has stronger support in the Quran, the Sunnah, and analogical reasoning. For scholars agree that wine becomes pure when Allah causes it to turn into vinegar. This substance falls under neither the wording nor the meaning of the prohibition, so it is neither forbidden nor impure.

Those who consider it pure permit its sale. Some permit its sale even while considering it impure. The disagreement over this is well known in “the issue of impure manure.”

“The second fundamental issue”: If selling it is permissible, one cannot therefore say that it is being sold in the prescribed manner. There is no doubt that it may be sold through an advance-payment contract. The question is not about selling a particular, identified item, which would require inspection and the like. Rather, when an advance-payment contract is made for it, a known quantity and a known delivery date must be specified, the seller must receive the payment during the contractual session, and the other conditions of an advance-payment sale must be fulfilled.

If, however, they have merely adopted the outward form of an advance-payment sale, while the buyer receives whatever accumulates—and this is what they actually intend—whether it is more or less than the specified quantity, then this is an invalid contract. It must be prohibited, and those engaging in it must be stopped.

He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

About a man in need who said to a merchant who had some cloth: “Give me this piece