 In this module, I am going to discuss a very interesting product based on Ijara. That is called service Ijara. Service Ijara is a product that tries to reduce the use of Tawarruq. Remember when we discussed Tawarruq, we said that Tawarruq is an Islamic mode of financing which is rather controversial. It is controversial because it looks like an interest based arrangement and many customers, observers and stakeholders in Islamic banking and finance somehow do not feel comfortable with the excessive use of Tawarruq. Service Ijara actually is a very innovative concept. In case of Service Ijara, a bank can lease a service from a service provider and then can sublease to its customers. This arrangement can be used for the kind of activities which otherwise require cash. For example, I might need cash for paying school fees for my children. I might need cash for paying for my medical expenses. I might need cash for paying a bill for a bed and breakfast or a hotel if I happen to be travelling. For this kind of need, normally people would like to have the comfort of having cash in their pocket. Dubai Islamic Bank was actually the first bank which came up with this concept of Service Ijara because the Sharia Board of Dubai Islamic Bank at that time did not approve the use of Tawarruq in personal finance facilities. So how did this Service Ijara help Dubai Islamic Bank in offering personal finance facilities to its customers? In case of Service Ijara, we are going to use this example. A customer actually is looking for some help, some financing to go for a kidney transplant operation. Of course, this operation is done in a hospital. Now the bank actually after looking into this kind of market, they can have a contract with a hospital and enter into a forward lease contract with the hospital pursuant to which the bank leases the services of the hospital for kidney transplantation. So the bank has got this facility. When a customer approaches it, I need certain amount of money for kidney transplant. The bank would say that we can offer you a product which is based on Service Ijara. We have this hospital, they have state of the art facilities for this kind of operation and in some cases actually they can ask the customer which hospital do you want to have your operation in and the customer may say that this is Dubai American Hospital and the bank would say that actually we have got this arrangement with Dubai American Hospital. You can go there and get your treatment done and the agreement between you and us would be based on this coupling. So the trick is that the bank would buy this service for a price X and or PX and it would sell this for PX plus to the customer and the customer would have the comfort of paying this amount in easy monthly installments over a certain time period which could be one year, three years, five years or whatever is mutually agreed between the two parties. I have used this hospital example but this can very well be used in other contracts like school education and of course in case of hotel accommodation as well. Now the benefits of this arrangement is that this is a lot more Sharia authentic as compared to a Tawarruk based personal finance facility and of course it fulfills a genuine need and from that viewpoint this is a product which should sell in the market and very importantly this kind of products can bring the Islamic banks closer to the real economy. What do I mean by that? In fact if this business of service Ijara is so successful a lot of customers are actually coming to the bank for getting financing based on service Ijara it may very well be the case that the bank decides to set up a hospital specializing in that activity. In fact once I stayed in a hotel and in that hotel they were very strict about smoking everywhere they were signed no smoking, no smoking, no smoking each and every floor they would have this sign displayed and when I asked why so much excessive use of no smoking stickers they said this is a property owned by Dubai Islamic Bank and they want to make sure that no Tariya repugnant or anything which has a slight kind of doubt activity takes place in this hotel. So Dubai Islamic Bank actually owned that hotel similarly if the banks they find that this kind of service Ijara product is profitable they might want to set up their own schools their hospitals their hotels and so on. In fact in case of Kuwait Finance House not in this context but in the context of Morabaha they actually have their own car dealership if you want to buy a car on a Morabha basis from Kuwait Finance House Kuwait Finance House would ask you to go to their Lexus dealership or Toyota dealership and you would buy the car from there. A similar kind of trend may emerge if service Ijara becomes a popular product used by Islamic Bank and of course even if that doesn't happen this product can actually be more profitable as compared to other plain vanilla products why when I as a bank I go to Wellington hospital and lease 50 kidney transplantation operations I am I should be expecting a lot of discount from Wellington hospital I am naming just one hospital and that would be my saving because I would be selling I would be leasing sub leasing that activity to my customers based on the market price of kidney transplantation I am using kidney transplantation as an example that could be any other operation.