What is ihtikar (hoarding), and why is it prohibited?

Ihtikar refers to buying up and withholding essential goods from the market — particularly during shortages — specifically to create artificial scarcity and drive up prices before reselling at inflated rates. The Prophet ﷺ said clearly that whoever hoards in this way is sinful. The prohibition targets the manipulative intent and harmful effect: exploiting people's basic needs during hardship for personal profit, at the expense of the wider community's ability to access necessities like food and medicine at fair prices. Classical jurists generally distinguished ordinary inventory-holding or normal business stock (which is fine) from deliberate withholding of essentials during scarcity to manipulate prices, which is not. Some scholars extend the principle to modern price gouging — sharply raising prices on necessities during emergencies (natural disasters, pandemics) purely because demand has spiked and buyers have no alternative — since the underlying harm (exploiting desperate need for windfall profit) is the same. Islamic economic teaching generally favors market prices set by genuine supply and demand over both hoarding-driven price spikes and heavy-handed price controls, but government intervention against hoarding and price manipulation during emergencies has long been considered legitimate by Muslim jurists.

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