What is the ruling on holding competitions and allocating monetary prizes for them?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: If a person sets up a competition and allocates a sum of money for it, is this action permissible?
Answer:
A competition based on what came in the hadith, such as archery, horseback riding, or camel riding, is permissible. Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) included in this the prize for memorizing the Qur'an and for questions of Islamic jurisprudence. He said that this falls under jihad in the cause of Allah, because seeking knowledge is part of jihad in the cause of Allah. Anything other than that is not permissible to take prizes for; it is forbidden, and it is gambling. This is gambling.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: If a person sets up a competition and allocates a sum of money for it, is this action permissible?
Answer:
A competition based on what came in the hadith, such as archery, horseback riding, or camel riding, is permissible. Ibn al-Qayyim (may Allah have mercy on him) included in this the prize for memorizing the Qur'an and for questions of Islamic jurisprudence. He said that this falls under jihad in the cause of Allah, because seeking knowledge is part of jihad in the cause of Allah. Anything other than that is not permissible to take prizes for; it is forbidden, and it is gambling. This is gambling.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، [573 -582] ما حكم إقامة المسابقات ورصد الجوائز المالية لها؟ - الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.