Article & fatwaMedium trust

Riba and gharar are not the whole story: maisir is the third prohibition.

Riba and gharar are not the whole story: maisir is the third prohibition. 'In Islam, Maisir (Arabic ... maysir ... or ... qimâr) refers to gambling' — 'the acquisition of wealth by chance (not by effort)' — and 'Maisir is totally prohibited by Islamic law (Sharia)'. It is grounded in the Qur'an by name: 'They ask you about wine and gambling. Say: "In them both lies grave sin, though some benefit, to mankind. But their sin is more grave than their benefit"' (2:219), and 'O believers, wine and gambling, idols and divining arrows are an abhorrence, the work of Satan. So keep away from it, that you may prevail' (5:90-91). In finance the same term 'is usually translated as "gambling" but used to mean "speculation"', and 'Bans on both maisir and gharar tend to rule out derivatives, options and futures' (Wikipedia, 'Maisir', 'Gambling in Islam' and 'Islamic banking and finance')

What this source says

This corpus has named two of the three classical defects a transaction must avoid: riba, the prohibition of interest, and gharar, the prohibition of excessive uncertainty. The third completes the set, and the honest reader building a halal financial life needs it by name: maisir. The dedicated reference states it plainly — 'In Islam, Maisir (Arabic: ميسر, romanized: maisîr, maysir, maisira or قمار qimâr) refers to gambling' — and, unlike gharar which the sources call 'of less significance than Riba', maisir is unqualified: 'Maisir is totally prohibited by Islamic law (Sharia)'. Where riba is a defect of return and gharar a defect of knowledge, maisir is a defect of desert: wealth changing hands by chance rather than by earned effort or genuine exchange. A second reference captures this as 'the acquisition of wealth by chance (not by effort)', or more fully 'wishing something valuable with ease and without paying an equivalent compensation for it or without working for it, or without undertaking any liability against it by a game of chance'. That is the moral core of the prohibition, and the same source names it: 'the agreement between participants is based on immoral inducement provided by entirely wishful hopes in the participants' minds that they will gain by mere chance, with no consideration for the possibility of loss'. Every gambler expects to win; someone must lose; nothing of real value is created. Maisir is the one prohibition in this triad the Qur'an forbids by name, and the corpus quotes it exactly as the references give it, without inflating or trimming the wording. The first, gentler, revelation is at 2:219: 'They ask you about wine and gambling. Say: "In them both lies grave sin, though some benefit, to mankind. But their sin is more grave than their benefit."' The decisive prohibition comes at 5:90-91: 'O believers, wine and gambling, idols and divining arrows are an abhorrence, the work of Satan. So keep away from it, that you may prevail.' Notice that both verses pair gambling with wine — the same two are named together — which is why the prohibition is treated as categorical rather than a matter of degree. This is also where the classical prohibition reaches straight into modern finance, and where it matters most for anyone assessing an 'Islamic' product. The finance reference notes that maisir 'is usually translated as "gambling" but used to mean "speculation" in Islamic finance' — the wager need not be at a casino table; it can be a position whose entire payoff depends on an unknown future price move. That is why maisir and gharar so often bite together: 'Bans on both maisir and gharar tend to rule out derivatives, options and futures', and 'options, futures and "other derivatives" are "generally" not used in Islamic finance "because of the prohibition against maisir"'. Gharar objects that the parties cannot know what they are trading; maisir objects that the trade is a bet on chance rather than a real exchange of value. An instrument can offend both at once. So maisir is the third leg of the test the site has been assembling one entry at a time. Riba asks whether the financier's return is a trading, leasing or partnership return rather than interest. Gharar asks whether the underlying subject of the deal is real, known and deliverable. Maisir asks whether the gain is earned through genuine risk-bearing and effort, or merely won by chance at another's expense. A contract must clear all three: no riba, no excessive gharar, and no maisir. This is precisely why the takaful entry already in this corpus reframes insurance as mutual donation and shared risk rather than a wager, and why speculative derivatives sit outside compliant finance — not because risk itself is forbidden (real trade and partnership are risky), but because pure chance-based gain, detached from any productive undertaking, is.

Wording inside quotation marks is quoted from the source. The rest is this notebook’s summary of it — read the original before relying on it.

Provenance

Compiled from: Compiled from three neutral third-party references cross-read: Wikipedia, 'Maisir', 'Gambling in Islam' and 'Islamic banking and finance' (drawing on the Qur'anic verses they cite and transactional Islamic jurisprudence)
Source: DEFINITION ('In Islam, Maisir (Arabic ... maisîr, maysir, maisira or ... qimâr) refers to gambling'; 'the acquisition of wealth by chance (not by effort)'; 'wishing something valuable with ease and without paying an equivalent compensation for it or without working for it, or without undertaking any liability against it by a game of chance'; the 'immoral inducement provided by entirely wishful hopes in the participants' minds that they will gain by mere chance, with no consideration for the possibility of loss') + STATUS ('Maisir is totally prohibited by Islamic law (Sharia)') + QUR'ANIC GROUNDING (2:219 'They ask you about wine and gambling. Say: "In them both lies grave sin, though some benefit, to mankind. But their sin is more grave than their benefit."'; 5:90-91 'O believers, wine and gambling, idols and divining arrows are an abhorrence, the work of Satan. So keep away from it, that you may prevail.') + FINANCE REACH ('usually translated as "gambling" but used to mean "speculation" in Islamic finance'; 'Bans on both maisir and gharar tend to rule out derivatives, options and futures'; 'options, futures and "other derivatives" are "generally" not used in Islamic finance "because of the prohibition against maisir"') — three neutral encyclopaedia pages, verbatim, cross-read on three genuinely DIFFERENT articles 2026-07-02: [1] Wikipedia, 'Maisir' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maisir) — verbatim: 'In Islam, Maisir ... refers to gambling'; 'Maisir is totally prohibited by Islamic law (Sharia)'; the 2:219 and 5:90-91 translations quoted above. [2] Wikipedia, 'Gambling in Islam' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling_in_Islam) — verbatim: 'Maisir ... refers to gambling'; 'the acquisition of wealth by chance (not by effort)'; 'any game of chance'; 'wishing something valuable with ease and without paying an equivalent compensation for it or without working for it, or without undertaking any liability against it by a game of chance'; 'the agreement between participants is based on immoral inducement provided by entirely wishful hopes in the participants' minds that they will gain by mere chance, with no consideration for the possibility of loss'; the SAME 2:219 ('In them both lies grave sin ...') and 5:90-91 ('wine and gambling, idols and divining arrows are an abhorrence, the work of Satan') wording, independently cross-confirming the verse translations. [3] Wikipedia, 'Islamic banking and finance' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking_and_finance) — verbatim: maisir 'is usually translated as "gambling" but used to mean "speculation" in Islamic finance'; 'Bans on both maisir and gharar tend to rule out derivatives, options and futures'; 'options, futures and "other derivatives" are "generally" not used in Islamic finance "because of the prohibition against maisir"'.
School / basis: Comparative / foundational (maisir as the THIRD classical prohibition alongside riba and gharar — 'refers to gambling' / 'the acquisition of wealth by chance (not by effort)', 'totally prohibited by Islamic law (Sharia)'; grounded by name in the Qur'an at 2:219 ['grave sin ... more grave than their benefit'] and 5:90-91 ['an abhorrence, the work of Satan']; in finance 'used to mean "speculation"', and the reason — with gharar — that derivatives, options and futures are generally excluded from Islamic finance, and part of the reason takaful replaces conventional insurance)
Original: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maisir
Captured: 2026-07-02
Added: 2026-07-02
Trust: Useful and cited, but with an editorial or commercial lean worth cross-checking.

Compiler’s note

First DEDICATED MAISIR (gambling/speculation) entry in the corpus — the THIRD classical prohibition, completing the riba/gharar/maisir triad the corpus began naming in round-83's gharar entry (which itself flagged 'a dedicated maisir (gambling/speculation) explainer as the third classical prohibition' as the NEXT natural candidate). Every prior mechanism entry (qard hasan, takaful, waqf, sukuk, murabaha, mudaraba, ijara, salam, istisna, tawarruq, hawala, diminishing musharaka, wadiah/amanah) explains how money is financed, moved or held without interest; riba is covered site-wide; gharar got its dedicated entry in round-83; maisir — the one member of the triad the Qur'an forbids BY NAME — had none. Grep-confirmed before writing: `ls content/articles | grep -iE 'maisir|maysir|qimar|gambl|game.?of.?chance|speculat'` returned NOTHING. VERIFICATION: every load-bearing quote verified BY ME 2026-07-02 across THREE genuinely different Wikipedia pages (one WebFetch each), verbatim and mutually consistent — the 'refers to gambling' definition and 'totally prohibited by Islamic law (Sharia)' status from the dedicated 'Maisir' page; the 'acquisition of wealth by chance (not by effort)', 'game of chance' and 'immoral inducement ... no consideration for the possibility of loss' framing from 'Gambling in Islam'; the finance-specific 'used to mean "speculation"' + 'Bans on both maisir and gharar ... rule out derivatives, options and futures' + '"because of the prohibition against maisir"' from 'Islamic banking and finance'. CRUCIALLY, the two Qur'anic verse translations (2:219 and 5:90-91) were quoted with MATCHING wording on TWO independent pages ('Maisir' and 'Gambling in Islam'), so the verse numbers AND the English rendering are cross-confirmed, not single-sourced — this is why maisir (unlike gharar in round-83, where the sources gave NO verse number and it was honestly dropped) CAN carry named verse numbers here without fabrication. TRUST 'medium' (three well-corroborated encyclopaedia pages that themselves quote the Qur'an + transactional fiqh, NOT a primary read of a fiqh-council resolution or an AAOIFI standard). DELIBERATELY DROPPED / NOT ASSERTED per the no-fabrication rule: (a) any hadith collection number (the entry rests on the two named Qur'anic verses, which the sources DO give, not on numbered hadith); (b) any AAOIFI standard number or named fiqh-council resolution on maisir (none returned/verified); (c) any market/volume figure; (d) any claim maisir outranks or equals riba in juristic weight — the body keeps the triad framing (riba = defect of return, gharar = defect of knowledge, maisir = defect of desert) without ranking maisir above riba, and notes the source's OWN 'totally prohibited' status without extrapolating a ranking. FRESHNESS-HONEST: all claims are structural/definitional/scriptural, no volatile dated statistic. JSON-only per the established article convention (content/articles/*.json feed app/lib/corpus.ts + the /corpus stats badge + Phase-2 retrieval; NOT rendered as individual routed cards), so no SourceCard/route/href added and internal-link integrity is unaffected. Articles 43->44, corpus total 141->142 (articles 44 + books 23 + youtube 23 + curated 52 = 142). This entry pairs with the round-83 gharar entry and the takaful mechanism entry to give the corpus its first COMPLETE statement of the three-part test: a contract must clear no riba AND no excessive gharar AND no maisir. NEXT natural candidate for a future run: wakalah (agency) as the fee-for-service contract underlying much of modern Islamic banking operations, or kafalah (guarantee) as the surety contract.

Topics

islamic-financemaisirmaysirqimargamblingspeculationribagharargame-of-chanceprohibitionthird-prohibitionmu-amalatderivativesoptionsfuturestakafulquranal-baqarahal-maidahshariah-compliancesubstance-over-form

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