Also, his third and final question asks: What is the ruling on taking the difference in a sale, meaning in gold, if he sells gold and takes the difference, or sells gold for gold?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : Also, his third and final question asks: What is the ruling on taking the difference in a sale, meaning in gold, if he sells gold and takes the difference, or sells gold for gold and takes the difference between them?
The Shaykh : If he sells gold for gold and takes the difference between them, and if this difference is in exchange for the excess weight of the second gold, then there is a difference of opinion among the scholars. Some scholars, such as Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, permitted it, saying: It is permissible to sell jewelry weighing twenty mithqals for jewelry weighing twenty-five mithqals, and to add dirhams to the lesser amount to correspond to the five mithqals in excess of twenty. He said that this does not contradict the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)Sahih al-Bukhari 2176 because here we make the excess, or we make the dirhams, correspond to the excess, which is five mithqals, and we make twenty mithqals of the twenty-five correspond to the twenty mithqals that are with the dirhams. By this, what the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) made obligatory is realized, namely that gold for gold must be equal in weight.
The well-known position in the Hanbali school is that this is not permissible. They said: The generality of the hadith includes this case, and this case undoubtedly contains an increase in one side from a different type and an increase from the same type in the other side. They said: That is not permissible.
The questioner : Yes.
The Shaykh : The precaution is not to do it; this is the most cautious approach. The owner of the old gold should sell his gold externally, meaning to another person, then take its price and add to it the dirhams he will add from before, and buy the new gold. This is safer, more cautious, and clears the conscience.
The Shaykh : If he sells gold for gold and takes the difference between them, and if this difference is in exchange for the excess weight of the second gold, then there is a difference of opinion among the scholars. Some scholars, such as Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, permitted it, saying: It is permissible to sell jewelry weighing twenty mithqals for jewelry weighing twenty-five mithqals, and to add dirhams to the lesser amount to correspond to the five mithqals in excess of twenty. He said that this does not contradict the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)
Do not sell gold for gold unless equal in weight
الذهب بالذهب مثلاً بمثلThe well-known position in the Hanbali school is that this is not permissible. They said: The generality of the hadith
Equal in weight
مثلاً بمثلThe questioner : Yes.
The Shaykh : The precaution is not to do it; this is the most cautious approach. The owner of the old gold should sell his gold externally, meaning to another person, then take its price and add to it the dirhams he will add from before, and buy the new gold. This is safer, more cautious, and clears the conscience.