- It is permissible. However, if he has already taken wages for undertaking the task, he may not take another fee when giving the testimony.
A full exposition of these topics belongs elsewhere; the purpose here is simply to note that, since the Sunnah has established in certain cases that an owner must sell his property for a fixed price—either the prevailing market value or the amount he himself paid—then setting a price is not, in itself, categorically unlawful.
When the Prophet ﷺ fixed the price for purchasing the share of a co-owner in order to complete a slave’s emancipation, he did so to perfect the slave’s freedom, and that is a right owed to Allah. Likewise, anything that people need on a public, collective level is deemed a right of Allah. For this reason the scholars classify such matters as “rights of Allah” and “divine limits,” in contrast to the private rights and limits that belong to human beings. Examples include the rights pertaining to mosques, the state’s share of booty (fay’), obligatory alms, endowments set aside for the needy or for public utilities, and the ḥadd penalties for banditry, theft, fornication, and drinking wine.
Thus, anyone who kills another person for the sake of money is executed without exception, by unanimous agreement of the scholars,¹ and the victim’s heirs have no right to pardon him. This differs from a person who kills for a private reason—such as a dispute between the two parties—for in that case the matter is a right belonging to the heirs of the slain; if they wish, they may demand execution, and if they wish, they may pardon, by consensus of the Muslims.
The Muslims’ need for food, clothing, and other items that serve a public interest is not the exclusive right of any one individual. Therefore, obliging a seller to accept the market price in such cases is even more warranted than fixing a price to complete a slave’s freedom. Completing freedom was obligatory upon the partner who had emancipated his share; had the price not been fixed, he could have been harmed by the other partner demanding whatever sum he pleased. Here, however, the general populace must buy food and clothing for themselves; if a person who controls those goods were allowed to refuse to sell except at whatever price he chose, the harm to society would be far greater.
For that reason the jurists have said: when someone is in absolute need of another person’s food, the owner must provide it to him at the market price. One must therefore distinguish between someone who is obliged to sell and someone who is not. Of the four Imams, al-Shāfiʿī was furthest from making transactions and their prices mandatory, yet even he holds that the owner of food needed for survival must sell it at the market rate. His followers disagreed over whether price-fixing is permissible when people are in need, producing two opinions. The Ḥanafī jurists said: the ruler should not fix prices for the people unless