What is the ruling on working in a place that obligates me to wear trousers and a tie during work?
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The questioner : Your Eminence, the Shaykh (may Allah preserve you), you mentioned that wearing trousers is a matter of imitating the disbelievers. So what do you advise me to do, when my job forces me to wear trousers and what is called a tie? May Allah reward you with good.
The Shaykh : As for wearing a tie, I do not see any justification for it, and I find no excuse for the one who wears it.
As for wearing trousers, some people in certain jobs may need such clothing, such as carpenters and blacksmiths. If they wore the garments known in some countries as the jilbab, in others as the dishdasha, and in the Arabic language we learned from the Sunnah as the qamis (shirt), which may be long or short, such clothing might not facilitate performing the trades I mentioned earlier.
However, if an employee is required to imitate the disbelievers in a clean job that does not involve the trades I cited as examples earlier, but rather because the taste of the disbelievers requires such attire, then this is not an excuse for this employee to consider it a reason for being excused from being held accountable for placing the tie around his neck and wearing tight trousers. In reality, the tie represents the taste of the disbelievers more than the trousers do. But the trousers have another calamity: they reveal the awrah (part of the body that must be covered), especially when one stands to pray in the first or second row. You find that when they bow, and more specifically when they prostrate, the awrah of the buttocks, and sometimes what is between them, becomes visible. So this is not an excuse for this employee. Rather, I believe he is sinful, most severely, because he seeks the sustenance allotted to him, as Allah the Exalted said:[Adh-Dhariyat 51:22] (there is disagreement regarding the interpretation of this verse). He seeks to attain sustenance through a forbidden means, even though the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) mentioned in some of his sermons that he said: And Allah, Mighty and Majestic, in the well-known verse: [At-Talaq 65:2-3]. So I remind every Muslim who is concerned about his religion in general, and about his lawful sustenance in particular, not to adopt means that are forbidden by the Shari'ah to attain sustenance, for sustenance is not attained through what is forbidden. And this is sufficient, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
The Shaykh : As for wearing a tie, I do not see any justification for it, and I find no excuse for the one who wears it.
As for wearing trousers, some people in certain jobs may need such clothing, such as carpenters and blacksmiths. If they wore the garments known in some countries as the jilbab, in others as the dishdasha, and in the Arabic language we learned from the Sunnah as the qamis (shirt), which may be long or short, such clothing might not facilitate performing the trades I mentioned earlier.
However, if an employee is required to imitate the disbelievers in a clean job that does not involve the trades I cited as examples earlier, but rather because the taste of the disbelievers requires such attire, then this is not an excuse for this employee to consider it a reason for being excused from being held accountable for placing the tie around his neck and wearing tight trousers. In reality, the tie represents the taste of the disbelievers more than the trousers do. But the trousers have another calamity: they reveal the awrah (part of the body that must be covered), especially when one stands to pray in the first or second row. You find that when they bow, and more specifically when they prostrate, the awrah of the buttocks, and sometimes what is between them, becomes visible. So this is not an excuse for this employee. Rather, I believe he is sinful, most severely, because he seeks the sustenance allotted to him, as Allah the Exalted said: