ENGLISH
This explains the legality of mudaraba, muzaraa, bay salam, etc. Contracts like bay’ salam may be adduced by some to support the existing practices of mark-up or murabaha etc., in which the sale takes place without possessing the goods actually being transferred and without the seller even having the capacity to deliver the goods.
Likewise if the banks declare their policy of financing their clients on non-interest bases it would be necessary to do so and not merely continue the same practice and seeking to rationalize it in Islamic terms by changing the relevant nomenclature such as calling it “buy-back” or “mark-up”.
Price markup (debt) contracts involve a bank financing the purchase of assets or services in exchange for a negotiated profit margin.
Islamic banks preferred to utilize the murabaha primarily because they were worried about their commitments to pay back their depositors. Because mudarabah is a long-term and risky instrument, there were serious concerns about the mismatch of funds. Murabaha, by contrast, provided fixed returns that could be paid back to the depositors easily.
Being one of the Islamic financial instruments that is friendliest to conventional financial institutions and one of the most loved by lawyers for its simplicity, cost-plus financing, known as murabaha, is probably the most widely used Islamic financial instrument today.
Cost-plus financing is also referred to as deferred-payment financing, which goes back to the concept of the time value of money.
The ideal alternative to an interest-based system is profit and loss sharing, which still remains under-used in the global Islamic finance industry today due to its higher risks. Instead, the Islamic finance industry is considered largely risk-averse and primarily uses debt-based modes such as murabaha (cost plus profit) and tawarruq (a commonly used method designed to provide liquid assets such as working capital finance and short-term financing), both of which either resemble conventional interest-based products or have very little links to the real economy, which is an important requirement of shari’ah.
Several topics were discussed, chief of which was the murabaha contract as presented in Dr Sami Hamoud’s proposal. The murabaha is a cost-plus profit markup contract which, for the purposes of financing, involves the bank first purchasing the item desired for the customer and then reselling it to the customer at a markup representing the bank’s profit.
Murābahah is generally defined as selling a commodity with cost plus a margin.
In the court registers of Istanbul, references to interest are made frequently through such euphemisms as "payment for cloth" (çuka bahası), "price of fur" (kürk semeni), "treating ten as eleven" (ona onbir hesabı), "eleven for ten stamp duty" (ona onbir pul hesabı), "earning" (ribh), "religious achievement" (marifet-i şeriyye), "religious procedure" (muamele-i şeriyye), "religious transfer" (devr-i şerî), and "fee for commodity financing" (murabaha).
This arrangement is called bay‘ al- murābahah li al-āmir bi al- shirā’ (sale at an agreed margin of profit to one who has ordered their purchase) by Dr. Sāmī Hamūd, but has become popularly known as murābahah.
The Islamic banks carry their business on the basis of equity-participation (musharakah, and mudarabah), leasing (ijarah), lease-purchase (ijarah wa iqtina'), cost-plus financing, (bay' murabahah), and rent-sharing.
Installment Sale. In this mode of finance the Bank buys the equipment, which is mainly capital assets, and sells and delivers them to the beneficiary in installments.
Murabahah is a sale contract at a mark-up.