
7 Financial To-Dos Every Muslim Should Complete in 2025
06 January 2025 5 min read
6 min read
Published:
Updated:
Ibrahim Khan
Co-founder
Imagine the situation. You’re working in a supermarket stacking the shelves and helping customers find things (that are right in front of them), and bantering with the team in the backroom. Life is good. But then disaster strikes, and you’re asked to stack the alcohol aisle. Or maybe you’re asked to swipe things at the checkout. Or perhaps you have to offer customers the latest deal available from Tesco Banking.
The question of whether or not your job is haram is one the plagues many Muslims daily.
What about the Taxi driver who has to drive people to and from the pub or nightclub at night? Is he an accessory to the actions of his clients and consequently sinful?
And what about the banker, lawyer, or accountant who works in the financial industry? He will inevitably have to interact with transactions that involve some kind of interest-related element.
The jobs that are potentially affected are numerous and include working as an accountant, a lawyer, an actuary, a banking analyst, a management consultant, an HMRC worker, a debt collector, and even serving haram food at a restaurant.
So what do we do in these situations?
Well, like most things in fiqh, there are two positions. They are roughly this:
Well there are a number of contextual issues to take into account to inform our decision-making.
Firstly, it is vital to remember that we are not living in a country where things like interest, alcohol, and pork are prohibited. Indeed, I don’t think there is a single country in the world where this is the case right now. Given that, the possibility for alternative jobs is drastically reduced.
Secondly, with the rise of globalisation we have seen companies growing larger and larger. There has been an explosion in large multinational corporations with their fingers in many pies, and for these companies it is near inevitable that somewhere down the line there will be some haram activity mixed in. Given that, a large number of available jobs are at these companies, and so a large number of people will be getting at least a portion of their income from haram sources.
Thirdly, we are operating in a legal, economic, and political framework that is structured around interest. Every financial agreement that we sign will have some interest-related element, whether it be with our utility company, a mobile phone contract, or a rental agreement with our landlord or tenant. Chances are we’ve all signed up to either pay or receive interest. So when talking about interest it is important for us and Islamic scholars to not see the contract in isolation.
Fourthly, in the particular case of the supermarket checkout example, the legal status of these staff are not as agents of the company who are selling the product to you on the company’s behalf, but rather they are being paid for the job of processing food and swiping it. In other words they’re getting paid to do what you could do yourself in the self-checkout aisle. So for these employees the second opinion can be availed of.
Fifthly, in the case of the financial industries, preparing and signing off on interest-based agreements – like some lawyers have to – is not on, but working on and preparing all sorts of other contracts and clauses that a bank or investment company may require are usually okay. As an accountant you are simply auditing after the fact so that is fine.
As an actuary you are doing a job that is halal per se (assessing risks, modelling), so again the second position can be applicable. Even in banks, there are a wide number of departments. If you are working in an investment bank on the trading floor buying and selling shares, that is probably okay compared to if you are brokering interest-based deals, which is highly likely not.
So all this context leads us to be slightly less strict in our interpretations of the Shariah. The latter opinion, that of Imam Abu Hanifah, is perfectly acceptable to adopt. However, there are some important checklists to fulfil to make sure you’re not abusing this Shari’ position.
The reality of the matter is that jobs are messy, ambiguous affairs where you will be doing lots of things that may not have thought you would be doing before you started.
One can’t just turn around and say, “oh, you’re an accountant? Let’s look at the fiqh list of approved employments – ah that’s haram and that’s halal. Simple.” Job roles change from week to week and month to month and so there isn’t really a cookie cutter Shari’ answer to these questions.
Instead the best thing to consult is a scholar you trust, but also your own conscience. You might be able to sway the scholar by presenting your job in one particular light but you can’t fool yourself.
If you want an expert Islamic finance mufti to give you their personalised fatwa on your situation, please ask on our Fatwa Forum here.
Check out our investing platform Cur8 Capital.
P.S. You can see a very detailed discussion of this topic here:
http://alqalam.org.uk/can-someone-work-in-restaurant-where-alcohol-is-served/
If you’re interested in personal finance, you can check out a bunch of sharia-compliant investment options that we have vetted from across the globe here.
For more information on key personal finance topics, check out our personal finance page here.
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