Maqasid-based analysis of deferring both counter values in financial transactions and its impact on contemporary applications

Sharī'ah texts forbid the postponement of the counter values in financial transactions. However, some contemporary jurisprudential opinions abide by this prohibition without attempting to rationalize it, and sometimes despite their apparent abidance by the prohibition, the same opinions violate the prohibition by allowing stratagems that will lead to the same result of postponement of the counter values. This indicates, in large part, the need to postpone the two counter values in our modern financial transactions, but not in all applications. Nevertheless, this need is not realized in many applications in which the postponement of the alternatives is called for, but on the other hand, it is evident and justified in some other applications. This paper comes to analyze the Shariah objectives of the prohibition of such transactions, and then to investigate the contemporary applications that relate to this prohibition. Based on the identified Shariah objectives, and on the extent of the contemporary need to these applications, the paper goes then to use that as criteria to determine the acceptable and the unacceptable applications indicating though their positive or negative effects.