and the sacrificial offerings required as expiation for Hajj, as well as expiations for oaths, killing, and other matters. These obligations also include fulfilling financial vows and similar duties. Indeed, wealth is fully subject to obligations prescribed by the Sharia, whether recurring or incidental, and whether occasioned by the individual’s own actions or otherwise. This is not the place to explain this general point in detail.

Our concern here is with transactions for compensation that are obligatory, such as sales, leases, and similar arrangements, as well as partnerships, such as tending trees for a share of their yield, cultivating land for a share of its crops, and the like.

This is a matter in which people frequently err. The Sharia firmly establishes that injustice is forbidden and that, as a general rule, these contracts are permissible only by mutual consent, except in cases exempted by the Lawgiver, where compelling people to enter into them is rightful. Consequently, two groups fall into error: some regard compulsion to enter into certain contracts as rightful when it is wrongful, while others regard it as wrongful when it is rightful. In some cases, compulsion rests on an interpretation of what is right, and thus falls within the realm of matters subject to juristic judgment—whether that judgment rests solely on juristic reasoning or is mixed with personal inclination. The same applies to transactions for compensation.

We know with certainty that if providing wealth or benefits without compensation is obligatory under the Sharia in very many circumstances, for reasons that give rise to such an obligation—and this is not injustice, which consists in taking another’s rightful due without right—