the preceding views.

There is also an anomalous view: that the legal rationale is possessing value as property. This contradicts the scriptural texts and the consensus of the early generations. Under every view, sameness of kind is a condition for usury through unequal exchange.

Our purpose here is to discuss the legal rationale for prohibiting usury in dinars and dirhams. The more evident view, held by the majority of scholars, is that the rationale is their monetary function, not their weight. Unequal exchange is not prohibited in other goods sold by weight, such as lead, iron, silk, cotton, and flax. Evidence for this is the scholars’ agreement that gold and silver may be paid in advance for goods sold by weight. This is an exchange of one weighed commodity for another with deferred delivery; if weight were the legal rationale, this would not be permissible.

The opposing scholar says that permitting this is an exercise of juristic preference, yet it contradicts the proposed legal rationale. He also says that it was permitted because of need, although analogy would require its prohibition. On the basis of what he has said, he would thus be committed to a rationale for usury contrary to his own position.

As for making an exception to the legal rationale—what has been termed juristic preference—unless scriptural evidence establishes both that the ruling is tied to the stated rationale and that the exceptional case possesses a feature which, according to the revealed law and the hadiths, prevents the ruling from applying, the rationale is unsound.

Basing the ruling on monetary function, however, grounds it in a relevant attribute. The purpose of money is to serve as a standard of value for property, through which the value of property may be determined, and not