A Sharʽiah Analysis of ʼijāra as a Financing Mode in the wake of Parallel Banking System of Bank of Khyber

The only religion Islam provides the thorough layout for human beings not only covers the spiritual needs but also shaped the materialistic desires in a better way. The most important aspect among all is the availability of proper, smooth flowing and practical financial system as it involve almost in all fields of life. Looking at the current situation and fast growing industry, Islamic Banking System emerged as solid and firm scheme for optimum utilization of finance in full conformity of Shariʽah. ʼijāra is one of the modes frequently used in Interest free banks. The Bank of Khyber claims as Parallel Banking System i.e. It practicing conventional Banking as well as Islamic Banking System. This study emphasis on analyzing the practice of ʼijāra as a financing mode in the wake of Parallel Banking system of Bank of Khyber in the light of Sharʽiah teachings and to portray the real picture of it to enhance the level of satisfaction of customer.   

A Study of the Relationship Between School Affinity and Academic Achievement of Students at Secondary Level

School and education are the major parts in the life of a student. School plays a leading role to enhance the quality of education. The quality of education is generally measured in the form of a student‘s achievement. The concept of a student‘s achievement depends on the various factors from home to school as has been investigated by previous researches. The concept of students‘ achievements depends on school-affinity that should also be very strong. The current study aims at examine the relationship between schoolaffinity and academic achievement of students at secondary level. For this purpose, an indigenous School-Affinity Scale (SAS) was developed to measure the relationship between school-affinity and its academic achievement. The principal component of analysis (PCA) of school-affinity scale propounded by Varimax reveals six factors of school-affinity which are affinity with; teacher''s personality and profile, school status, affinity with school as a result of school records, peer-group, co-operative learning activities and school management. A standardized procedure was adopted to develop and translate the scale through two phases: Urdu and English version. The psychometric properties yielded SAS a reliable and valid measure. The alpha reliability for the total scale was 0.85. After the finalization of research tool, nine of the items which were not clustered on any factors (item loadings < .35) were excluded from the scale and finally SAS was retained with 31 items. After this, the questionnaire was administered to the students of 1,040 secondary schools of public and private sectors. Multi-stage random sampling technique was selected to choose sample for the study. To collect data, 1,040 schools were selected from 130 selected Tehsils of Punjab province. Questionnaire was administered (irrespective of their gender, discipline and rural and urban divide, belonging to public and private sector of secondary schools) to the students of 10th class by all the Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISEs) in 2015. Collected data with coding scheme of Likert rating scale of 4-point ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (4) was put into SPSS, Version 20. Relationship of school-affinity and demographic variables on academic achievement of students at secondary level were calculated by the use of bivariate factors of Pearson Correlation coefficients at the significant level of 0.05 and 0.01. Independent samples t-test and one way ANOVA followed as a post–Hoc Tests by Bonferroni was used in multiple comparisons. Findings reveal that there is a significant relationship among the subscales of school-affinity and academic achievement. However, it is found that school management has no significant difference with academic achievement of students at secondary level. It was also concluded that demographic information of respondents also played a major role to improve the academic achievement of secondary school students. The current study also suggested further investigations of other school factors that influence the academic achievement of students.