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The distinction between Allah’s right and a purely human right.
• Whenever the matter involves a right that belongs to Allah, the human party’s consent alone is not enough to render it lawful—such as contracts of ribā (usury).
• Whenever the right belongs to a human being, it may be waived with that person’s valid consent, for the entitlement does not extend beyond him. -
The Revealed Law has not fixed a specific limit for what constitutes “separation”; the point therefore reverts to customary usage. Whatever people conventionally regard as a parting that ends the joint session renders the sale final. Thus leaving a small shop, going up to its upper floor, moving away in an open field, and similar actions are all deemed a separation that terminates the option period and makes the contract binding.
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The scholars have declared it forbidden to separate merely out of fear that the other party might rescind the sale. The compilers of the Sunan transmit that the Prophet ﷺ said, “It is not lawful for him to leave his companion for fear that he might ask to be released from the sale,” and because such conduct is an artifice to strip the other party of his right.
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Truthfulness in dealings and disclosure of whatever the item contains are causes of blessing in both this world and the next, just as deceit, lying, and concealment erase blessing and make it vanish. This is plainly observed in worldly life: those whose trade prospers and whose goods find ready buyers are the truthful and well-mannered, whereas no business suffers loss or bankruptcy except through treachery. What Allah has in store for each group in the Hereafter is far greater.
Scholarly disagreement
The jurists differed over the validity of the session-option (khiyār al-majlīs):
• The majority of scholars—among the Companions, the Successors, and the leading imams—affirm it. These include ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, Ibn ʿAbbās, Abū Hurayrah, Abū Barzah, Ṭāwūs, Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab, ʿAṭāʾ, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, al-Shaʿbī, al-Zuhrī, al-Awzāʿī, al-Layth, Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥāq, Abū Thawr, al-Bukhārī, and all other diligent mujtahids. Their evidence is the clear, sound hadiths—such as the two under discussion and others. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said, “The report of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar is the most reliable of all solitary transmissions.”
• Abū Ḥanīfah, Mālik, and most of their followers, on the other hand, do not recognize the session-option. They sought to justify leaving the hadiths unacted upon with weak arguments that the majority have thoroughly refuted. Among those arguments:
First: that the hadith runs counter to the practice of the people of Medina, and their practice constitutes evidence. The reply is that many scholars of Medina do affirm the option—including the Companions already mentioned and Saʿīd ibn