any of the other reward-based contracts, where each of the two parties pledges a payment to whoever performs a service for him commensurate with the service he himself renders to the other.

This constitutes a shared point of refutation for the two camps: they admitted that the arrangement belongs to the category of jaʿālah, yet limited it to only certain lawful activities and required the presence of a muḥallil whenever the prize is supplied by both competitors—an approach that contradicts the fundamental rules governing jaʿālah.

A third group maintained that the matter has nothing to do with jaʿālah at all. Everyone knows that when one of the two contestants offers a prize to the other if he should defeat him, his aim is not for the other to triumph and seize his wealth; no rational person intends to be beaten and to lose. Rather, (1) his objective is to emerge victorious and gain the prize, just as a warrior seeks victory. In jaʿālah the payer’s purpose is to have the other party perform the work and to compensate him for it with his money. That is the very opposite of a competition, which is modelled on jihad and was legislated as training, drill, and mental conditioning for it. A combatant does not enter battle merely to overpower and despoil—although some individuals may do so—when he plunges into enemy ranks hoping for martyrdom in Allah’s cause. Such an act is praiseworthy only when it brings benefit to the army and to Islam, as in the case of the boy whom the king ordered to be killed so that, by that means, the people would embrace Islam. (2)