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    Becoming a ‘good’ Muslim woman : comparing habitus and everyday lived religiosity : an ethnographic study of Aotearoa New Zealand Muslim women : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology at Massey University, Palmerston North, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2023-11-10) Cheema, Hina Tabassum
    For women like us Every day isn’t about a sunrise Every night isn’t about a sunset Between our sunrise and sunset There are puzzles to solve Of the pictures never seen before Missing and broken pieces And bits mixed up from other puzzles But surprisingly Sometimes we make them And other times, they break us And occasionally They are left unsolved Lingering in on our minds Becoming part of us This thesis is an ethnographic study of everyday lived experiences of Muslim women immigrants in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a focus on everyday lived religiosity, I explore the lives of Muslim women, who are extremely diverse and in the state of becoming as depicted in the poem. I extend Bourdieu’s theory of Habitus by introducing Comparing Habitus as an analytical tool which allows us to comprehend and analyse the diversity, multiplicity, complexity, intersubjectivity, heterogeneity, fluidity and unfinishedness of Muslim women’s lived experiences in Aotearoa NZ. I also use Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming and Das’s theory of everyday to understand the complex and intersubjective ways of becoming ‘good’ Muslim women and their negotiations of everyday challenges in a non-Muslim context. I use the framework of lived religion to capture my participants' experiences to understand these experiences as ordinary Muslims; e.g., what Muslims do rather than what Islam says. The use of poetry and autoethnographic commentaries throughout the thesis adds another layer to the analysis to confer insights and to help understand my participants’ experiences in more depth. The study concludes that being a Muslim woman immigrant in Aotearoa NZ is an ongoing agentive and complex process that is continuously defined and redefined, not always in a linear direction. Muslim women make sense of their lives through engagement with other Muslim women and use comparison as one of the key strategies to make everyday decisions. My research participants are on journeys to understand Islam more logically, using their agency to actively negotiate situations, and are constantly engaged in finding meaning in their lives. The study suggests the need to understand Muslim women as cultural and social beings who actively negotiate their everyday challenges.
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    Essays on determinants of integration of Islamic and conventional financial markets : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Finance at Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Billah, Syed Mabruk
    This dissertation contains a series of essays, three in total, which examine the determinants of integration of Islamic and conventional financial markets. Academic and commercial interest in Islamic finance has increased in recent years, meaning that it is commonly seen as a reasonable alternative to mainstream finance. However, it is notable that growing awareness of Islamic finance has emerged alongside several relevant concerns surrounding the poor performance of Shariah-compliant indices. The limitations include minimal access to risk management tools, low regulatory standards in Islamic finance, and a suboptimal governance framework. With the large expansion of Islamic finance in recent years, Sukuk (Islamic bonds), which are the Shariah-compliant substitute to conventional bonds, are becoming more prominent. Although numerous studies have examined the impact of global shocks on conventional bond spreads, little attention has been paid to explore the effect of global shocks on the Sukuk spreads. Therefore, the first study's objective was to examine the impact of factors affecting the conventional bond and Sukuk markets, including financial factors, economic policy uncertainty, US and EU macroeconomic news. Using an ordinary least squares approach, the results indicated that for regions and countries such as the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, and Singapore, global shocks play a vital role in explaining Sukuk spreads. Furthermore, employing a matched sample featuring firms from these regions and countries revealed that European and US macroeconomic announcements and economic policy uncertainty have a significantly greater impact on Sukuk spreads than on conventional bond spreads. The second study builds on the directional spillovers from Sukuk markets to Shariah-compliant equity markets and vice versa. The directions and magnitudes of spillovers are quite disperse among different countries and Islamic equity markets. Novel to the literature, we find that the Islamic equity markets' profitability and liquidity positions are highly influential on the magnitude of spillovers. We create a matched sample for 38 firms that issued both Sukuk and Islamic equities. Implementing similar spillover models, we indicate that firms' firm-level profitability and liquidity positions are essential in modeling the spillovers' magnitude between Sukuk and equities. Finally, the third study explores spillovers from regional and global equity markets to sectoral equity indices for several different regions/countries. First, we investigate sectoral equity return spillovers' connectedness and explore the different patterns and magnitudes of spillovers. Next, we look for the determinants of sectoral equity return spillovers. We find the regional and global markets spillovers on sector equity indices are highly dispersed across different markets. Novel to the literature, we examine the sectors' liquidity and financial positions and find that sector positions are highly influential in explaining the extent of the spillovers. Particularly, our exploration evidence that regional and global spillovers to specific sector equity markets jump significantly when a sector has higher debt and lower interest expense coverage. Similarly, higher profit margins of the sector make it less vulnerable to global and regional shocks. We also find market capitalization of the sectors inversely affects the spillovers' extent originating from global and regional markets.
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    Essays on Shari'ah compliant equities : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Finance at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Karimov, Jamshid
    This dissertation presents three essays on Shari’ah Compliant Equities. The reported work analyses the impact of Shari’ah Compliant Requirements (SCR) on the capital structure of the firms and its effect on the cost of equity capital, payout policy and mitigation of firm-level political risk. The first study examines if the adoption of SCR affects the cost of equity capital for firms. It estimates the cost of equity capital, implied by market prices and analyst forecasts, and account for changes in growth expectations around the adoption of SCR. The results of the study show that the transitional implications of Shari’ah compliance can diverge depending on information spread. The findings reveal that getting a Shari’ah compliance certificate, initially increases the cost of equity for a firm, potentially due to higher financial constraints and other burdens associated with Shari’ah requirements. However, with greater exposure and awareness in Islamic markets, Shari’ah compliance eventually leads to a fall in the cost of equity. The industry-level, SCR adoption effects are stronger in relatively tangible sectors. Robustness analyses confirm that becoming Shari'ah-compliant increases the stock liquidity of SCR adopted firms, which co-varies negatively with the cost of equity. The second study examines if and to what extent the adoption of SCR affects the payout smoothing policy of firms. More importantly, this study aims to identify and assess a possible mechanism behind such linkage and measure the amount of fluctuations of earnings absorbed by investment, borrowings, and payout policies. Variance decomposition strategy that enables to empirically analyse the adjustments of borrowings and investment policies to comply with payout smoothing in order to buffer net income fluctuations in the environment of Shari’ah compliance is employed. Using a new approach in the literature, this chapter measures the extent of intertemporal payout smoothing across business cycles to test the permanent income hypothesis for firms. Accordingly, the impacts of temporary vs. permanent net income shocks on the payout policy of firms are distinguished. The study also, documents that even though their payout ratios are mostly independent from the year by year net income growth (temporary shocks), dividends are impacted deeply by long term net income growth (permanent shocks). Interestingly, being Shari'ah-compliant makes dividends more dependent on permanent income growth. The third study, using a novel Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) firm-level political risk index as a proxy for political risk and uncertainty firms face, examines the impact of firm-level risk on the cost of equity and dividend payouts policy of firms. The paper aims to shed light on the transitional implications of Shari’ah compliance on firms exposed to firm-level political risk. It analyses if the adoption of SCR mitigates the firm-level political risk and their impact on the cost of equity and dividend policy. Benchmark results show that 1% increase in the exposure of political risk contributes to a rise in its cost of equity capital by 0.2% and in dividend payout by 13%. Shari’ah compliance eventually leads to a fall in the cost of equity and a rise in dividend payouts, despite the exposure of the firm to political risk. These findings have important policy implications that are relevant to Shari’ah compliant equities and beyond.
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    Representing Islam: Experiences of women wearing hijab in New Zealand
    (New Zealand Psychological Society Inc, 15/04/2019) Ash E; Tuffin K; Kahu E
    An increase in commentary on the hijab, or Muslim headscarf, in Western countries can be attributed to multiple factors, not least among them the current political discourse relating to Islamic terrorism (Green, 2015). Despite Islam being a rapidly expanding religion in New Zealand, there is a dearth of research pertaining to Muslims. Here we aim to understand the everyday experiences of hijabi women in New Zealand. Six women were interviewed, and the data were analysed using an interpretive phenomenological framework. Three themes were identified: explanations for wearing hijab, interpersonal experiences, and the responses to these interpersonal experiences. Research findings point to a complex interplay of individual and socio-cultural factors which influence the everyday experiences of hijabi women.