When a Sale Cannot Take Place

A false contract, bayʿ bāṭil, is one that cannot take place at all. Certain things are given freely by Allah (swt), balāsh, majjānan, and cannot be bought or sold: nobody may say, I am selling you air, charging for the very breath a person breathes, since that air is not his to sell. Buying oxygen for a tank, to descend and dive beneath the sea, is a different matter and is permitted, because what is bought there is the equipment and the service, not the air that belongs to everyone freely. Any contract over what is given free in this way is void, because it does not amount to possession of any wealth or property.

The second kind, bayʿ fāsid, a defective sale, is never permitted. Suppose a person sells a kilo of honey for five dollars: the buyer takes the honey from the seller's hand but has not yet paid the money, and before paying, sells that same honey on to somebody else. This is a circular transaction and is not permissible, because the first buyer never actually took possession of the honey — the price was never paid — and so he had nothing of his own to sell on.

A third kind of impermissible sale is one where the goods themselves are lawful but something ḥarām has been mixed into the transaction — a contamination of the sale rather than a defect in the goods. Allah (swt) says:

— that it is farḍ upon every male Muslim to attend the Friday congregation, to hear the khuṭbah and pray ṣalāt al-Jumuʿah, and that all business, all transaction, is to stop at that time. A fish and chip shop that continues buying and selling once the call for Jumuʿah has sounded is engaged in what the Ḥanafī jurists call taḥrīm al-makrūh, close to ḥarām: buying and selling is in itself good, a lawful business, but the time at which it is carried on can itself make the transaction prohibited.