Prizes for a cultural competition
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The first question of Fatwa No. ( 20952 )
Q1: This is my letter to your eminence, hoping that Allah the Exalted will issue a ruling for me regarding my problem, which is as follows: A competition for the Noble Qur'an was announced for the month of Ramadan, at the level of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and praise be to Allah for His success, for Allah guided me and I won the competition, thus winning this prize attached to this letter. However, I have not yet spent even a single coupon until I am certain that this prize is not interest-based, even though I am in need of books such as al-Mughni or al-Insaaf or the fatwas of the Shaykh al-Islam. This is because, praise be to Allah, I have studied books in Hanbali jurisprudence such as al-Umdah, and also: (Al-Sharh al-Mumti' 'ala Zaad al-Mustaqni') by the honorable Shaykh Muhammad al-Salih al-Uthaymeen, but I stopped; because the Shaykh stopped at the eighth volume, and the ninth has not been published to this day.
This is while my husband is an employee with a salary that does not suffice to buy an Islamic tape, so how could he buy a book whose price is three times his salary? So please issue a ruling for me regarding my problem.
A1: If this competition is merely answering cultural questions, without paying money in exchange for that, then taking the resulting prize is permissible and there is no harm in it. However, if participating in this competition entails paying money before or after obtaining the prize, then that is one of the forms of forbidden gambling, so it is not permissible to take the prize in this case. And success is from Allah, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his companions.
Q1: This is my letter to your eminence, hoping that Allah the Exalted will issue a ruling for me regarding my problem, which is as follows: A competition for the Noble Qur'an was announced for the month of Ramadan, at the level of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and praise be to Allah for His success, for Allah guided me and I won the competition, thus winning this prize attached to this letter. However, I have not yet spent even a single coupon until I am certain that this prize is not interest-based, even though I am in need of books such as al-Mughni or al-Insaaf or the fatwas of the Shaykh al-Islam. This is because, praise be to Allah, I have studied books in Hanbali jurisprudence such as al-Umdah, and also: (Al-Sharh al-Mumti' 'ala Zaad al-Mustaqni') by the honorable Shaykh Muhammad al-Salih al-Uthaymeen, but I stopped; because the Shaykh stopped at the eighth volume, and the ninth has not been published to this day.
This is while my husband is an employee with a salary that does not suffice to buy an Islamic tape, so how could he buy a book whose price is three times his salary? So please issue a ruling for me regarding my problem.
A1: If this competition is merely answering cultural questions, without paying money in exchange for that, then taking the resulting prize is permissible and there is no harm in it. However, if participating in this competition entails paying money before or after obtaining the prize, then that is one of the forms of forbidden gambling, so it is not permissible to take the prize in this case. And success is from Allah, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his companions.
Source
www.alifta.gov.sa
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.