السلام فی القرآن الكريم

It goes without saying that peace has been a hot issue in the past; it is, still, a vital topic of discussion today, and it seems to continue to draw the attention of people in the future. We witness wars and destructions in several parts of the world. This has led to killings of millions of people, left innumerable number of families broken and displaced millions of people. We need to address it earnestly. The author of this dissertation has specified this topic with reference to the Holy Qur’ān, because being the book of Allāh Almighty, it means to us as the final constitution, the ultimate torchlight for our guidance, and a great blessing to the whole world. Peace means to be free from the calamities in this world and in the hereafter. Usually, peace is used to imply an opposition to war and violence between the nations. Peace is a virtue and it means absence of evil, and, therefore, it is always praiseworthy. The author of this paper deals with this topic by dividing it into six sections. These are, ‘The Peace’ as one of the divine names of Allāh Almighty; Peace equals good; Peace is praiseworthy; Peace in the sense of conciliation and security; Peace in the sense of customary Islamic salutation; and Refutation of the objection that Islām was spread by sword.

The Determinants of Stock Market Development: A Panel Study of Developed, Emerging and Frontier Markets

The objective of the present study is to find the determinants of equity market development with a panel data of Developed, Emerging and Frontier Equity Markets. The determinants of equity market include both the quantitative and qualitative factors, whereas the former represents the macroeconomic variables, and the later embodies the governance variables. The study incorporates the panel data set of world stock markets of 70 countries, which are classified by international group of Financial Times Stock Exchanges (FTSE) in three main regions of the world as Developed (25), Emerging (21) and Frontier (24) Equity Markets and period of the study is 20 years starting from 1996 to 2015. Given the panel nature of the data, the econometric methodologies of dynamic Generalized Methods of Moments (GMM) has been incorporated to find the significant relationships on subject matter Moreover, the study has incorporated multifaceted statistical methodologies in all three regions of the world stock markets. Despite having different dynamics and resources, there are few similarities but there are some of the stark differences, which lead them to identify their uniqueness. The study finds that effects of economic and governance factors on stock market development are peculiar in nature and quite unique as per the dynamics of that particular region. For instance, the study finds that economic and governance factors are more influential in developed region as compared to emerging and frontier regions which is mainly due to strong institutional quality in the developed countries. The study has formed a composite index of Economic and Governance factors through Principal Component Analysis by using factors for each region of the world equity markets. Afterwards, cross-index of Economic and Governance Factors is formed for exploring the joint effects of these variables. The study reveals that there is strong correlation in these composite indices in the developed region, where as there is no clear pattern in the developing countries. Moreover, there is quite dispersion in the composite data of the developing countries. So, there is no direct correlation in the composite factors of economic and governance in the developing countries. The studies on exploring the direct effects are quite in abundance but the literature on indirect and cross effects of governance and economic factors on the development of stock market are quite scarce. The present study explores the comprehensive direct and indirect effects of governance factors as well as vice versa effects on the development of economy and equity market in all regions of the world equity markets. After the estimation, the study finds that effects of economic and governance factors on stock market development are not only unidirectional, but also bidirectional as well. Particularly, the emerging markets have dual effects on economic and governance factors. The indirect effects of governance through economic factors are significant in developed region and cross effects of governance and economic factors are significant in emerging markets. The vice versa effects of stock market development and economic growth suggests that economic growth is also affected by the development of stock market and governance factors particularly in frontier markets. The reverse impacts of stock market development on the economic growth are quite captivating in which development of stock market also affects the growth of economy in all three regions of the world. In the end, the study recommends that determinants of equity market may not solely based on economic factors rather the significance of governance factors may be taken into account while taking the complete picture of the subject. This study will append the knowledge of prevailing institutional works on equity markets and economy as well. Moreover, the formation of composite indices for governance and economic factors for all the regions of developed, emerging and frontier markets may append the existing knowledge database of financial markets.