weighing a hundred and twenty dinars, and someone who permits legal stratagems allows him to add a loaf of bread or a cloth in which a hundred dinars are placed, or something similar that any usurer can easily provide, then the prohibition of usury would serve no purpose and embody no wisdom. Whenever a usurer wished to exchange any of these commodities for a larger quantity of the same kind, he could simply add something of negligible value to the smaller quantity. Likewise, if the two parties are allowed to agree beforehand that one will sell it to the other in exchange for merchandise in which the buyer has no interest, and then buy it from him for the higher price, anyone seeking usury could do so.

It is well known that if even someone of lesser standing than the Messenger were to prohibit something because of the harm it entails, yet permit it through a procedure that serves no useful purpose, this would be blameworthy and foolish. The harm remains, but he has made them more deceitful. If the procedure entails a burden, he has burdened them with something of no benefit. How, then, could this be thought of the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace?

Indeed, it is well known that if kings prohibited what the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited, and someone evaded their prohibition through such a stratagem, they would regard him as toying with their commands and mocking them. Allah punished the owners of the garden who devised a scheme to avoid giving charity. Allah also punished the people of the town by the sea when they used a stratagem to treat what was forbidden as lawful, turning them into apes and swine. It is reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Do not commit what the Jews committed, treating what Allah has forbidden as lawful through the most trivial of stratagems.”