Murabaha


Murabaha

A structure in Islamic finance in which one party buys a good for cash and then sells it to a second party for deferred payments. For example, if Joe wishes to buy a house, he asks a bank to purchase it and then sell it to him for a higher price than the bank paid. While the bank pays cash up front, Joe amortizes his payments over an agreed-upon number of years. From Joe's perspective, this is similar to a conventional mortgage because the payments are likely the same. Because there is no debt with interest, a murabaha is thought to conform to Islamic law. However, murabahas are controversial even within Islamic finance because some scholars believe the profit on the second sale imitates interest too closely.