نیند آنکھوں میں نہیں خواب کہاں سے آئیں
ہم سے دیوانوں کو کیا سنگ جہاں سے آئیں
تیرگی بخت کی یک لخت کہاں بدلے گی
پھول جب تک نہ ترے لفظ و بیاں سے آئیں
میں ترے عشق میں کچھ ایسے فنا ہو جائوں
لینے رضوان مجھے خلدِ جناں سے آئیں
مجھ سزاوار کی ہے تیرے لبوں سے امید
یہ نہ ہو آنکھیں نکل اشکِ رواں سے آئیں
ایک شوریدہ سری ہے جو فضاؔ پر طاری
پھول آئیں یا بھلے سنگ، بتاں سے آئیں
This research article explores the rationale behind Islamic injunctions regarding inheritance. Unlike other Islamic injunctions, which are briefly enunciated in the Quran but elaborated in Sunnah, inheritance has been detailed in considerable length in the Quranic text itself. This coupled with numerous Prophetic traditions underpins the unique importance Islam accords to the question of inheritance. However, despite its exceptional importance, the subject of Islamic law of inheritance remains mostly a neglected one, even among the students of Islamic seminaries and Ulema. Resultantly, Islam’s brilliant system of inheritance is often not implemented by the adherents of Islam, much to the miseries and hardships of the legal heirs, especially the children and women. Thus these marginalized segments of society are deprived of their rights today just as they were treated before the advent of Islam. This research brings home the fact that the divinely ordained Islamic injunctions of inheritance are based on sound rationale and justification in the best interest of humanity, and that the believers must adhere to these injunctions that are based on three key principles: proximity in relationship, need, and distribution of wealth. The paper explains in great length the types of relatives and legal heirs, the principles of distribution among them, the justification for such shares, and the limits imposed by Quran and Sunnah with regard to the right of the deceased, the heirs, relatives and the state. It also discusses some of the contentious issues in contemporary debate on Islam: an orphan grandson’s title to inheritance, and the philosophy behind 2: 1 inheritance distribution formula between son and daughter. In doing so, the author has not only relied on the main sources of Islamic jurisprudence viz. Quran and Sunnah, in addition to classical and modern Islamic scholarship but also sound argumentation and logical exposition.
The contemporary literature is challenging the original idea that strategic purity leads to superior performance. Similarly, there is an inconclusive debate in extant literature about the superiority of strategic consistency over strategic flexibility. To address these issues, the objectives of the research include: the refinement of scoring methodology for classification of strategic types and strategic behavior of the firms; the comparison of strategic groups’ performance across firm size and industry; strategy-performance, size-performance, industry-performance, contingent effect of strategy, size, and industry on performance; and the comparative analysis of single industry results with multi-industry results for generalization. Drawing on the contingency theory perspective, Miles and Snow typology is used for operationalization of strategic types using seven years archived financial data of 307 joint stock companies listed at Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSE). The findings reveal that the defending and analysing strategies perform better than prospecting and reacting strategies. Hybrid strategies outperformed pure strategies while both consistent and flexible strategies performed equally well and outperformed the reactors. The performance of strategic types varies with the change in firm size and industry. The results imply that for better performance, firms in Pakistan should either compete on the basis of service, price, quality, and operational excellence or should focus on a balance of innovation and core product development. Innovation, rapid growth and new product developments is non-profitable. Similarly, inconsistent strategic behaviour results in poor performance. The conceptualization of pure, hybrid, consistent, and flexible strategic types, identification of strategic transition of the firms to find out behaviour along with their empirical testing, refinements in methodology for objective measures, a comparison of single industry vs multi-industry results are the major contributions of the study. Typology-driven theorizing for hybrid, consistent, and flexible strategic types is one of the promising area for future research