Last year, when we published a survey of advertising in Islamic and Muslim countries, the slideshow was one of our most popular galleries of commercial creativity.

From McDonald's famous golden arches in jarring Arabic script, to a beauty contest in which only women's eyes were shown, we were all fascinated by the way advertisers in strict religious cultures handled — or avoided — the universal themes of sex, wealth and consumption.

Now we've updated our survey of Arabic and Middle Eastern advertising.

The one thing that hasn't changed is the cleverness with which advertisers handle the burdensome rules on their creativity.

Islamic finance is widely available throughout the Muslim world, but is rare in the United States, says Yahia A. Rahman, who bought the bank in 1982 and five years later opened a related financing operation, Lariba American Finance House, to handle mortgages and small business ventures. Deals are structured so that the bank buys into the venture with the entrepreneur, who runs the company and buys the bank out, with payments structured so that the bank is compensated for its investment. Profits and losses are shared; the overall cost tracks with a traditional loan repayment at a standard interest rate.

“Our model is that we do not rent money,” says Rahman, who spent most of his career as an engineer in the oil and gas industry.”We do not charge interest; we look at every deal as an investment deal.”

Such a model may become more popular as the population of Muslims in the U.S. booms. Estimated at 2.6 million in 2010, a 2011 Pew Research Center report projects that the number of M

As global economies slowly begin to find their footing again, certain industries such as the newspaper industry are still struggling after the world-wide economic crisis. With declining revenues from print sales, modest flow of revenue from paywalls and drooping employment rates, times are bleak for the newspaper business. Research firm IBISWorld even ranked newspaper publishing No. 5 on the list of fastest-dying industries in the US at an average rate of 6.4 percent.

In the year of the "go viral or go home" Super Bowl commercial, Coca-Cola is now embroiled in the latest advertising controversy for going too far on-air and online with an offensive spot in the desert.

The Muslim population of the United States represents a niche consumer group that is largely untapped, proven to be loyal to brands, generally well educated, and best of all for marketers, it represents annual disposable income of at least $107 billion according to a new study by Dinar Standard (JWT estimated disposable spending at about $170 billion in 2007).

Malaysia has been ranked first among the top 10 Halal friendly holiday destinations in the Crescentrating’s Halal Friendly Travel (CRaHFT) Ranking 2013 under the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) category.

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is still developing its own halal standards and there is no official halal certification body in Pakistan. The countries with Muslims majority are the most obvious target market for halal products especially for meat and meat products.However, Muslims living outside the Sub,

Why does Walmart have greeters? What's Facebook doing with your photos? How come so much air in your chips? Here, bizarre secrets from large businesses.

HSBC Holdings Plc is to significantly scale back the scope of its global Islamic banking operations, as the business becomes the latest area to be affected by a wider restructuring at the UK-based bank.

When I recently consolidated a student loan I had taken out many years ago, I noticed that the amount I owed was more than double what I had originally borrowed. I’m still in school, so I don’t have double the education from when I first took out the loan. I definitely don’t have double the income. Even before I knew anything about Islam and how it forbids usury, I knew something was wrong with that picture. And that there was a bigger picture involving a whole world in debt crisis.