Spending haram money on public interests
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
We are concluding this episode, Honorable Shaykh Salih, with this question from the questioner, who says: What is the ruling on spending money that a person obtained through an un-Islamic means, and he wishes to spend it on building mosques, or paying off the debts of those who are unable to pay, or giving it to charitable organizations?
Answer:
If he knows the owners, he should return it to them. But if he does not know the owners, and he has repented to Allah from it, and it is un-Islamic money, then he should place it in public interests, like lost money that has no owner; he places it in public interests. And if he distributes it to the needy in order to get rid of it, there is no harm, but it is not charity; rather, it is a matter of getting rid of it and clearing his conscience of it. Yes.
We are concluding this episode, Honorable Shaykh Salih, with this question from the questioner, who says: What is the ruling on spending money that a person obtained through an un-Islamic means, and he wishes to spend it on building mosques, or paying off the debts of those who are unable to pay, or giving it to charitable organizations?
Answer:
If he knows the owners, he should return it to them. But if he does not know the owners, and he has repented to Allah from it, and it is un-Islamic money, then he should place it in public interests, like lost money that has no owner; he places it in public interests. And if he distributes it to the needy in order to get rid of it, there is no harm, but it is not charity; rather, it is a matter of getting rid of it and clearing his conscience of it. Yes.
Source
نور على الدرب - الفوزان - 02/253 — archive.org (14:22)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.