Explaining the deception of some Muslims in committing prohibited acts by following the example of the Jews, with a mention of some errors of the Zahiri school.

The Shaykh : We have many examples; among them is what I mentioned recently, that some Muslims deceive regarding unlawful marriage by calling it a marriage to make lawful what Allah has forbidden. Allah has forbidden a man who has divorced his wife three times to marry her again unless she marries another husband. So what did they do? They brought in a "borrowed ram"—the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) called it that—and they said to him: Our goal is for you to marry this woman and then divorce her so that she becomes lawful for her first husband. So what do they do? They bring this borrowed ram, they bring the woman's guardian, and they bring false witnesses who testify that so-and-so married so-and-so for such-and-such a dowry, and so on. It is merely a formality. The reality is making this wife lawful for her husband who divorced her three times, whereas she is not lawful for him unless she marries a lawful husband, and so on. We detailed this issue yesterday with some detail.
Muslims have fallen into this kind of deception. This is a sister to that case, but the difference is that this is by hand, like... a Zahiri position. Some of the old Zahiris were too shy to fall into this, as they would bring up things that were actually laughable due to their deviation from the wording of the hadith and their lack of depth in understanding the objectives and implications of the hadith. For example, some of them said—take, for instance, the hadith: . This is a clear and evident hadith. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade urinating in stagnant water that does not flow or move. Some of the Zahiri scholars stopped at the wording of the hadith and did not delve into what lies beyond it. They said: If a man urinates in a vessel and then pours what is in the vessel into stagnant water, it is permissible. This is a Zahiri position, but the Zahiri position of the people of... is more severe than this.
The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade urinating in stagnant water. Why? Everyone understands that the purpose of this prohibition is to preserve the purity and cleanliness of the water. If a person urinates in it, he exposes it to impurity, and he has certainly contaminated it. This causes harm to people by contaminating this water, if we do not say... If this is the intended meaning of this explicit prohibition, what is the difference between the case to which the hadith directly addresses and the other case where a person urinates in a vessel and then pours this urine from the vessel into the water? In terms of wording, one cannot say: "He urinated in stagnant water"; rather, one says: "He urinated in a vessel." But the purpose and objective of the prohibition confirm that there is no difference between the case mentioned in the text of the hadith and this other case we are using as an example. Then we say in Syria: all the sewers and latrines flow through pipes for a long or short distance, and the end of the road is that they pour into flowing water, thereby contaminating this water. So if there is a pipe where a person urinates or defecates, and then there is a lake with stagnant water; whether he comes and stands on the edge of the lake and urinates in it directly, or through this pipe as they say, "All roads lead to the mill," whether he urinates directly or indirectly, the contamination occurs. And this is what the Lawgiver aimed at when He forbade urinating in stagnant water.
This is an old Zahiri position, and this is a modern Zahiri position. This is a permissible case because it is by machine, and that case is forbidden because it is by hand; knowing that the machine was made by hand, and without the working hand, this active case would not exist.