Q616 :I believed that it is permissible for a Muslim
to buy, own and sell shares and stocks. On this basis, I confidently
brought some shares in a newly opened bank in my country. Recently, a
friend led me to understand that having such shares cannot be
permissible because the bank operates usurious transactions. I would be
grateful for your view. Perhaps, I should say that I am willing to
forgo all rights to these shares.
A616 : It is certainly permissible to invest one’s
money in buying and selling shares, provided that the shares you buy or
sell are that of a business that is permissible to operate. Thus, it is
perfectly permissible to own shares in a furniture netpany, an iron and
steel corporation, a supermarket, a travel agency, a netputer business,
etc. The list is endless. It is not permissible, however, to own
shares in a wine netpany, a brewery, a gambling shop, etc. because all
these either sell things that are forbidden or provide services that
are also forbidden. That makes any profits earned from such business
forbidden to have. A bank that operates on the capitalist system of
finance belongs to this second category, because much of its operations
are interest charging. When you buy shares in a bank, you are actually
owning a portion of that bank which means you are involved in all its
operations. In a way, you are actually helping in all its operation.
Therefore, it is forbidden to own shares in a bank where interest is
the basis for most of its transactions. What I have mentioned applies
to buying shares in the bank itself, which means that you are a
shareholder of the bank. This is different from the service operated by
many banks nowadays, where the bank is an agent, buying and selling
stocks and shares for customers in different netpanies. If those
netpanies are engaged in permissible trade and rendering permissible
services, then there is nothing wrong with dealing with them. Even this
bank operation itself is permissible, because it is simply a service
agency. You only need to make sure that the netpanies in which the bank
buys shares for you do some legitimate business. If your shares are in
the bank itself, you simply need to get rid of them. You only need to
offer them for sale, and there will be some purchasers to give you the
market value for that. It is not in your interest or in the interest of
Islam or the Muslim netmunity to forgo the shares in the bank without
claiming the price you paid for them, or their market price.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )