Poverty is a curse at individual as well as community level. It is a threat to humanity at whatever level it exists. All the societies of the world have made efforts to address this challenge. Islam being the religion of all times has also presented a comprehensive system to alleviate this curse. The present study explores the application of some of these measures in collective way and brought into consideration the Zakat system exercised in Pakistan since 1980. This is hypothesised that weather Zakat disbursement along with other Islamic measures has proved to bail out the poor from poverty. Descriptive as well as empirical appraisal of the existing system showed that the Zakat disbursement among the poor, needy, destitute, orphans and widows has played a significant role in poverty alleviation. The ARDL approach to cointegration is used to evaluate the short run and long run impact of Zakat disbursement along with the other exogenous variables on poverty. The results of the study show that there is an inverse relationship between poverty and Zakat disbursement both in the short run and long run. The study also investigated the certain flaws in the system operated in Pakistan and suggested the remedies.

Keeping into consideration the far-reaching social and economic impact of child work both for the children involved and society as a whole, in this study an attempt has been made to disentangle the child employment and schooling tradeoff with perspective to understand the effect of income deprivation measures and other non-income factors such as demographic and parental background information for Pakistan using Pakistan Panel Household Survey 2010 data set. At one level this research resolves empirically the debate that exist in literature whether child work is direct outcome of poverty or not in context of Pakistan through assessing the impact of the poverty channel for both likelihood of sending a child for paid work versus probability of enrolling a child into school and on other tries to connect the above line of reasoning with other non-income channels so as to build more enriching perspective. The consequences of household socioeconomic level in terms of its poor or non-poor status on child employment and child enrollment likelihood functions is assessed using both a direct measure of poverty based on household consumption expenditure information and also indirect measures based on access (or lack of it to be more specific) of household to electricity, sewerage system and to type of housing in terms of number of rooms and durability of house. In our empirical evidence, we do find strong support for poverty channel both directly and indirectly acting as defining force in decreasing his or her probability for school enrollment. However in context of effect of poverty on probability of child employment we do not find strong evidence through direct measure of poverty based on household consumption information, however the indirect proxies of poverty level of the household as child belonging to poor status in terms of access to certain type of living [living in house with no electricity, kaccha type of house (not bricked and hence vulnerable to fall), no sewerage system and with just one room] do provide strong evidence in support of poverty channel of impact on increasing the chances of child work. Further demographic information whether it is in form of increasing sibling size or impact of number of adult earners or parental background variables such as employment status of parents and their employment categories provides support for the significance of how being resource poor can be a binding constraint for the household and can act as an impetus to send a child towards paid work against schooling.

Keeping in view the importance of economic growth in a country’s development, this study intended to examine the relationship between the government size and other determinants on economic growth using a time series data over the period 1973-2012. To specify the growth equation, we have followed the Barro (1990) model of endogenous growth. The exogenous variables in the model consisted of the government size, employment, inflation, capital and trade openness. To examine the impact of the 9/11 incident, the earth quake in 2005 and financial crises, we have introduced three dummies in our growth equation. Keeping in view the nature of variables and possible endogenity in the model, we have used the VAR methodology which is believed to overcome the possible endogenity. The estimation strategy comprised of two steps. In the first step, we have estimated the long run growth equation using the Johansen co-integration technique. In the second step, we have estimated the ECM model to arrive at the short run growth elasticities with respect to the variables concerned. The long run results indicated that almost all the variables have found out to be significant with their expected signs except for trade openness which carried negative coefficient. The negative and significant coefficient of the government size suggested that large government size negatively affect economic growth of Pakistan. On the other hand, the positive and significant coefficient of capital indicated that increase in capital holdings enhances economic growth. The positive and significant long run coefficients of inflation and employment highlight that economic growth increase along with increase in inflation and employment. The trade openness variable was found to be significant with positive sign which is the only significant variable in the ECM model except the dummies. The ECM term in the error correction model has carried out significant coefficient with negative sign and plausible magnitude that highlights the stability of the model.

This study is investigated determinants of child mortality in the Pakistan. The Pakistan is amongst one of the five countries who have the highest child mortality rates in the world. Literature on the subject has found extensive variation in causes of child death. We used micro-data of Pakistan Demographic Health Survey (PDHS) of 2006-07 collected by National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS). In the descriptive analysis, it is founded that neonatal mortality rate is high for Pakistan. In econometric analysis, binary logit model was estimated using Maximum Likelihood Method (MLM). The study puts particular emphasis on the effect of wealth, mother’ education, exposure to media and ethnicity. Effect of mothers’ education, wealth, and exposure to media found significant determinants of child mortality in Pakistan. Knowledge on condition of a subject at national and local level gives a prerequisite for shaping efficient polices addressing the Problem.

This study is investigated determinants of child mortality in the Pakistan. The Pakistan is amongst one of the five countries who have the highest child mortality rates in the world. Literature on the subject has found extensive variation in causes of child death. We used micro-data of Pakistan Demographic Health Survey (PDHS) of 2006-07 collected by National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS). In the descriptive analysis, it is founded that neonatal mortality rate is high for Pakistan. In econometric analysis, binary logit model was estimated using Maximum Likelihood Method (MLM). The study puts particular emphasis on the effect of wealth, mother’ education, exposure to media and ethnicity. Effect of mothers’ education, wealth, and exposure to media found significant determinants of child mortality in Pakistan. Knowledge on condition of a subject at national and local level gives a prerequisite for shaping efficient polices addressing the Problem.

The foundation of Islam is on knowledge. It candled the light of knowledge in the darkness of Jahiliyah. Its first revelation came with the word “Read.” In its light the Messenger of Allah instituted ‘Dar-e-Arqam’ at Makkah and ‘al-Suffah’ at Madinah. From there the splendor of knowledge spread out of Arabian Peninsula to Persia and Rome. In the Umayyad period Islam reached to Europe where the West remained under the authority of Christianity/ Catholicism for more than one thousand years, where scientific knowledge was suppressed. This period is known in the history for ‘dark ages’. The criterion for Truth and Knowledge, according to Catholics school of Christianity, was Church. Anyhow, Islam approached Europe through Italy from Muslim Spain. There the Muslim Arabs established several Universities where the non-Muslims, too, had the opportunities to acquire knowledge. The members of royal families such as Italy etc. studied in these institutions. Learning, speaking and writing was a matter of pride for them. As Arabic was medium of instruction and research for academic writings, a number of church members would prefer to speak and write in Arabic. The Muslim civilisation not only gave new life to the ancient Greek Philosophy and literature, it also introduced new sciences, and revived other forgotten sciences. This civilisation gave Egypt its glorious position. It was the result of this newly established civilisation that it took out Europe from the dark ages. The movement of learning sciences from the Muslims played influential role in the renascence of Europe. The European countries adopted Muslim philosophy, modern sciences such as medical sciences, Astronomy, meteorology, chemistry and several other sciences. This article, after getting into brief overview of the dark ages of Europe, the beginning of Islamic Civilisation, its reach into Spain will be addressed. The main theme of this article is the influence of Arab Muslim civilisation over European countries in different fields of sciences.