a man pays a poet or someone else so that he will not spread lies about him in satirical verse or otherwise, or make unlawful attacks upon his honour, it is permissible for the man to make that payment. However, what the recipient takes in return for not wronging him is unlawful for him, since he is obliged to refrain from wronging him.

Lying about someone in satirical verse is akin to what ordinary people call “qata'a masāni'ahu.” This refers to someone who approaches people and, if they do not pay him, attacks them by helping others commit sin and aggression against them, spreading lies about them, or doing something similar. Anyone who takes money in return for not lying about people or wronging them is taking filthy, unlawful earnings. Wrongdoing and lying are forbidden to him, so he must refrain from them without taking payment from the person he would wrong. If he refrains only in return for payment, that payment is an unlawful gain.

As for resources that are originally available for all Muslims to use—such as land game, sea catches, things growing naturally on the land, and resources found in the mountains and open country, including minerals, salt, atrūn and the like—if the ruler restricts access to them and orders that only his deputies may collect them and that they must be sold to the people, it does not become unlawful for people to buy them. They are not wronging anyone by doing so; rather, they themselves are wronged by being denied access to them. How, then, could it be unlawful for them to buy what they are entitled to take without payment?

If the ruler’s deputies obtain these resources only by using the payments they have unjustly collected for them, or through some similar injustice, the reply is: those funds were taken unjustly from the Muslims, and it is the Muslims who are