-makers is a necessary tool toward the successful adoption of Green-IT. Therefore, to foster an environmentally sustainability friendly atmosphere, Nigeria's manufacturing industries shall strive to strengthen the decision-makers' attitude toward practicing Green-IT in their respective domains. The findings showed that AR, AQ, environmental concern (EC), perceived behavior and perceived behavior are critical factors to be considered in an organization.

According to the findings, an individual's Green-IT attitude has a substantial impact on the environment as social behavior. As a result, the positive and essential attitude of the social sector is a key tool for efficient Green-IT implementation. Nigeria's social activists must try to create awareness campaigns to boost decision-makers' attitudes toward implementing Green-IT in their various regions to develop a friendlier environment. Thus, the identified factors can be of great help to the social sector in designing and implementing successful environmental-friendly policies that could support the adoption of Green-IT practices.

The current research look at Green-IT adoption in manufacturing industries of West African countries. The study offers practical implications and recommendations for top management practitioners of the manufacturing industries, government policy-makers and organizations to enhance the use of Green-IT for mitigating environmental degradation. Recommendations for future research are stated as concluding remarks.