We ask Allah, the Exalted, for protection and guidance, to show us the truth as truth and enable us to follow it, and to show us falsehood as falsehood and enable us to avoid it.
12 – Legal stratagems are forbidden; they do not alter realities, even when things are renamed or some of their qualities are removed.
13 – The Sacred Law has brought everything that contains benefit and has warned against everything that contains harm or whose harm outweighs its benefit.
14 – The items declared unlawful in the hadith are merely examples of the various repulsive things that are forbidden—those whose harm rebounds upon one’s religion, intellect, body, natural disposition, or character.
Thus, it is as though this hadith was given to clarify the categories of repulsive things. (1)
Chapter: The Salam Sale
Salam—also called salaf, identical to it in pronunciation and meaning—is so named because the capital is handed over in the session (taslīm), and salaf because it is paid in advance.
Its legal definition is: a contract for a specified item owed in one’s liability, to be delivered at a fixed future date, against a price received in the very session of the contract. From this definition it is evident that salam is a type of sale.
The permissibility of salam rests on the Quran, the sunnah, scholarly consensus, and sound analogy. As for the Quranic proof, Allah says: “O you who believe! When you contract a debt for a fixed term, write it down” (2:282). Ibn ʿAbbās said, “I testify that advance payment for a deferred delivery has been made lawful by Allah in His Book and that He has permitted it,” and then he recited this verse.
Regarding the sunnah, one of its proofs is the hadith that will follow in this chapter. As for consensus, no scholar is reported to have prohibited salam. Al-Shāfiʿī said, “The ummah has unanimously agreed on the permissibility of salam, as far as I know.”
Salam also accords with analogy and serves the interests of both seller and buyer: the seller profits by obtaining the goods for less than their spot price, while the buyer profits from the liquidity provided by the price he has received. To secure these benefits and remove harm and uncertainty, the sharia has laid down conditions: the price must be received in the sitting of the contract so that the seller in fact gains the needed funds; both counter-values and the term must be precisely known; and the goods sold must be described by sharia-approved standards of measurement, thereby eliminating dispute and litigation.
There is no essential difference between deferring the price and deferring the commodity; both conform to sound analogy and serve the common good, and the Sacred Law brings nothing but benefit.