Is It Permissible for a Muslim Doctor to Accept a 3-Year Medical Residency Scholarship and Contract from a Catholic Church?

Answered by Ustadh Salman Younas

Question

Is it permissible for a Muslim Medical Doctor to accept a 3-year medical residency scholarship from a Catholic Church and be bonded by contract to their establishment by having to work for their church hospital for five years after the three years of medical residency specialization sponsored by them?

Answer

This would be permitted as your work as a doctor in the church hospital is permitted, and the money you earn is lawful. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar]

As for what the church hospital does with its funds, this is separate from your work and will not impact its status.

For more on this and references, see:
Assisting in Sin

[Ustadh] Salman Younas
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Born and raised in New York, Ustadh Salman Younas graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Political Science and Religious Studies. After studying the Islamic sciences online and with local scholars in New York, Ustadh Salman moved to Amman. There he studied Islamic law, legal methodology, belief, hadith methodology, logic, Arabic, and tafsir. He is now in his final year of his PhD at Oxford University, looking at the early evolution of the Hanafi madhab.
His teachers include: Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Salah Abu’l Hajj, Shaykh Ashraf Muneeb, Shaykh Ahmad Hasanat, Shaykh Hamza Karamali, Shaykh Ahmad Snobar, Shaykh Ali Hani, Shaykh Hamza Bakri, Ustadh Rajab Harun and others.
Ustadh Salman’s personal interests include research into the fields of law/legal methodology, hadith, theology, as well as political theory, government, media, and ethics. He is also an avid traveler and book collector. He currently resides in the UK with his wife.