The obligation of one who has a debt and cannot find its owners
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you. This questioner says: I took money from people without right, and now I want to repay them. Some of them I have been able to reach, and others I have not. My question is: Is it permissible to spend the money of those I cannot reach on my brothers, or some of them? Knowing that they are poor people, not destitute? If
Answer:
It is obligatory to pay the rights to their owners as much as possible, and one’s conscience is not cleared except by doing so. However, if reaching them is impossible and you are unable to reach them because you do not know them and cannot find information that leads you to them, then at that time you give in charity the money that is yours belonging to them to the poor and the needy, with the intention that the reward of this charity is for them. Yes.
May Allah reward you. This questioner says: I took money from people without right, and now I want to repay them. Some of them I have been able to reach, and others I have not. My question is: Is it permissible to spend the money of those I cannot reach on my brothers, or some of them? Knowing that they are poor people, not destitute? If
Answer:
It is obligatory to pay the rights to their owners as much as possible, and one’s conscience is not cleared except by doing so. However, if reaching them is impossible and you are unable to reach them because you do not know them and cannot find information that leads you to them, then at that time you give in charity the money that is yours belonging to them to the poor and the needy, with the intention that the reward of this charity is for them. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 7436- الواجب على من عليه دين ولم يجد أصحابه - الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.