International Business: Islam, UAE Culture, and HR Recommendations

This assignment delves into the influence of Islam on international business, specifically focusing on the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It addresses the origins of Islam, the significance of the Quran, and the five pillars of Islam, comparing it with Christianity. It explains the practice of fasting during Ramadan, dietary prohibitions, and the lunar calendar. The assignment also provides recommendations for HR consultants managing Muslim employees, including accommodating prayer times and adjusting work shifts during Ramadan. Furthermore, it examines the demographic composition of the UAE, highlighting the high percentage of expatriates and suggesting ways to preserve the local culture. The assignment concludes with references to support the analysis, offering a comprehensive overview of Islam's impact on business and culture within the UAE. Desklib offers similar solved assignments and study resources for students.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
International Business
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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1) The Islam religion originated from the country Saudi Arabia.
Muhammad was a prophet and he was founder of Islam religion. No the Muslims do not
worship Muhammad.
2) Quran is the holy or religious text of Islam (Abdelnasser et al., 2014). It is deemed as the
revelation from God or Allah.
The five pillars of Islam that are the acts in Islam are:
 Shahada- It is the faith that asserts that there is only one God.
 Salah –It is the Islamic prayer.
 Zakat-It is the practice of charity or giving alms.
 Sawm – Sawm deals with fasting.
 Hajj –It is the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia
3) Both the religions of Christianity and Islam have originated from the Middle East which
consists of the regions of Western Asia ,Turkey and Egypt and both the religions believes
in the existence of one God (Watt, 2013).
4) The Muslims fasts because fasting or Sawm is one of the pillars of Islam religion so
every Muslim who professes Islam, considers fasting as a religious duty (Zimmer, 2013).
Ramadan or Ramazan is the ninth month of Muslim calendar and it is the month, when
they fast, in order to celebrate the first revelation of Quran to Prophet Muhammad.
The Muslim fast for 29 to 30 days, during the month of Ramadan. It depends on the
moon sighting.
5) The food that are prohibited in Islam are intoxicants and alcohol, carrion, pork, blood,
food not served to God and slaughtered animals.

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All the Muslims who abide by the Islamic laws follows the above mentioned prohibitions
in their diet.
6) Ramadan does not fall on same date every year, it changes in accordance with the Lunar
calendar of Islam.
7) As a H.R consultant, in this scenario of workplace ,the list of recommendations are :
 First, I would make the managers of the company familiar with the Islamic
practices before hiring a Muslim employee to avoid issues related to it in future.
 Considering the Muslim employees in the company, time should be provided for
them in order to perform their five daily prayers in a secluded place in office.
 During the month of Ramadan, work shifts can be shortened considering the
lunch breaks are not taken by them.
8) Presently, the population of United Arab Emirates is 9,574,803.
The percentage of population of UAE with respect to gender is –
 72 % males (6.89 million)
 28 % females (2.65 million)
The percentage of population of UAE considering each nationality:
India 28 %
Pakistan 13%
UAE 11%
Bangladesh 7%
Philippines 6%
Iran 5%
Egypt 4%

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Nepal 3%
Sri Lanka 3%
China 2%
Other Countries 18%
In the statistics, the most interesting part that comes into notice is that the percentage
of native population that is the people of UAE is only 11 % less than countries like
India and Pakistan.
9) UAE can preserve their culture and heritage in the following ways :
 Controlling the flow of Expatriates – The flow of expatriate workers in UAE
has led to the situation of imbalance in the structure of demography and has also
impacted the cultural identity (Hopkyns, 2014).
 Reviving Culture –UAE should take measures, which would revive the Arabic
culture through Arabic books.

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References
Abdelnasser, H., Ragab, M., Mohamed, R., Mohamed, A., Farouk, B., El-Makky, N., & Torki,
M. (2014). Al-Bayan: an Arabic question answering system for the Holy Quran.
In Proceedings of the EMNLP 2014 Workshop on Arabic Natural Language Processing
(ANLP) (pp. 57-64).
Hopkyns, S. (2014). The effect of global English on culture and identity in the UAE: a double-
edged sword. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, 11(2).
Watt, W. M. (2013). Muslim-Christian Encounters (Routledge Revivals): Perceptions and
Misperceptions. Routledge.
Zimmer, H. (2013). The Muslim creed: Its genesis and historical development. Routledge.