Boycott: Anti-Islamic Campaigns & Boycott

There is much criticism, false allegations and negative propaganda targeted at Islam these days. Some of it is perpetrated by politicians. How should we react to such campaigns? Some scholars have issued rulings requiring Muslims to boycott American goods. Are these rulings based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah?

There has always been false propaganda against Islam. It began on the day the Prophet, peace be upon him, declared his message in public, and has not stopped since then. When Muslims are strong and feared by others, such propaganda cowers down and resorts to rumors and secret communication. When Muslims are weak, as they happen to be in our present times, anti-Islamic hate campaigns shout loud. Some Western leaders have been involved in such campaigns of false allegations, while others participated in military attacks against some Muslim countries.

Muslims are supposed to defend their faith, because it is God's final message to mankind. The best way they can defend it is to make it known to people, and the best way to achieve that is through proper implementation and practice of Islam. The other most important thing is for Muslim countries to add to their strength, so that any enemy will hesitate before embarking on an unlawful and unjustified attack against them. The two elements work hand in hand and strengthen each other's effect.

As for the ruling against buying American goods and services, this is a valid ruling, based on the fact that America is engaged in an unlawful war against Islam and the Muslims. It also provides Israel with unwavering and unlimited support in its aggression against Islam and the Muslims of Palestine and other Muslim countries.


Boycott: For Reasons of Conduct

If one distances himself from another Muslim because of his bad conduct, does one incur a sin?

If you boycott someone because of his Islamically unacceptable behavior, you are to be commended. It is always better to steer away from whatever and whoever encourages sinful practice.


Bribes: Contractual Privileges or Bribes?

A supervisory team that works for a consulting firm is charged with the task of supervising a project being built in the outskirts of a city. It is the duty of the team to make sure that the building work is carried out to the standards required by the ministry. According to the terms of the agreement, the contractor is supposed to provide the supervisory team with certain items, including safe drinking water. Instead, the contractor has agreed with the team to pay them a lump sum and they would provide their own water. The actual sum paid is far in excess of the cost of even bottled mineral water. Would this be considered a bribe? If so, and some members of the team have accepted it unaware of the fact, what should they do to compensate for this grave sin? Moreover, some members use the vehicles of the contractor on their trips to the city or to perform pilgrimage or Umrah. Sometimes they claim for the repairs they have to do to the vehicle on such trips. The contractor is happy to provide all this, because he cannot afford to alienate the supervisory team.

Members of the supervisory team should consider themselves to be in a position of trust. They are doing a job on behalf of the government to make sure that the contractor, who has agreed with the government to execute a particular project in a particular fashion, fulfills his obligations as required by the contract. In order to be honest to their trust and to fulfill their obligations, the supervisory team must consider themselves government agents. As such, they should beware of anything that may reduce, even in the slightest, their ability to give sound advice to the government or to make sure that the terms and condition of their agreement with the contractor is fulfilled in the most perfect of manners. Hence, they must not allow themselves to get into a position of being indebted to the contractor. They should take from the contractor such items as its agreement with the government allows. If they take something extra, which raises even the slightest suspicion that they would give sound advice to the government then they must refrain from it. Their judgement must not be colored by any person's interest whatsoever. In practical terms, they should not receive any favors from the contractor.

Having said that, I should perhaps add that it is possible to imagine a situation where the supervisory team can have some sort of advantage if they forgo certain rights, which are provided for them under the agreement, but the advantage they receive is also of benefit to the contractor. In such a situation, when the benefit is mutual, the verdict on providing that particular privilege may be different. Let us take the example of safe drinking water. This term in the agreement may be interpreted as providing bottled mineral water in such quantities as would amply cover the needs of the supervisory team. It may be that the contractor prefers that members of the team provide their own water so that the contractor saves him the trouble of buying the water and transporting it to the site. If the contractor agrees with the supervisory team to make a payment on compensation for that water, then the supervisors are free to take this money and have their own water. If one or all of them decide to buy cheaper [and yet safe] water, then this is up to them.

However, you have mentioned that the amount paid by the contractor is far in excess of any imaginable estimate for the cost of this water, even if it is the bottled mineral type. Here members of the supervisory team must ask themselves why this contractor is making such a generous payment. Is it to win favor with them so that they may overlook certain things? If so, then they should either reject the money insisting on having only the actual cost of water, or let the contractor provide the water, no matter what problems he may encounter in providing it. If we suppose that the cost of water is SR 50 per month, but the contract pays SR 60 or 70, then it may be a matter of his convenience in not having to make all those arrangements for uninterrupted supply. However, on the other hand if he pays SR 500 to each person, then the contractor must have some objective toward making such a payment. It can hardly be an honest, straightforward objective. After all the supervisory teams are the government's agents. Such payment is highly suspicious. It is a fact of life that no one pays something for nothing. The contractor must expect some returns for what he pays the supervisory team. This is bound to be in the possibility, or in the hope that they would overlook certain violations of the terms of the agreement. If so, and the supervisory team do overlook them, then they have accepted a bribe and they have not been honest to their trust as agents of the government.

You speak of the use of vehicles of the contractors by members of the supervisory team, which could include their travel to perform the pilgrimage or the Umrah. It is difficult for me to say outright whether this is permissible from the Islamic point of view or not. However, if the contractor provides these vehicles as a gesture of goodwill, not expecting anything in return, then it is perfectly permissible for the supervisors to make use of them. Provided that they are absolutely certain that such facility does not become, even in their subconscious, a favor which they owe to the contractor and which they are expected to return in one way or another. For such a situation to be realized, probably the vehicle should be moving normally between the site and those areas, and the use of the vehicles by the supervisors does not represent an extra cost to the contract. In such a situation, using the vehicles by the supervisor can be considered as no more than accepting an invitation in the normal course of events. On the other hand, the contractor may need to make special arrangements every time one of the supervisors uses a vehicle to go on a trip. And the contractor does not really wish to provide such a vehicle but feels it necessary because he wants to win the goodwill of the supervisors, then we could construe the situation as one of using one's position in order to compel others to meet one's needs. The use of the vehicles becomes forbidden to take as something, which the owner is too shy to prevent. In this latter case, the situation is one of using one's position to get a privilege to which one has no claim.

A third possibility is that the contractor feels that he needs to rely on the good intentions of the supervisors and cannot afford their ill feelings. Therefore, the contractor provides them with services, which are not required of him by the terms and conditions of the contract. Although the supervisors may not have claimed these privileges, nor did they ask for them, yet the contractor provides them as a means to buy their goodwill. In such a case, it is forbidden for them to accept. The reason is that the contractor could not have given these privileges, had he no use for the goodwill of the supervisors. We can compare this with a case that took place at the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

The Prophet, peace be upon him, sent one of this companions to collect Zakah from people living in distant areas. When the man completed his trip after an absence of some weeks, he paid into the treasury what he collected of Zakah. As he did that, he put aside certain things, which he said belonged to him, as the people he met on his trip had given to him as gifts. When the Prophet, peace be upon him, heard of this, he was angry. He addressed his companions in the mosque, saying: "How is it that I send some one to fulfill a particular task and he comes back and says this belongs to you and this has been given to me as gift. Let him stay in his home and find out whether anyone would give him any gifts."

The objection that the Prophet, peace be upon him, raised was due to the fact that people had given the gifts to this man, simply because he was appointed to do a certain task. No gifts would have come his way, had he not been assigned that task to fulfill. The man did not ask for the gifts, nor perhaps did he hope for them. They were simply given to him. Those who gave the gift simply had some intention behind making these gifts which was only to win favor with the appointee of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

In short, I would counsel the members of this supervisory team not to accept the privileges offered them by the contractor, unless they are absolutely certain that their acceptance would in no way affect their performance of their duties. ~

Bribes: To Get One's Right

I was shocked to read your answer to a reader justifying the payment of a bribe to get something to which the payer is already entitled. How can you justify this when it is clearly forbidden to give a bribe or to receive it? If you make such a statement in the West, people will immediately say that you are at fault.

There is no doubt that bribery is a grave sin, which invites God's curse to the one who takes it as well as the one who pays it. A person who facilitates bribery, as a go-between, also receives strong censure for his behavior. But all this applies when a person pays a bride to an official so that he is able to circumvent the law, or deprive others of their rights, or to get a privilege that is unlawful to him. In such a case, he commits a grave sin, and the one who receives the bribe is also guilty of the same transgression.

What I wrote about was something totally different. It is a case of an official denying a person his right, unless he receives some payment in return. This is normally the case in many countries, many of which are Muslim. Such corruption is indeed widespread. The result is much injustice and people failing to have what is perfectly legitimate and sometimes absolutely necessary.

Take the case of a person who wants to have a permit to build a house for his family. The matter should be easy once certain formalities are completed. The man completes the formalities but finds the permission delayed time after time, because he would not pay the official concerned. If corruption is widespread, then no amount of complaint will get him his building permission unless he pays the bribery demanded. Should he refuse to pay, he and his family will be deprived of a home, to which they are entitled. If he tries to sell the land on which he wants to build, its price is terribly reduced because he has no planning permission. Can we say to such a person that if he pays under duress, he is committing the same offense as one that bribes to get something unlawful?

Of course, the way to stamp out corruption is to resist it. But this is not enough on its own. What is needed is a government drive to put an end to it. But failing that, what are people to do in order to get what is rightfully theirs?

When a person is coerced to pay for what is rightfully his, he is not paying a bribe in the true sense. He is only paying to free himself from an injustice. This is legitimate according to many eminent scholars.

My reader mentions Western countries where this would be unacceptable. You can't say all Western countries are free from this evil. Maybe it is not as widespread as in the Third World countries. I admit that in certain Western countries individuals are able to obtain what is their right under the law without resorting to unlawful means. By and large it is under dictatorship that corruption flourishes, and when ordinary citizens are unable to obtain their rights, they may do so if they have to fork out some payments to official who exploit their position in order to obtain people's money unlawfully.

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