Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

Society Religion & Philosophy
1

:salam2:

On this Friday, while listening the sermon, the Imam masjid said: “Don’t work in banking and insurance field because the income source of both are from impermissible (Haram) way”.

  • Sayyiduna Abd Allah ibn Masud (Allah be pleased with him) narrates that the Messenger of Allah :saw2: cursed (la’ant) the one who accepted usury, the one who paid it, the witness to it, and the one who recorded it. (Sunan Abu Dawud: Book 22, Number 3327).
  • In another Hadith, the Messenger of Allah (saw2) invoked curse on the receiver of interest, the payer of interest, the scribe and the two witnesses. And he said: They are the same (i.e. in sin). (Sahih Muslim)

The permissibility (halaal) or impermissibility (haram) of employment in a particular firm or company basically depends on two things:

The nature of the job must be lawful (halal), meaning if the work entails something that is prohibited in Shariah, such as posing for nude picture-taking, serving alcohol or recording and calculating interest transactions, etc, then this type of work will be unlawful.
The reason for its prohibition is that, the work itself has been prohibited in Shariah. And due to this, even if the salary was paid from a Halal source, the work will still remain unlawful.

The salary or income that one receives must also be from a Halal source. If the work itself is lawful (halal), but the salary is paid from unlawful and impure money, such as or interest money, it will still be unlawful to accept that job.

P.S. this is for awarness of our borther/sister :slight_smile:

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

insurance can be completely non interest based and so can banking. as a matter of there are banks which dont work with interest.

Tell the imam to get edumacated and then talk about things..

but taking your argument further, no one should work in any govt related job in Pakistan because Pakistan as a nation has a lot of debt and pays interest on it..so professors in govt college..haram job.

taking it further, since masjid is running on donations and many of those donations are from people whose source of income is interest related one way or the other, Imam sahab should resign pronto.

3

It is a delicate matter and complex.

Many points need to be considered before accepting or even refuting what is said by the Imam.
He may be right and he may not be depends how one looks at it.

Money is money. It does not by itself has a stamp placed automatically if it was earned by interest or not. Money earned by interest, bribery, stealing or cheating…they all look the same! :slight_smile:

A person who is working in any job (as long as the job itself is acceptable or halal) then accepting money for that hard work should be considered acceptable.

The matter gets real difficult when one thinks with same token a person who is guard, cashier, cleaner, maintenance person, operator on a drug business place, brothel house…humm…should his/her salary be considered halal? He/she is doing his/her assigned job and has nothing to do with the business what goes in there.

4

:salam2:

The imam said what exactly is going on these day. btw i believe if one peson stand-up and say truth then 100 will stand-up against one person to blame him/her what he/she saying is incorrect/wrong instead of looking into this matter. In GCC ( i don’t know 'bout rest) poeples r rely on credit card which make their life more easiest then b4 but they don’t realize that the interest on it are all impremissible amount.

Refer to you next para, could u please explain how being a nation it has lot of debt and pays interest especially in govt. related jobs, if u don’t mind thanx.

Answering to your last para. Pardon me i disagree with. An interest taker will never donate even it could be smallest amount. In other way for show-off yeah he/she might give donation to needy peoples in presence of media etc.

I agree! but refer to your last para. Ofcoz the employee has nothing to do with the business but how business pay his/her salary, other liabilites etc. These paid by the income/profit which business/owner earns by selling his/her products and as u said if the resource is impremissible then no dobut is impermissible for the employee(s), as well.

5

Walekum As-Salaam!

There is nothing principally wrong with what you posted. :slight_smile:

It becomes pretty much an individual’s choice what position to take depending on obviously wrong place of business or a place where… ‘some legitimacy can be brought for lack of other alternative’.

It is a complex and bigger issue than it appears on the surface. I mean the job which involves banking or insurance.

6

May be the imam was only referring to conventional banks and insurance companies.

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

Kami you have touched a very sensative topic, do you think we are living in a society fully cleaned of other evils?

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:salam2:

maybe or maybe not :hmmm:

Unfortunatily :nahi: we arn’t that much secured. But somehow we should try to avoid it in any possible way and to keep away fro it others too.

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

i m not sayinng that you have done any thing wrong but just thinking that many of(infact all of us)facing the same system that we want to get out from all these things but we can't,in any bank you can't have account without usuri so i think if Allah is watching us then He better can decide that who is fake?& who deserves punishment becauze we are innocent & don't like to do any thing which is wrong infront of Allah.

10

I agree to above.

Plus now we have Islamic banking and Islamic insurance (Takaful) too. I can not say much about islamic banking but takaful IMHO is just another name of conventional insurance. Many a time the back end reinsurers to takaful companies are the conventional reinsurers instead of retakaful companies. Similarly many retakaful companies have back end retro-cessions with conventional reinsurers. How can you ensure that your insurance is islamic even when you are buying it from a takaful company ? Insurance is a part of life as much as banking is. If you are not working for a bank but you are using it's services then indirectly you are a promoter and approver of interest ...........right ? similarly we all have insurances one way or the other .......car , house , health etc so if you are buying insurance (which u said is haram) then u r doing a haram act too ???
all the items that are imported in a country are insured , when u r travelling by air you are insured .........where will you stop ? the LCs are opened with bank when you are importing something ..........so you don't know that a product that you r buying from your market has been made available to you by using up many services from banks and insurance companies ...................the only way possible is to cut yourself from the world and live in jungle otherwise you are a client and buyer of banking and insurance products directly or indirectly whether you like it and approve it or not.

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

There could be many flaws in the current takaful structure primarily due to the fact that it is relativly new idea and still in beta testing phase, but still saying it equivalent to conventional insurance is not true.

The underlying structures of both vary and so does the risks and rewards associated with it. The best takaful structure todate is based on WAQF model ( derviing its shariah basis from the munahada concept)(munahada was a practice of equal distribution of food in case of drought by Banu Ashr and the practise was endorsed by the Prophet :saw:

LCs are normaly opened on Murabaha cum wakalah basis hence is very much shariah compliant.

If one does not have proper knoweldge then they should refrain from giving fatwa which may induce others into HARAM/RIBA.

May ALLAH guide us all

12

:salam2:

For me its not part of our life, it forced on us to avail this service. I never opened an account in bank i asked my organization to issue me cheque but after few months, they clearly said either u open a saving accout or leave the job. Then i had no choice except to open an account which i opened in condition no interest, profit or lost. The bank only charge me services charges which i think all bank does. i withdraw all salary except few left in account which is necessary.

No person can force u to do insurance of car, health, house etc. This is upto us if we want to do so. But in some countries, its forced by law where we have no option left other then to accept/get insured. btw if we can use the bus or any other transport then i don’t think so its necessary to us to buy car and get insuarance.

let talk about car insurance. When we get involved in accident, why our insurance doesn’t repair our car? why 2nd party’s insurance repair it? The second party repair our car and charge to that person a huge amount even he/she already paying the insurance. Where this huge amount charged does go? hope u got the point.

Shazia Ashraf! i can only say that if a bird see a cat is coming to catch the bird and bird close eyes imagining that now the cat can’t see other than to use wing to fly and save life :slight_smile:

13

Mind your language. I am no halwa or farigh lalchi maulvi I don’t give FATWA and May ALLAH never make me like those FATWA givers.

if you are blind and can not read properly it’s not my fault . What I said was it’s a pre requisite to have an insurance in order to get LC opened. I didn’t say LC is haram or not.

And about takaful it was new , srilanka is completely operating on takaful. If you dn’t have any clue about reinsurance or retakaful or retrocession then please keep your opinions to your self.

14

that is third part insurance and it is only applicable when someone else’s car suffers damage due to your mistake or ignorance. It’s not always in all the cases. When an insurance company pays the claim for insurance the INSURED upon next renewal needs to pay a loading which is not HUGE. It’s still a percentage of total value of the car. I can tell you that most car insurance claims comes from the fault of insured’s own fault rather than anyone elses.

15

Baji/Baja what ever you are :)

Can you elaborate through some logical examples how takaful/Retakaful is haram in your opinion.

Peace be with you.

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

:hmmm: jawab ka maza nahi aya :nahi:

17

when did I say it's haram ?

you really have problem with understanding atleast what i write !

I said its similar to conventional insurance i didn't say it's haram !

my simple logic is

takaful is islamic OK

backed by retakaful (ok) or backed by conventional reinsurance (not ok)

retakaful or reinsurance backed by retrocessions (not ok)

not ok is from point of view of people who thinks insurance is haram.

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

I need more info on this topic !

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

no bank today works without interest, be it a "islamic" bank or a traditional one.
they all work under the "state/national bank" of their country of operation, and all the state banks need the registered banks to submit a "handsome" amount of money, based on which they will be allowed to expand their operations (the over all money they can play with), and this "range/ limit/ capacity" whatever you call it, involves "money which does not exist" that's not permissible

plus, they all have to take part in so called "open market operations" of state banks, which are performed to control the liquidity in the market, these operations are based on interest which state bank pays/ receives to/from registered banks

plus, they all take part in "money market" no matter what they are traditional banks or so called new "islamic" banks (as in islamic alcohol?!?), which again, does not operate, but on the basis of interest, eg: KIBOR

but yes, there are some banks which offer some products/ services to their end customers which do not include interest (or likes), only upto the level of "bank - end customer" dealing, but the money which end customer keeps in those banks is again used in the above mentioned operations, to generate profit for the bank.

so that small portion of "bank - end customer" in some products, "may" be considered some what OK, (they don't need to be "Islamic Banks" to do that, "current account" of a traditional bank may also fit in this category in some cases)

but this "some what OK" does not mean its permissible, except the cases where there is no other option, eg: your country may have a rule that all employers should pay salaries via banks

that means, end products like murahaba, takaful, ijarah or current accounts, "may be" treated as permissible but the money involved in these products, on the banks part, is used in "non-permissible" ways, which makes it a mixture of halal and haram

so the mixture of halal + haram = haram, except when there are no other means to survive and the use of this mixture should be limited to an amount essential to survive, no more than that

and look up the first post, what the Imam Sahab said? "Don't work in banking and insurance field because the income source of both are from impermissible (Haram) way". so this is the source of income of the bank, which is them shared among the bank employees as salaries.

for those of us, who work for banks, its of course not easy to accept it, because some of them are working there for loooong time and the banks pay really very good : ) but they should honestly look for some other job, and we should all pray for them that may ALLAH provide them equally good even better, halal source of income.

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Re: Is Bank/Insurance Salaries are permissible or impremissible ?

:salam2:

Well in my country we don’t have such kinda rules but the company/organization, they force us to open an account i.e if company/organziation is let say Pakistan based then they prefer that their employees open their accounts in any pakistani bank so this will be in best interest of pakistani bank as well in economy of Pakistan.

Another reason forcing to open an account in bank to the ‘protection of foreign worker’s right’ b’coz most companies don’t pay the salaries on time which caused number of increase run-away emplyees etc.

Thanks for your information :k: