partners in the yield generated by the underlying assets they own. This category of transactions differs from a straightforward contract of hire in its nature, purpose and legal ruling. Whatever element of exchange it contains is of the same kind as the element of exchange found in partnerships.

Transactions based on equity in this world fall into two categories: exchanges and partnerships. Exchanges include sale and hire. Partnerships include co-ownership and contractual partnerships. These encompass the Muslims’ shared entitlement to the funds of the public treasury; people’s common rights to freely available resources, such as the use of mosques, public marketplaces and roads, land reclaimed from wasteland, or ownerless resources that are found; heirs’ shared ownership of an inheritance; beneficiaries’ shared entitlement to bequests and endowments; and merchants’ and craftsmen’s participation in joint-capital or joint-labour partnerships, and similar arrangements. These two categories are where injustice arises, as Allah Most High relates that David, peace be upon him, said:

“Indeed, many partners wrong one another, except those who believe and do righteous deeds—and how few they are!”

Other transactions are acts of generosity, such as loans, lending things for use, gifts and bequests.

Since transactions based on equitable dealing are either exchanges or partnerships, it is certainly clear that orchard-tending and sharecropping arrangements, and others like them, belong to the category of partnerships, not straightforward exchanges. Selling what is uncertain is prohibited in exchange transactions only because it amounts to consuming wealth unjustly. Here, neither party consumes the other’s wealth, for if no