اختلاف علة الربا بين الفقهاء

This study aims to clarify the effective cause (ʿillah) of riba in Islamic jurisprudence and to examine the points of agreement and disagreement among the Islamic schools of law regarding the legal basis for its application to wealth and financial transactions. The study adopts an inductive and analytical approach by tracing the legal texts concerning the prohibition of riba in the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and scholarly consensus, and by analyzing jurists’ views on the definition of riba, its types, and the effective cause upon which non-textual cases are analogically attached to the six ribawi commodities mentioned in the Prophetic tradition. The study discusses the linguistic and technical meanings of riba and shows that jurists agree on the prohibition of both riba al-nasi’ah and riba al-fadl in the explicitly mentioned commodities. However, they differ regarding the common effective cause by which other commodities may be compared to them. The Hanafi school holds that the effective cause is measurement by volume or weight together with unity of genus. The Maliki school considers storability and use as staple food in edible items. The Shafi‘i school identifies the effective cause in gold and silver as their function as money or price-measure, while in the remaining commodities it is edibility. The Hanbali school contains several views, including measurement by volume or weight, or edibility combined with volume or weight. The Zahiri school, however, restricts riba to the explicitly mentioned commodities because it rejects analogical reasoning. The study concludes that disagreement over the effective cause of riba has influenced contemporary juristic applications related to deferred gold sales, repayment of loans in different currencies, stipulating an increase in loans, and fixing predetermined profits in investment transactions. The study emphasizes the importance of accurately defining the effective cause of riba due to its direct impact on distinguishing lawful from unlawful transactions and on fulfilling the objectives of Islamic law in preventing injustice and exploitation and protecting financial dealings.