A prayer area in a school that is not used for prayer: is it permissible to utilize it for a public benefit?
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Fatwa No. ( 20861 )
Praise be to Allah alone, and peace and blessings be upon the one after whom there is no prophet. Then: The Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta has reviewed what was sent to His Eminence the Grand Mufti from His Excellency the Director General of the Department of Religious Affairs of the Armed Forces, in his letter No. (2\10\1457) dated 2\6\1419 AH, which was referred to the Committee by the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars with No. (3691) and dated 13\6\1419 AH. His Excellency asked a question, the text of which is as follows: I present to Your Eminence the inquiry submitted by the Director of the Boys' Secondary School at King Abdulaziz Military College, regarding the following subject: There is a mosque within the school's design, sharing its roof, but it is small, not exceeding seven meters by five meters in area. Due to its narrowness and the large number of students, the prayer is held in the sports hall. They wish to convert the aforementioned mosque into a computer room for calculating academic results. Is it permissible to use the mosque
mentioned as a computer room? Since the congregational prayer is not held there, as mentioned above, we hope Your Eminence will inform us about this matter.
After studying the inquiry, the Committee responded that if the matter is as described, it is permissible to convert the aforementioned prayer area, which is too narrow for the worshippers, into a computer room, and to replace it with a wider location, because this prayer area does not take on the ruling of a mosque in terms of being an endowment or otherwise. And success is from Allah, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his Companions.
Praise be to Allah alone, and peace and blessings be upon the one after whom there is no prophet. Then: The Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta has reviewed what was sent to His Eminence the Grand Mufti from His Excellency the Director General of the Department of Religious Affairs of the Armed Forces, in his letter No. (2\10\1457) dated 2\6\1419 AH, which was referred to the Committee by the General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars with No. (3691) and dated 13\6\1419 AH. His Excellency asked a question, the text of which is as follows: I present to Your Eminence the inquiry submitted by the Director of the Boys' Secondary School at King Abdulaziz Military College, regarding the following subject: There is a mosque within the school's design, sharing its roof, but it is small, not exceeding seven meters by five meters in area. Due to its narrowness and the large number of students, the prayer is held in the sports hall. They wish to convert the aforementioned mosque into a computer room for calculating academic results. Is it permissible to use the mosque
mentioned as a computer room? Since the congregational prayer is not held there, as mentioned above, we hope Your Eminence will inform us about this matter.
After studying the inquiry, the Committee responded that if the matter is as described, it is permissible to convert the aforementioned prayer area, which is too narrow for the worshippers, into a computer room, and to replace it with a wider location, because this prayer area does not take on the ruling of a mosque in terms of being an endowment or otherwise. 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.