they distort words from their contexts, forget a share of what they were reminded of, and you will constantly discover some act of treachery from them.” (al-Māʾidah 13)
11 – Using stratagems to render the unlawful lawful, or to evade obligatory duties, is forbidden. Such ploys do not change the true nature of things, even if they are given new names or some of their attributes are altered.
12 – This community is cautioned against imitating the Jews in committing prohibited acts through tricks, lest it be struck by the same wrath, curse, and painful punishment that befell them.
Al-Khattabi said: “This ḥadith invalidates every ruse by which a person seeks access to what is forbidden, for its ruling does not change when its outward form is altered or its name replaced.”
13 – Ibn al-Qayyim said: “Allah cursed the Jews when they took payment for what He had forbidden them to eat; their use of a sale-like device did not protect them. Likewise, it did not profit them to remove the name ‘fat’ by melting it, for once melted it loses that name and becomes wadak (rendered grease). When they tried to legalize it by changing its name, the stratagem availed them nothing.”
He also said in Maʿālim al-Sunan: “Any means that leads to the unlawful is itself unlawful according to the Quran, the Sunnah, natural disposition, and sound reason. Allah, exalted is He, turned the Jews into apes and swine because they approached unlawful trade through a means they assumed to be permissible. Whenever a path ends in something forbidden, the Sharia will never sanction that path, for allowing the means while forbidding the end unites two opposites. It is inconceivable that something be permitted while what it leads to is prohibited; rather, it must be either prohibited or permitted, and the latter is decisively false, so the former is obligatory.”
14 – The ḥadith supports the well-known legal maxim: “When the harm outweighs the benefit, preventing the harm takes priority,” for any potential benefit in the fat of carrion was set aside because of the greater harm involved in utilizing carrion.