 In this segment, we would be looking into Islamic dealings or muamilat. Because muamilat are the basis for dealings in Islamic banking and finance, hence this segment would look into some of the characteristics of Islamic dealings. The basic thing in any human interaction is a contract. Contract is basis of all the things human beings do. And this is a basis of all the interactions in Islam as well. So nothing can go beyond the scope of a contract, whether this is buying and selling, this has something to do with social matters like marriage, or it has something to do with giving even something for free. Muslims are bound by contracts, whether these contracts are explicit or implicit. As I said earlier, whatever we do, the behavior is actually governed by something like a contract. This contract could be verbal, this contract could be something in a written format, and it is quite possible that this is an implicit contract. Now, a written contract by its very nature must be an explicit contract. And when we talk about a contract, this means there must be an agreement on this contract by the transacting parties or by the contracting parties. So a contract is a mutual agreement between two or more parties to do something Sharia compliant as per agreed terms and conditions. This definition of contract would be applicable to all the Islamic legal contracts, which we would be studying as part of this course in due time. But we must keep this basic definition of contract in mind because it has implications for a lot of understanding we are going to attempt to make in this course. A valid contract, what is a valid contract? A valid contract must be between two parties. And there are some characteristics of these transacting parties. These parties must be sane, i.e. they should have sound mind. They should be adults if they happen to be human beings or they should be recognized legal persons if they happen to be companies. And these transacting parties should agree on the price and its payment and the delivery of the object of sale, which must be halal. So there are a lot of things in a valid contract to at least two transacting parties and then we have characteristics of these transacting parties. There must agree on price, there must be a well defined object of sale which is going to be sold, there must be knowledge and agreement on when the price is going to be paid and of course there must be knowledge and agreement on the delivery of object of sale. It is absolutely important that the object of sale is halal as well because Muslims are not allowed to trade in non halal or haram item. To make sure that you understand this point, it is not permissible for a Muslim to buy or sell wine or any alcoholic beverage. In fact, if I tell you the truth, it is not permissible for Muslims to even gift a non halal item. So this is very important for you to understand this thing. Any ambiguity in transactions and in the transacting parties, price and object of sale may invalidate the transaction because this would involve error. A base level contract in Islamic law is a spot sale and all other sale contracts actually originate from this spot sale. A spot sale contract involves payment of price now and of course the delivery takes place now as well. Such a contract is error free because price is paid, price is known, price is paid now and the object of sale is known and of course it is delivered now as well. There are some other variants of contracts in which price may be delayed or there must be a delay in the delivery and there might be some other variants as well. It is important to understand these variants and we would be going through Islamic legal contracts one by one in due time. There are some rules about sale and purchase of money and these are exceptional rules. We would be covering them in a separate segment. However, when it comes to sale of goods and services in general, the form of the contract or the definition of the contract which I have shared with you that would be applicable. For trading in currencies, there are different rules which happen to be more conservative.