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The Malaysian economy is expected to face another tumultuous year in 2019. It has been reported more than 21,000 people lost their jobs in 2018, half of whom were in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. This rising unemployment gravely affects a person’s source of income, particularly when he/she is the sole breadwinner of the family. It further leads to the inability to pay one’s monthly commitments such as home, personal and car financing. Notwithstanding the above situation, Sharīʿah encourages leniency on the part of the creditor, that is, when the debtor is in a difficulty, to grant him/her time until it is easy for him/her to pay. Nonetheless, in Malaysia, the inability to pay debt or non-performing loan/financing entitles the financial institutions (both conventional banks and Islamic financial institutions) to proceed with legal proceedings in civil court It is trite that Islamic financing in Malaysia is governed by Sharīʿah principles and legislations, which are conventional in nature; and contractual rights and duties involving Islamic finance are enforceable in the civil court of law. This chapter examines procedural laws governing the event of default of Islamic financing in Malaysia. The methodology adopted in this chapter is doctrinal legal analysis whereby the relevant laws, namely, Rules of Court 2012, Insolvency Act 1967, Limitation Act 1953, Evidence Act 1950, Court of Judicature Act 1964 and the National Land Code 1965 are analysed in addition to the relevant case law. The study reveals that while some of the provisions are sufficient to regulate the event of default of Islamic financing, the laws are largely inadequate. The chapter also finds a significant number of legal issues and challenges relating to event of default in Islamic financing, which require legal reform.

The initial policy of the countries that developed vaccines has been to lock the vaccine by patent. This has been due to the fact that domestic demand for vaccine was mounting. Since only a few countries could invest in it, manufacturing and export remained at the behest of those few resulting in deep inequity in the global rollout. Pandemics are global health crises. Hence, calls for the patent waiver for the COVID-19 vaccine are growing to access the vaccine. The vaccine and its production, marketing and distribution have been politicized driven by the hegemonic aspiration. Both manufacturing and import-dependent countries are racing to win the diplomatic battle: the former has to win to gain hegemony and the latter to get the vaccine. Hence, the vaccine distribution has been marked with deep discrimination, and as a result, the migrant community is less likely to get their vaccine on time. This article engages in the decades-long debate over intellectual property rights and patenting life-saving vaccines. We argue that exemption of COVID-19 vaccines from intellectual property rights would improve global access and equity.

This paper aims to present the qualitative findings on students’ and teachers’ experiences in communicating and interacting with students and teachers from different ethnic backgrounds in the Malaysian vision schools initiative.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted involving 15 informants comprising of three headteachers, three teachers and nine students. The interviews centred on the informants’ experiences and views living and experiencing the reality of the vision schools which is comprising three major races; Malays, Chinese and Indians; which is represented by the three school types which are a national school, Chinese vernacular and Indian vernacular schools.

The interview data revealed that the intercultural communication in the vision schools had triggered intercultural understanding and awareness of cultural diversity in the schools. However, the interview data with experienced teachers showed some drawbacks of the intercultural dynamics at the school complex. Among the weaknesses were the absence of structured and formal training on intercultural and multicultural education, lack of trust and poor social skills which may have hindered effective intercultural communication from taking place.

This study presents the informants’ experiences and views on the reality of intercultural interaction among students and teachers in the context of the Malaysian vision school initiative.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the conceptual relationship between competency and effectiveness of internal Shariah auditors in Islamic financial institutions (IFIs).

Normative and theorizing based on the main sources of Islam, mainly Maqasid al-Shariah theory, has been utilized in this research.

This study demonstrated how Maqasid al-Shariah or higher objectives of Islamic law have gradually captured the attention of increasing numbers of modern Muslim scholars for solving contemporary issues.

This study uniquely captured Maqasid al-Shariah for the competency of internal Shariah auditor.

Buy Muslim’s First campaign started with the primary aim of urging the Muslim community to be more vigilant about halal or Shariah-compliant products, leading to a number of halal-related issues, triggered by the exploitation or misuse of the halal logo in Malaysia. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the purchase intention for Muslim-made products by applying the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Halal consciousness was integrated as a moderating influence on the purchase intention of Muslim-made products.

Data collection was performed through a self-administered questionnaire which was distributed through convenience sampling method. Therefore, a useful sample comprising 152 Malay Muslim participants aged over 18 was collected. For hypothesis testing, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was implemented.

It was found that the participants’ attitudes towards the purchase of Muslim-made products and their perceived behavioural control significantly influenced their purchase intention, but the subjective norm did not impact this intention. Furthermore, halal consciousness moderated the relationships among all the independent and dependent variables. Halal consciousness moderated the relationship between participants’ attitudes towards Muslim-made products and their perceived behavioural control towards the purchase intention; however, this moderation did not occur through the subjective norm and the purchase intention.

As the findings of this study were limited to the Muslim population in Malaysia, it might be difficult to generalize for other nations that have no similarities with the Malaysian Muslim culture.

The findings of this study may support Muslims to implement more effective marketing strategies that attract the target customers to purchase Muslim-made products. Effective promotion may attract potential customers as well.

The halal consciousness among Muslim consumers is important for the moderation and prediction of consumers’ intention to purchase Muslim-made products.

The purpose of this study is to analyze millennial generation purchase behavior on halal cosmetic products in Indonesia.

The research approach used is a quantitative approach with the research method in the form of a survey and the sampling technique using purposive sampling. The respondents in this study are 206 Muslim females of the millennial generation. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS software is used for analyzing the data of this study.

This study found that of the 11 hypotheses tested, 10 of them were accepted: H1, H2, H3, H4, H6, H7, H8, H9, H10 and H11. The accepted hypotheses are the influence of perceived value on trust, brand image on trust, brand image on attitude, religious belief on attitude, halal certification on halal awareness, trust on attitude and halal awareness on attitude. As for trust, attitude toward product, halal awareness affects the intention to purchase halal cosmetics. Moreover, H5 was not accepted, namely, the influence of religious belief on halal awareness. The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the development of marketing theory, specifically related to consumer behavior of halal cosmetic products, as well as the development of the concept of consumer behavior based on demographics, namely, the millennial generation.

This study is more comprehensive than previous studies, and this study is focused on the millennial generation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the industry's expectations on the key employability skills of fresh graduates in the communication and media industry. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has raised the question of whether the university should produce work-ready graduates with employability skills. Driven by the theory of human capital, society expects higher education to produce graduates with skills that are useful in their workplace.

The data were gathered primarily through a quantitative survey, which was later extended to include qualitative interviews. Quantitatively, questionnaires were completed by 313 employers from the middle and top-level management from the communication and media industry. This study also expands on qualitative data through in-depth interviews with nine respondents who were among key decision-makers of recruiting graduates to garner their insights on required employability skills.

The findings revealed the following employability skills required by the industry in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: communication, ICT or digital, leadership, interpersonal, and personal qualities skills.

These findings are beneficial to education providers as well as media and communication industries in preparing students and developing their skills to adapt to the changes in the workplace.

The authors provide an empirical understanding of industry expectations towards employability skills in the Fourth Industrial Revolution of the communication and media industry within the Malaysian context.

The Government of Malaysia has developed an Islamic Interbank Money Market since January 1994 with the objective to facilitate funding for the Islamic banking sector in the country. This platform also enables Islamic banks to obtain Sharīʿah-compliant funds from other Islamic banks. This study aims to examine the effects of interbank investment and financing risk on the financing decisions of Malaysia’s Islamic banks between 1994 and 2015. The financing decisions are used as financing measures to determine the effect of investing in the interbank market and financing risk indicators on financing.

The descriptive, correlation and dynamic panel analysis results are derived with the help of LIMDEP 9.0 software.

The study found a negative relationship between the interbank investment variable with the financing decisions of Islamic banks. This reflects that an increase in interbank investment leads Islamic banks to reduce their level of financing. These findings prove that the investment activities between Islamic banks had a “substitution effect” and decreased their capability of financing because of their tendency to maintain liquidity.

Islamic banks are confident that they will generate higher profits in the coming financial year. The economic conditions of Malaysia do not influence Islamic banks’ financing decisions, whereas Islamic banks in this study are more dependent on the balance sheet indicators.

This paper aims to examine the characteristics influencing internal Shariah audit effectiveness in Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) in Bahrain.

Data were collected from 76 internal Shariah auditors, 23 Shariah supervisory board and 16 audit and governance committee from 52 IFIs in Bahrain. The data were analyzed using structural equation method via SmartPLS 2.0 to examine the relationship between characteristics and effectiveness of internal Shariah audit.

It was found that competency and work performance were positively significant with internal Shariah audit effectiveness. The findings revealed that the main competency of internal Shariah audit to influence effectiveness were to have professional certification and skills, while work performance to influence effectiveness were engagement planning, performing the engagement and communicating results with management and having sufficient information to provide sound opinion formed by Shariah audit.

From the research perspective, this is the first study that examines the relationship between internal Shariah audit characteristics and its effectiveness in Bahraini IFIs.