two sales within a single transaction. If he takes payment at the higher price, he has taken usury; if he takes the lower amount, he has accepted the worst of the two options. Both are among the gravest means that lead to riba.

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Saʿdī said: What falls under the Prophet’s prohibition of “two sales in one sale” is precisely the ʿīnah arrangement.

Scholarly disagreement:
The three imams—Abū Ḥanīfah, Mālik, and Aḥmad—ruled that ʿīnah is forbidden, citing the hadith, “When you resort to ʿīnah,” and because it is outright usury.

Al-Shāfiʿī deemed it permissible, invoking the general wording of the Khaybar report: “Sell the mixed dates for silver coins, then buy with those coins superior dates.” Its broad language indicates that there is no objection if the person who bought the inferior dates with his silver later receives those very coins back when selling him the better dates.

The reply is that the hadiths specifically prohibiting ʿīnah qualify that general statement; this is the established method of reconciling general and particular evidence. Moreover, the usurious stratagem in ʿīnah is patent and unmistakable, and every stratagem devised to reach what is forbidden is itself forbidden, invalid, and rejected. Allah knows best.