The Ruling on Temporarily Selling Land to Escape Zakah
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
This questioner says, and he is from Al-Khabar, that the owner of a piece of land agreed with another person to sell this land to him, or transfer its ownership to him, for a period of one month, and then it would return to its original owner in exchange for a sum of money. The landowner intends by this to escape the zakah. What is the ruling on this action?
Answer:
This action is not permissible. It is a deception to drop the obligation of zakah, and that is not permissible. Nor is a temporary sale permissible; a sale is permanent, and it is not permissible to make it temporary, then have it return to its owner, and for it to be a sale of deception or a forced sale or something similar. Yes.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you.
This questioner says, and he is from Al-Khabar, that the owner of a piece of land agreed with another person to sell this land to him, or transfer its ownership to him, for a period of one month, and then it would return to its original owner in exchange for a sum of money. The landowner intends by this to escape the zakah. What is the ruling on this action?
Answer:
This action is not permissible. It is a deception to drop the obligation of zakah, and that is not permissible. Nor is a temporary sale permissible; a sale is permanent, and it is not permissible to make it temporary, then have it return to its owner, and for it to be a sale of deception or a forced sale or something similar. Yes.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you.
Source
نور على الدرب - الفوزان - 02/263 — archive.org (5:59)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.