Whoever supposes that the payment must be returned to the one who offered it—the hirer—on the grounds that it was received under a void contract, and is therefore to be restored to him just like money taken through usury or any similar invalid transaction, can be answered as follows:

In dealings concluded by a defective contract, mutual restitution is required from both sides: each party must give back what he has taken from the other. This is the ruling applied to an exchange involving usury, according to those who hold that property acquired through a void contract is not rightfully owned—a view well known in the schools of al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad.

However, if the item received has perished while in the recipient’s possession, he has no right at all to reclaim its substitute.

Accordingly, even though the literal analogy would dictate that the money be returned because it was taken under an invalid contract, the fornicator, the listener to songs, and the professional mourner paid that sum of their own free will and have already consumed the unlawful service in return. The prohibition here is not a personal right of theirs; it is a right that belongs to Allah, Exalted is He. Once the benefit has been enjoyed, it is gone for good.

Principled jurisprudence states that when one of the two counter-values is returned, the other must likewise be returned. Therefore, when the hirer cannot restore the benefit he has consumed, the money is not returned to him.

Moreover, compelling someone who has already enjoyed the service to lose both the benefit and the payment would cause him harm—unlike a case where the consideration is wine or carrion, for the loss of such items entails no injury to him; had they remained in existence we would have destroyed them anyway. By contrast, the benefit obtained from singing or professional lamentation