Kuwait's Dar says studying offers for Aston Martin

By Rania El Gamal
Kuwait's Investment Dar (TIDK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Sunday it was considering offers to sell up to 20 percent of British carmaker Aston Martin and is seeking to borrow up to 300 million dinars ($1 billion) to refinance debt.

The Islamic investment firm, which bought half of Aston Martin in 2007, is studying offers to sell a 10 to 20 percent stake in the carmaker on behalf of itself and some of its partners, executive vice-president Amr Abou El-Seoud said.

"We have offers ... we are in talks but the (sale) should be value-added whether financially or technically," Seoud told Reuters. "We are not considering selling and exiting."

"It (could) be a maximum 10 to 20 percent of the company to be taken out of all investors, in other words, Dar's dilution might be in 5 to 10 percent," he said.

"There is a 60 to 70 percent chance that we will reach a deal soon."

Seoud declined to identify possible buyers or give a reason for the sale but said Dar could also sell shares in the luxury carmaker to the public within three to five years.

Aston Martin, famously associated with fictional British secret agent James Bond, was bought from Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) last year by a consortium including Formula 1 specialist David Richards and Investment Dar for 479 million pounds.

Aston Martin said earlier this month it would cut up to 600 jobs in Britain as car sales continue to be hit by the downturn in the world economy.

The world's largest carmakers have reported billions of dollars in loss and announced thousands of job cuts.

Despite the crisis, Seoud sees it as the right time to bring a strategic technical partner into the British car maker.

"Yes, I might sacrifice today some of my future profit but I'll get today a better benefit and support from a technical partner," he said.

REFINANCING DEBT

Seoud also denied an al-Qabas newspaper report on Sunday that Dar had mortgaged banking and real estate assets, including its 19.2 percent stake in Boubyan Bank (BOUK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), with Commercial Bank of Kuwait (CBKK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (CBK) to secure financing.
Investment Dar was in talks with several banks, including CBK, for loans to help it refinance short-term debt, he said.

"Ideally we should be seeking around 200 million dinars to 300 million dinars from banks," Seoud said. "There is nothing finalised yet."

Last month Kuwait's government reached a deal with banks to provide loans to investment firms hit by the financial crisis.

Kuwait is also setting up a bailout fund for investment firms to help them cope with the crisis after the Gulf Arab state was forced to step in and rescue Gulf Bank (GBKK.KW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) after it lost 375 million dinars on derivatives dealings.

Dar's stock, which has lost about 77 percent of its value this year, closed up 5.81 percent on Sunday. (For Reuters content on Islamic finance, click on ISLAMIC) (Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
Source : Reuters

What Do Muslim Women Want?

An excerpt from the book Who Speaks for Islam? by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed

In sharp contrast to the popular image of silent submissiveness, Gallup findings on women in countries that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations hardly show that they have been conditioned to accept second-class status. Majorities of women in virtually every country we surveyed say that women deserve the same legal rights as men, to vote without influence from family members, to work at any job they are qualified for, and even to serve in the highest levels of government. In Saudi Arabia, for example, where as of this writing, women were not allowed to vote or drive, majorities of women say that women should be able to drive a car by themselves (61%), vote without influence (69%), and work at any job for which they are qualified (76%). Egyptian women, who have faced far fewer restrictions than their Saudi counterparts, speak even more strongly in favor of women's rights, with 88% of Egyptian women saying that they should be allowed to work at any job for which they are qualified. In Egypt, as in other parts of the Muslim world, this attitude is not just a theory, as a full third of professional and technical workers in Egypt are women, on par with Turkey and South Korea.

If you want to put faces to these data, observe women such as Souad Saleh, an assertive and outspoken woman whose area of expertise is fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. Saleh is an Islamic jurist and professor at al-Azhar University, the most prominent institution of Islamic scholarship and authority in Sunni Islam. She was the first woman dean of faculty at the institution and is a prolific writer on issues ranging from family law to women's rights, authoring more than seven volumes on Islam and at least four in-depth research works. A regular on pan-Arab television and one of the most outspoken preachers on Islam, her message is clear: "Islam is simple and holds women in high esteem."

Celebrity preachers aren't the only ones who defy conventional wisdom. There are also women like Salwa Riffat, an Egyptian woman now in her late 50s who earned her bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering from Cairo University and went on to earn her Ph.D. in civil engineering. At the same time, she managed to successfully balance raising a family and fulfilling the demands of her career. She is now a professor of engineering, teaching men and women alike. "Women of my generation were at the forefront of a new era in Egypt," she says, referring to the wave of women attending college that gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s. "Now, it's hardly something worth noting that in Egypt, universities are filled with women, in some cases more than men, and they are excelling." The valedictorians of Cairo's elite medical school are famously known to almost always be female.

These cases are hardly unique. Nationally representative self reported data show percentages of women in Iran (52%), Egypt (34%), Saudi Arabia (32%), and Lebanon (37%) with postsecondary educations. In the United Arab Emirates and Iran, women make up the majority of university students. However, in Muslim countries -- as well as in non-Muslim countries -- Gallup finds a wide range of female education with percentages of women pursuing postsecondary educations dipping as low as 8% and 13% in Morocco and Pakistan, respectively, which is comparable with 4% in Brazil, or 11% in the Czech Republic.

Based on the largest and most in-depth study of its kind, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think presents the remarkable findings of the Gallup Poll of the Muslim World, the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of more than 90% of the global Muslim community, spanning more than 35 nations. Lean more Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think

Interview : Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (3)

Who decides the rules of Islamic jurisprudence?

The thing about the Islamic situation is we don't have a church. We don't have an ordained priesthood, which makes it a little complicated. But we do have a tradition of scholarship, and rules of scholarship. It's very much like any field of knowledge.
Take any field of knowledge, like physics or biology or chemistry. Anybody can become a chemist or a biologist or a physicist. But there are rules [developed], and a kind of a growing consensus of opinion on how one should think correctly to arrive at what would be deemed a right, a correct decision.
Analogously, there is, in Islam, a tradition of theological interpretation, of [juridical] understanding and knowledge. And as long as you abide by these, the consensus of understanding on how you arrive at a decision, certain differences of opinion are considered equally valid.

What about interpretations regarding women, in particular? We find, in many parts of the world that tend to be populated by Muslims, it seems that women are getting the short end of the stick.

Well ... the prophet, for his times, was a feminist. And there are certainly voices within the Muslim world who believe and argue very strongly for the rights of women. But gender relationships really deal with the cultural norms of a particular group and the times in which they live. If one were to say, for instance, that American women are behind Muslim women -- and I pick the fact that there have been five Muslim women heads of state, and that the United States is behind the Muslim world in this regard -- that would not be considered to be an accurate assessment of how women are regarded in a particular society. One has to look at the sum total ... of the norms and the relationships and the understandings that exist in a given society in a given time. ...
Some of what we see may be considered to be inequities. But we have to remember that when Islam spread from Arabia to what we consider the Muslim world today, it spread through countries and societies which had very ancient traditions. Egypt had an ancient tradition, Iran, another ancient country, Persia before that. The subcontinent of India: another ancient culture. Same thing with current-day Turkey, the Byzantine Empire. ...
Through that, many cultural norms became to be considered by societies as being Islamic, but they're really cultural. So in matriarchal societies, which you will see some matriarchal societies like in West Africa or in Egypt, you'll find women very, very influential. Women hold the purse strings; women determine a lot of what happens, because ancient Egypt had a tradition of having women kings, women queens, queens of Egypt.
Whereas in some societies, which tended to be nomadic, it was very much more male-oriented, and the patriarchal and very strong male orientation became predominant. So as you go across much of the Muslim world, you will see this diversity, which really entered into Muslim life through custom, and not through the Quran and the hadith itself.

Can you define "hadith" for an American audience?
The word "hadith" means any report of something the prophet either said or did. That's hadith with small "h.". Hadith with capital "H" is the collection of all these reports.

Which have been carefully substantiated or authenticated?
There are all kinds of grades of hadith, from the most authentic to those that have been forged, and various degrees in between. Islamic hadith scholarship actually is a very fascinating study, because through the different hadith you get a slice of Islamic history. The politics of what happened at different periods of time are all manifest in the hadith.

And the Sunna, similarly.
The word "Sunna" is used to mean the normative practice of the prophet. In fact, the jurists have defined the general Sunna of the prophet to mean everything the prophet did or said. The hadith is the report of the Sunna. And of the practice of the prophet, there's a certain class of actions that are normative for Muslims to follow, Sunna which has legal value, has a precedent value. And there is Sunna which has no Sharia value. For instance, the prophet prayed a certain way. This has Sharia value, we're supposed to pray that way. The prophet went to hajj on a camel -- doesn't mean that we have to ride a camel from Medina to Mecca for our hajj to be valid. We can take a car. We can take a plane, because that Sunna has no Sharia value.
Source : Frontline : Muslims