Does Haram Wealth Affect the Permissibility of Purchases?

Answered by Shaykh Yusuf Weltch

Question

I have a follow-up question for your answer to my earlier question on Spending Haram Wealth

The fact that £1600 was Unlawful and that I was given possession of £400 of that and my mum kept the other £1200 for later on in life, does that have an effect on my purchases, I think what il trying to say is that does it matter that I possessed only the minority of haram wealth or is the whole of the £1600 considered mine even though I didn’t possess the £1200.

Second to that, if theoretically, the majority of one’s wealth was £1600 (impermissible) and £400 permissible, by the same principle could spend only up to £400 and not exceed that.

Answer

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful and Compassionate

The entire £1,600 is your property even if your mother is the one holding on to it. It is necessary for you to return that amount back to its rightful owner, in any way possible. As long as you still possess more than £1,600, all surplus money is permissible (halal).

Therefore the purchases made with the remainder of your money are permissible and unaffected.

If, however, your total balance falls to £1,600 or below any purchases made at that point will be considered illicit. For this reason, I would advise returning the money as soon as possible, to avoid such a situation. [Haskafi, al-Durr al-Mukhtar (Bab al-Ghasb); Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

Hope this helps
Allah A’lam

[Shaykh] Yusuf Weltch
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Shaykh Yusuf Weltch is a teacher of Arabic, Islamic law, and spirituality. After accepting Islam in 2008, he then completed four years at the Darul Uloom seminary in New York where he studied Arabic and the traditional sciences. He then traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he stayed for three years studying in Dar Al-Mustafa under some of the greatest scholars of our time, including Habib Umar Bin Hafiz, Habib Kadhim al-Saqqaf, and Shaykh Umar al-Khatib. In Tarim, Shaykh Yusuf completed the memorization of the Qur’an and studied beliefs, legal methodology, hadith methodology, Quranic exegesis, Islamic history, and a number of texts on spirituality. He joined the SeekersGuidance faculty in the summer of 2019.