What is the buy-back sale?
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The questioner : What is the buy-back sale?
The Shaykh : The buy-back sale is when a person sells an item for a deferred price and then buys it back for a lower cash price. An example of this is selling a car for fifty thousand over a period of one year, and then buying it back from the person who sold it to him for forty thousand in cash. This is the issue of the buy-back sale, and it is forbidden because it is a stratagem to obtain usury or interest. Indeed, the one who sold the car for fifty thousand and then bought it back for forty thousand in cash is as if he gave this man forty thousand in cash for fifty thousand over a period of one year. And this car is a letter that came for a meaning.
For this reason, it is mentioned from Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him and his father) that he said regarding it: "It is dirhams for dirhams, with a piece of silk entering between them", meaning a garment. And the condemnation of trading through the buy-back sale has come in the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family): And regarding this issue, I mean the issue of the buy-back sale, we can state a criterion for it, which is: every contract by which one reaches usury or interest is, in reality, a buy-back sale.
The questioner : May Allah bless you.
The Shaykh : The buy-back sale is when a person sells an item for a deferred price and then buys it back for a lower cash price. An example of this is selling a car for fifty thousand over a period of one year, and then buying it back from the person who sold it to him for forty thousand in cash. This is the issue of the buy-back sale, and it is forbidden because it is a stratagem to obtain usury or interest. Indeed, the one who sold the car for fifty thousand and then bought it back for forty thousand in cash is as if he gave this man forty thousand in cash for fifty thousand over a period of one year. And this car is a letter that came for a meaning.
For this reason, it is mentioned from Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him and his father) that he said regarding it: "It is dirhams for dirhams, with a piece of silk entering between them", meaning a garment. And the condemnation of trading through the buy-back sale has come in the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family):
If you trade through the buy-back sale, and take the tails of the cows, and are content with agriculture, and abandon jihad, Allah will impose upon you a humiliation that will not be removed from your hearts until you return to your religion.
إذا تبايعتم بالعينة، وأخذتم بأذناب البقر ورضيتم بالحرث، وتركتم الجهاد سلط الله عليكم ذلاً لا ينزع من قلوبكم حتى ترجعوا إلى دينكمThe questioner : May Allah bless you.