Microfinance has long been used a developmental tool to fight poverty. It has been operational since the 1960s. Recent studies have shown positive impacts of microfinance with respect to generating income and smoothing consumption of its clients. On the other hand, a number of critics argue that microfinance has not been able to achieve its main objective of fighting poverty. This is due to the shift that has taken place in the industry from poverty-focus to profitoriented business-focus. Above all, microfinance faces other challenges on its way to succeed. One of the major challenges is that the product is not universally applicable or it does not tailor with the belief system of the Muslims despite the fact that one third of the world poor are Muslims. There has been a growing effort to create an "Islamic" model of microfinance. The Islamic Model of Microfinance represents a new paradigm of social enterprise in which profit and loss sharing replaces interest-based financing. The growth of Islamic microfinance has led organizations such as the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), a multilateral organization distributing knowledge about Islamic microfinance, and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to begin understanding this new way of approaching poverty. The objective of this paper is to review the existing Islamic microfinance institutions (IMFIs) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH), and to propose a Shariah compliant microfinance product in Islamic microfinance operations particularly in BH.

The effective design and delivery of micro-credits is difficult under all circumstances. However, in conflict-affected societies, the task of microcredit institutions that seek to provide financial stability to its most impoverished members is more complicated. This paper aims to investigate the role and the impact of the microcredit industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Data for this study were gathered from both microcredit institutions and recipients of microcredit funds using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research results show that refugees, internally displaced persons and returnees are less likely to get loans compared to those with stable incomes, meaning the population with stable incomes has benefited more from these credits in improving their living conditions. Most of the targeted populations of the interest free microcredit foundation (MCF) that was taken as a case study in this research expressed their satisfactions with the loans and service provided by the particular MCF. From a policy perspective, it is important to focus attention on the most affected population groups, those least able to pull themselves out of poverty. Microcredit foundations should find a balance between being non-profit based and achieving their full sustainability.

This article discusses the system of gaps in modern Arabic literature and how such gaps function to alert readers to specific author intentions and so facilitate the construction of meaning. The system of gaps, this article argues, is fundamental to the process of literary communication between the text and the reader. Literary meanings are produced through a series of gaps that include the title, polyphonic narrative, circularity, ending, fusion between imagination and reality, punctuation, printed form on the page, reading order, linkage, and echoing. This article also studies the contribution of such gaps in making the reader produce the text's meaning using, as examples, several short-stories, novels, and poetic texts from modern Arabic literature.

This article studies three short stories by Muhammad Ali Saeid (1950-), a writer and critic who lives in Tamrah, the Western Galilee. These stories are "The Delivery" (Al Wilādah), "Ḥayāt" (life), and "Devouring" (Iftirās), which appeared in Assadi's Father and Son: Selected Short Fiction by Hanna Ibrahim Elias and Mohammad Ali Saeid. It examines the use of the artistic devices used in the selected short stories to highlight "female oppression" as well as the linkage between feminism and postcolonialism, in case of Palestine. Above all, this article confirms that the profound perceptions of Saeid are reflected in his success to control his narrative techniques so artistically that he offers new arenas for academic assessments and analysis. Saeid's observations also brighten new terrains, where divergent powers can band tunefully to battle subjugation, prejudice, and occupation.

Water in Arabic literature has literal and symbolic meanings. Water is one of the four elements in Greek mythology; life would be impossible without water and it is a synonym for life; life originated in water. Springs, wells, rain, seas, snow, and swamps are all associated with water. Each form of water may take on a different manifestation of the original from which it comes about. Arabic literature employs the element of water in poetry, the short story, and the novel. We find it in titles of poems: Unshudat al-matar (Hymn of the Rain) and Waj’ al-ma’ (The Pain of Water); and novels: Dhakirat al-ma’ (The Memory of Water); Taht al-matar (Under the Rain); Matar huzayran (June Rain); Al-Bahr khalf al-sata’ir (The Seas Behind the Curtains); Rahil al-bahr (Departure of the Sea); and many others. This study aims to answer the following questions: How does the element of water manifest in Arabic literature? What are the semantics and symbolism of the different forms of water in the literary imaginary? The study refers to six different significations for water in classical and modern Arabic literature: water as synonymous with life, purity and the revelation of truth, separation and death, fertility and sex, land and homeland, and talent and creativity.