I think I should have thought more before choosing accounting as my major, but as I look for a job I also am learning how interest is haram. I heard someone claim working at a bank is literally haram. And as accountants, you can’t avoid interest.
First, is recording down interest haram? As in writing down who owes you(the company you work for) interest, and how much? And how much you owe someone?
Second, What if you are just auditing a company, to make sure they recorded the interest amount correctly? Everything is recording, but you are double checking their work?
Third, what if you are trying to figure out how much tax someone owes on their interest income? Is that allowed?
Okay, so if all those three are haram, than basically one cannot work as bookkeeper, do audit, and prepare taxes.
I realize a lot of these are what-if situations, and might be hard to find an exact answer. But if someone who knows more about the subject can give me some more details, that would be great.
You better ask an aaalim, but the way I see it, you are only recording/auditing/preparing-taxes-for an income stream of an institution. In this case, that income stream is generated thorough charging interest, and the institution is bank. You are not promoting, endorsing or facilitating that income stream (or the way its generated). You are only doing what you would do even if the money was generated through halal sources.
You may want to find another job, but doing what you are doing is not haram in my opinion.
it is a tricky question. if you look at islamic banking/finance. they still can't outright reject interest based enterprises/organizations. they have developed criteria of what level of interest is tolerable. Like if the company has gearing level below a specific cutoff ratio, it is considered ok to do business with that company.
Likewise, being an accountant, one can not escape from the involvement of interest 100%. Best you can do is, try to work where involvement of interest is as little as possible.
About job, you have to think at two levels.
1) the organisation that you work for - does it carry on halal business? does it rely on interest in its primary revenue genearating activity?? or what level of involvment it has with interest based transactions overall.??
Keeping this in mind, banks and most of the other financial institutions would fall in the interest earning category. since the very basis of a bank is to earn interest. so that will be literally 100% haram... just like working for a porn producing company or liquor manufacturer etc.
2) The job you are performing. whether it involves interest based work. Now this is the area where you won't have it easy to decide. Some sort of intersest recording/verification/calculation will always be involved....unless you work in a company with no debt.... in this regard, i think you can't do much honestly...
It is still a very grey area, but i hope the above mentioned helps you a bit.
Thanks guys. The link is helpful.
It answered the question directly about recording not being haram, since you are not directly involved in the action. I would assume tax prep. and auditing is the same.
And I also did email an Alim today earlier, I'm waiting for their reply.
Thanks guys. The link is helpful.
It answered the question directly about recording not being haram, since you are not directly involved in the action. I would assume tax prep. and auditing is the same.
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Jab hum ne yeahi baat likhkhee to samajh nahi aa'yee, haan
