However, Imam Ahmad—may Allah have mercy on him—holds that, in such a situation, the purchaser should leave and look for another vendor from whom to buy. If that proves impossible, he may return to the first seller and buy from him, so that the transaction is further removed from any suspicion—the suspicion of employing a ḥīlah (legal stratagem).

Question Ten: What is the ruling on a person who sells gold to the shop owner and then purchases other gold from the same owner for roughly the same amount, and thereafter settles the price of the gold he bought out of the proceeds of the gold he sold, even though he has not yet taken possession of those proceeds?

Answer: This is impermissible. If someone sells an item for a price he has not yet received, and then, in place of that price, acquires something whose sale on credit is unlawful, the jurists have explicitly declared such a transaction forbidden. It may become a device for selling what may not be sold on deferment in this manner without actual possession. And if it is among