For in the two Sahīh collections, Ibn ‘Umar reports that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,

“forbade selling fruit before its soundness became apparent, forbidding both seller and buyer.”

If this tenant pays his money to obtain the fruit, then, according to their own position, he is effectively the purchaser whom the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited from doing so. How, then, can he pay his money for such a transaction? There is abundant evidence that transactions of this kind are invalid, which we have discussed elsewhere. A jurist is not someone who takes a practice that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited to avert harm to people, only to turn instead to something even more harmful. Such a person is like someone seeking refuge from scorching ground in a fire.

This can be understood from the principle of invalidating legal stratagems: many of them entail greater corruption and harm than openly committing the prohibited act. As Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī said:

“They seek to deceive Allah as though they were deceiving children. It would be less objectionable to me if they did it straightforwardly.”

For this reason, tahlīl marriage—a marriage intended to make a divorced woman lawful again for her former husband—entails greater corruption than temporary marriage. A man entering a temporary marriage intends to be married for a certain period, whereas a man entering a tahlīl marriage has no such purpose. Every harm underlying the prohibition of temporary marriage is therefore present in tahlīl marriage, with further harms besides. This is why people’s hearts recoil more strongly from tahlīl marriage than from temporary marriage. Temporary marriage was permitted in the early days of Islam