Investing in Islam: The practicalities and difficulties of making the UK a centre of Islamic finance

Last month, the World Islamic Economic Forum took place in London. It was the first time it has been held outside the Muslim majority world and the coalition government chose the occasion to renew emphasis on making the UK a centre of Islamic finance. Elaine Housby explores recent political developments and the practicalities of creating conditions favourable to Islamic financial structures

Book review: feminist edges of the Qur’an by Aysha A Hidayatullah

Aysha A. Hidayatullah offers the first comprehensive examination of contemporary feminist Qur’anic interpretation, exploring its dynamic challenges to Islamic tradition and contemporary Muslim views of the Qur’an. She offers no definite answers, but rather an embrace of the new ways of relating to the Qur’an that the uncertainty opens up, a dynamic and interactive relationship rather than that of a passive reader, writes Elaine Housby

Book review: how capitalism failed the Arab world: the economic roots and precarious future of the middle east uprisings by Richard Javad Heydarian

In How Capitalism Failed the Arab World, Richard Heydarian aims to show how years of economic mismanagement, political autocracy, and corruption have encouraged people to revolt, and how the initial optimism of the uprisings is now giving way to bitter power struggles, increasing uncertainty and continued economic stagnation. Although conciseness in academic writing is to be applauded, this book may have benefited greatly from being longer, finds Elaine Housby. It packs a huge amount into fewer than two hundred pages, and its arguments are sometimes so compressed that they are hard to follow. However, both academics and general readers with an interest in the Arab Spring and its continuing development will find it very useful

Book review: Muslim citizens in the West

The integration of Muslim communities into Western societies is a difficult and strained subject, with myth and misunderstanding rife. This new collection, edited by Samina Yasmeen and Nina Marković brings together academic perspectives from Europe, Australia, and Asia. While not agreeing with every word of every contribution, Elaine Housby finds the collection a useful addition to the literature in this area

The development of the Islamic financial tradition in contemporary Britain

This thesis considers developments in the provision of Islamic financial products in Britain in the first few years of the twenty-first century, in the light of some important debates about the situation of British Muslims, and of some more general debates within the sociology of religion. The opening chapter considers some of the main issues raised by the literature on British Muslims, and then moves on to outline the Islamic financial tradition. The two central chapters report some examples of Islamic financial activity, dividing these broadly into those related to the problem of Riba (fixed interest payment) and those which raise questions concerning Gharar (uncertainty and speculation). These chapters are largely based on material produced by the leading Islamic product providers and on media coverage of them. The final Analysis chapter relates this material to the wider theoretical issues outlined in the Introduction. It concludes that developments in Islamic finance present a challenge to conventional assumptions that there is an opposition between Islam and modernity, and to the established debate on secularisation. The activity here documented also undermines the traditional debate on multi-culturalism by demonstrating the creative interchange between Islamic tradition and twenty-first century Britain. The analysis further argues that developments in Islamic finance in Britain during the period studied were the product of factors very specific to the time and place. In particular the government played an important role in promoting these developments, for reasons related to its own political objectives

The isolation and characterisation of conditional (Outs[superscript ts]) and null (Out[superscript -]) secretion mutants of Erwinia carotovora subspecies carotovora (SCRI193)

Ecc strain SCRI193 secretes a wide range of extracellular degradative enzymes. Examples of these include pectate lyase (Pel), cellulase (Cel) and protease (Prt). Secretion mutants, Outˉ (Pelˉ, Celˉ, Prt⁺) that accumulate Pel and Cel periplasmically have previously been isolated by transposon and chemical mutagenesis. Protease secretion was always unaffected. Genetic and molecular analysis has revealed a cluster of genes (out) that are essential for the secretion of Pel and Cel in Ecc. In order to eventually investigate the putative periplasmic intermediate in the natural secretion process this study has employed localised mutagenesis, using hydroxylamine, of the out cluster, in order to isolate conditional secretory mutants. Tn5 was successfully linked 3' to the out cluster. Using the Ecc generalised transducing phage, øKP, localised mutagenesis yielded 17 Out' mutants (Pelˉ, Celˉ, Prt⁺) that accumulated Pel and Cel periplasmically. These 17 mutants included 2 conditional secretory mutants (Out15), HJN1003 and HJN1004, that were shown to accumulate Pel and Cel periplasmically at the restrictive temperature (33°C) but were wild type for secretion at the permissive temperature (26°C) and one auxotroph that was defined as histidine requiring. Each mutation was shown to be linked to the transposon Tn5 and most were subsequently shown, by cosmid complementation, to be within the out cluster. The two Outᵗˢ secretion mutants, HJN1003 and HJN1004, were mapped to outE and outL respectively. PCR amplification, cloning and sequence analysis has revealed two lesions in outL, from the Outᵗˢ strain HJN1004 and one lesion in the Outˉ strain HJN1008. Attempts to perform pulse chase experiments proved to be difficult and suggestions have been made to overcome these problems

What contributes to good outcomes? The perspective of young people on short-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy for depressed adolescents

Depression is the fourth leading cause of adolescent illness and disability worldwide. A growing evidence base demonstrates that Short Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy [STPP] is an efficacious treatment for moderate to severe adolescent depression. However, with research in its infancy, key factors contributing to efficacy are unknown. Service users' lived experiences provide valuable insight in this area. This study aimed to elucidate what adolescents value in treatment by inductively exploring lived experiences of STPP. Five adolescents with the largest reduction in depressive symptoms scores between baseline and end of treatment, who had taken part in a large-scale randomized controlled trial, were sampled. In-depth interviews carried out soon after the end of therapy were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Three superordinate themes were identified: "Therapy as a Transformational Process", "Explorative and Exposing: The Therapeutic Space" and "Being Heard and Working Together: The Therapeutic Relationship". Adolescents valued a process of collaborative exploration with the therapist which when it was achieved was felt to facilitate a deep-rooted transformation in self-perception. Additionally, they described how an adjustment was needed to the particular frame of a psychoanalytic therapy. However, not all participants with a good treatment outcome experienced therapy in this way, suggesting a potential gap between the quantitative assessment of outcomes, and the way young people experience and understand the change process. Clinical implications and directions for research are discussed