Islamic Finance

An Introduction to Islamic Finance by Mufti Taqi Usmani Sahab (DB) is available on line in PDF form.
Here is the link from the blog At-Tahavi.

The main headings of the book are:
(1) Preliminary Things
(2) Islamic and capitalist Finance, Basic Difference
(3) Musharakah
(4) Mudarabah
(5) Musharakah and Mudarabah as Modes of Financing
(6) Murabahah
(7) Ijarah
(8) Salam and Istisn'a
(9) Islamic Investment Funds
(10) The Principle of Limited Liability
(11) A Realistic Evaluation of Performance of Islamic Banks

The edition is of June 1998AC.

World View

At the conceptual level the problem of life is rather simple.
We have to use the resources provided by Lord Most High according to His injunctions.
Its practical implementation is the part where we falter.
By the Grace of Lord Most High, in matters of practical implementation, we are not responsible beyond our capacity.
In modern times this implementation has slightly higher level of difficulty because we live in those societies where Injunctions of Lord are implemented in their disobedience.
To act upon them is considered infradig.
There are, thus, fault lines between requirements of purpose of life and the actual practical conditions.
Most drastic fault line is at the scientific frontier.
Then there is a fault line at the financial frontier.
There there are fault lines at sociological frontier.
Sir Syed tried, mainly, to address the first and the last.
That task is still incomplete.
On the second frontier, in present times, one of the prominent names is that of Mufti Taqi Usmani Sahab (DB).

Darn! Missed a Nobel Prize

Spectroscopist Brian Orr writes in  AOS News Volume 24 Number 2 2010  (AOS=Australian Optical Society) page 13

I recall one afternoon when the leading NRCC spectroscopist, Gerhard Herzberg, brought an esteemed Indian colleague, R.K. Asundi, down to the basement to see my CO2 laser in operation. Asundi was quiet and contemplative for a while, then he explained how, about forty years beforehand, he had been working with a long, water-jacketed, direct-current-excited discharge tube with multiple-reflection end mirrors and a flowing gas mixture containing CO2 and N2 – very similar to the CO2 laser that he now saw, apart from its infrared-transmissive sodium chloride Brewster-angle end windows. I have often speculated where we would all be now if Asundi had accidentally discovered CO2 laser action a full thirty years before Maiman’s celebrated  experiments at Hughes Research Laboratories!

 Asundi, at that time must have been at Aligarh. Even Maiman did not receive Nobel Prize though he was nominated twice for it. But even then Orr is talking Nobel stuff here.

A Difficult Task

It is a difficult task when you take on a person that goes by the name of Albert Einstein. That is what Sir Shah Sulaiman (February 3, 1886 – March 12, 1941) did. There were several papers in which he made quantitative predictions that differ from results obtained by Einstein. Many people have tried to find loopholes in Einstein's theory but with no success. In case of Sir Shah's assertion too peer support went in favour of Einstein. For example there is a  letter in the journal Current Science in which Zahur Husain of Gurgaon, then in Punjab, finds problems in the arguments given by Sir Shah Sulaiman. This is published in November 1940 (Number 11) of the said journal. Few months later Sir Shah Sulaiman was no more. American humorist Robert Benchley had his take on Sir Shah assertion. Enjoy it here.

Above mentioned letter by Zahur Husain is spread from page 502 to 503 of the journal. After this letter there is an even shorter letter titled A New Comet Tail Band. This is by R.K.Asundi written on October 30, 1940 from Benaras Hindu University. Asundi had moved to BHU from AMU. 

Glimpses from Blizzard

Science is systematic, organized, objective and experimental approach to knowledge.
Sometimes some people get the impression that life is all tick-tack tick-tack for people in science.
It is not.
But sometimes there are real and present challenges and corresponding rewards.
Here is one such story, a real one. Not from a Hollywood studio.

At Least They Worry

The people at Into the Book started their blog because they realized that :

There aren't very many book review websites that specifically target teens, recommending good, solid Christian books.

At least they worry.

Thanking Them

Here are some words of thank by Professor Jagdish Prasad Srivastava, formerly a professor at the Physics Department of AMU from the preface of the upcoming third edition of his book Elements of Solid State Physics published by Prentice Hall.

Dr. Mohd. Wasi Khan, Department of Applied Physics, AMU, Aligarh, has remained a regular and strong support in my endeavour of making the book better. He has earned to be worthy of my thanks and appreciation.

Finally, I acknowledge gratefully the contribution of Late Professor Israr Ahmad, my former colleague, who is credited with getting me invaluable inputs on the book from his colleagues at King Abdul Aziz Univ., Jeddah. It is a befitting moment to revere and salute his love for an academic cause.

 The book has become very popular having been adopted by many Physics Departments in India and abroad, including many prestigious places.

Prentice Hall of India (Second edition)
Flipkart (Old Edition)
Google Books

Kuhn and Popper

These are two main protagonists of Philosophy of Science: Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper.

What difference did they make? They must have made some because people get worked up because of their ideas. Before we get to do proper posts on them entertain yourself with this post at the blog Anti-Matter.

And then you have a post, there itself, Paul Feyerabend, the man we had whined about  in this post. The objectionable statement is the assertion to the effect that there is no scientific method. He has a book concerning that. It is called Against Method.