Private ownership (al-milkiyya al-khassa)

Private ownership is one of the three kinds of property adopted by al-Tahir Qana in al-Dawr al-Tawzi'i li-l-Milkiyya fi al-Iqtisad al-Islami, alongside public ownership and state ownership. ¹ Quoting Abd Allah Yunus, he defines it as that whose owner is a specific person, an independent individual, or a group of individuals in partnership whose shares are defined and known; it covers all lawful wealth — things, usufructs and rights — that does not fall within public or state property. ²

The author argues that the Qur'an attributes wealth to persons as their own in many verses, among them the ban on consuming one another's wealth wrongfully unless by trade with mutual consent (al-Nisa' 29), the verse leaving their capital to those who repent of riba (al-Baqara 279), the command to take alms from their wealth (al-Tawba 103), the known right of the asker and the deprived (al-Ma'arij 24–25) and the verses of inheritance. ^{2 3} From the Sunna he cites the Farewell Sermon on the sanctity of life, property and honour, the hadith on one who takes a Muslim's property by a false oath, Aisha's hadith that whoever cultivates land belonging to no one has the better right to it — on which Umar ruled in his caliphate — and the Prophet ﷺ's approval of sale, endowment, bequests and gifts; he notes that scholars agree that private property is lawful and that violating it is forbidden. ^{3 4}

He divides its causes into those that create ownership and those that transfer it. Creating causes are labour — every lawful effort, such as farming, trade and craft; he recalls that the Prophet herded sheep for the people of Mecca and traded with Khadija's capital, that the Emigrants were traders and the Helpers farmers — reviving dead land, and gains in war such as spoils, bonuses and the arms of a slain foe. ^{5 6 7} Transferring causes are contracts of exchange and of gift, inheritance, bequest and endowment. ⁷

Among the law's means of protecting it he lists the recording of debts in the debt verse, the right to defend one's property, the penalty for theft, the ban on consuming wealth wrongfully through uncertain sales, riba or intercepting caravans before market, interdiction of the incompetent, and the conditions placed on expropriation. ^{7 8 9} Here he quotes the resolution of the Council of the Islamic Fiqh Academy at its fourth session in Jeddah (18–23 Jumada al-Akhira 1408 / 6–11 February 1988): real property may be expropriated for the public good only with immediate fair compensation of no less than its market value, by the ruler or his deputy, for a public need such as mosques, roads and bridges, not to be turned to public or private investment, and with the owner having first right of recovery if the planned use is dropped. ^{9 10}