What is the ruling on a loan that leads to a benefit (installment payments)? And an extensive discussion on the prohibition of legal stratagems, with an explanation of the hadith: “Whoever sells two sales in one sale.”

Al-Hawini: I went with one of the brothers to a car exhibition, and I chose a car worth eight thousand riyals, on the condition that he would give me one thousand and two hundred riyals each month, and there would be an increase of five thousand on it; that is, it would amount to thirteen thousand riyals on him, and four thousand has reached me from it; is there anything forbidden in this or not?

The Shaykh : What did he take in return for the increase?
Al-Hawini: It seems the return was that I gave him the amount.

The Shaykh : The case is an open usurious matter, it does not need a question; because this is a “loan that led to a benefit.”
Al-Hawini: But he might say, I mean, the car is between me and him, it is not money for money, but money and its income is a car in half?

The Shaykh : “Double,” a stratagem, many people fall into this today.
Al-Hawini: Installment payments, meaning it seems he intends by it installment payments.

The Shaykh : It is not permissible, he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: , and the Wise Lawgiver has forbidden legal stratagems, and , the hadith that came in “Sahih” from his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): , the point of this hadith is that Allah (Mighty and Majestic), when He forbade the Jews as He said in the Noble Qur’an: , among these good things that were forbidden to the Jews were the fats, so it was obligatory for them when they slaughtered the animal to benefit from its meat, and to throw its fat to the ground, so the Jews did not have patience with this just divine ruling, so what did they do?
They took the fats and threw them into the pots, then they lit the fire underneath them, so they took another form, and by that Satan made their evil deeds attractive to them, and deluded them that this fat had become something other than the forbidden fat, so they took the fat and rendered it (i.e., melted it) and sold it and ate its price.
The point is that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) disciplined us with such as the hadith of His Prophet and its like, that it is not permissible for a Muslim to stratagem to make lawful what Allah (Mighty and Majestic) has forbidden by the slightest of stratagems. And the marriage of tahil (dissolution) which – known to those present, if Allah wills – is a marriage in which the conditions of the prescribed marriage are usually met, but why did the Wise Lawgiver make it an invalid marriage and curse the one who dissolves and the one for whom it is dissolved?
Because it was not intended for what is usually intended from the lawful marriage which our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) referred to in His saying (Blessed and Exalted is He): , since the intention of the marriage of tahil was not to achieve this tranquility and affection between the spouses, but rather the intention was to make lawful what Allah forbade in His saying: , and this is a discipline from Allah (Mighty and Majestic) for the one who divorces his wife with the third divorce, so that people do not become accustomed to divorcing and then regretting their divorce, so this one who dissolves hastens the return of the woman to her husband who divorced her three times, and Allah (Mighty and Majestic) says: , marry a lawful marriage as you did before, so when this one who dissolves intends to make lawful what Allah forbade, he was cursed in the well-known hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him): .
And now we return to the previous picture, or to the sale of installments, if I came to a rich person named Zayd and said to him, lend me a thousand pounds, I want to buy a car, lend me a thousand pounds for the sake of Allah, he says, I will do it but on the condition that you give me a thousand and one hundred – for example –, this is forbidden by the consensus of the scholars of the Muslims; because it is open usury, and a loan that led to a benefit.
Now we introduce the intermediary; I want to buy a car, so he says to me, go you and buy the car, and I will pay for you, and this costs – for example – ten thousand, you pay ten thousand and one hundred; what is the difference between this picture and the first picture? There is no difference at all except that the car entered as an intermediary to make lawful what Allah forbade, and the result is one, and that if he gave me the value of the car and took usury from me; then this is open usury, but he is not willing to give me the car, he says, go take the car, then he takes from me the value of the car, and the usury on it “all roads lead to the mill”; therefore he (peace be upon him) said: , so I know that some scholars, old and new, interpret this hadith with an interpretation by which they exclude the sale of installments, and they have many interpretations in that, but I, from my methodology and my upbringing, first, that I interpret the hadiths with each other, and second, I return to the Salaf in interpreting them, and especially among them those who were narrators of some of them, and Imam Ahmad narrated in his “Musnad” with a strong chain from Simak ibn Harb – and he is from the Tabi’un –, he narrated from Ibn Mas’ud (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade two sales in one sale,” and in another wording: “two transactions in one transaction,” so a man said to Simak, the narrator of the hadith: “What are two sales in one sale?” He said: That you say: “I sell you this for cash for such and such, and for deferred payment for such and such.” This is the sale of installments, the narrator of the hadith, Simak ibn Harb, interprets with it the hadith: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade two sales in one sale,” he said: That you say: “I sell you this for such and such dinars – for example – for cash, and for such and such dinars and dirhams for deferred payment.” What is this dirham in return for? In return for the deferred payment, so there is no difference between the increase that is called an increase in return for the term in the sale or in the loan, the sale here is an intermediary to make lawful what Allah forbade on the tongue of His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and those who go to the permissibility of the sale of installments – and they know such hadiths – interpret them by saying that the prohibition of two sales in one sale is only due to the ignorance of the price, because the seller offers two prices; the cash price, and the deferred price, so when the buyer separates from the seller with one of the prices, they say – and I am not with them naturally – because he separated and it was not specified which of the prices he relied on between them.
I say: such an interpretation first contradicts the reasoning mentioned in the first hadith, because this reasoning that I quoted earlier from some of them is a reasoning by the ignorance of the price, and this ignorance contradicts the legal cause, and if the matter in the reasoning of a legal ruling turns between a rational cause and a legal cause, there is no doubt that the legal cause is the one that must be relied upon without the rational cause, what is the legal cause? It was mentioned earlier in his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): , he forbade two sales in one sale, this coincides with this part of this hadith: this is the hadith of Abu Hurayrah