change their status, and this falls within the category of contracts. If they are not owned, acquiring them by taking possession and the like is likewise an act that changes their legal status, just as contracts do.

Moreover, an animal is unlawful before ritual slaughter. Ritual slaughter performed upon it is analogous to a contract applied to property. Thus, just as the basic presumption regarding our acts upon tangible things—such as taking possession and ritual slaughter—is permissibility, even though they alter the thing’s legal status, so too the basic presumption regarding our acts affecting ownership—contracts and the like—is permissibility, even though they alter the legal status of that ownership.

The reason is that legal effects arising from our acts—such as ownership established through sale and the right to marital intimacy established through marriage—have causes that we ourselves bring about. The Lawgiver establishes the legal effect because we have brought about its cause; He does not establish it independently, as He does when imposing obligations and prohibitions in the first instance. Since it is we who bring about that legal effect, and the Lawgiver has not forbidden us to remove it, removing it is not prohibited to us.

Thus, when someone purchases a tangible item, the Lawgiver makes it lawful for him and unlawful for others because he has brought about the cause of that status—namely, ownership established through sale. So long as the Lawgiver has not forbidden him to terminate it, he may terminate what he established in any manner he wishes, provided that the Lawgiver has not forbidden that manner. Similarly, if someone gives a man some property, the basic presumption is that the recipient is not forbidden to dispose of it, even if doing so removes the ownership established by the giver, unless some impediment prevents him [from doing so].

This is the key point in the issue, through which its legal basis becomes clear: particular legal rulings—such as this property being lawful for Zayd and unlawful for Amr—were not individually instituted by the Lawgiver. Rather, He instituted them as universal rulings, as in His statement: “Allah has permitted trade and forbidden usury” [al-Baqarah: 275] [al-Baqarah: 276], and His statement: “And lawful to you are all women beyond these” [al-Nisā’: 24]