Q: We have a male family member who is mentally retarded. Who is responsible for his well-being?
He has the following family members living: 3 sisters and a brother. From his nephews, he has 2 male nephews who are the sons of his late brother. From his sisters, he has a few male nephews as well.
Q: I have a question about something called positive affirmations.
I pray the five daily prayers and the Sunnah, read the Qur’an, fast, and do a lot of supplication to Allah Ta'ala. But I like to listen to positive affirmations to improve my mood, for example to achieve a certain thing that definitely comes from Allah Ta'ala, so my intention is not shirk. The affirmations do not contain any negatives or against Islam.
Is this considered polytheism if I still have complete trust in Allah Ta'ala? Is the law of attraction permissible? What is forbidden in subliminal messages? Or in subliminals in general?
Q: Is the responsibility of taking care of the parents only on the sons or on the daughters also?
Q: Can the wife of the deceased husband take ownership of the inheritance and withhold it from the children if she fears that her children will abandon her if they receive their share so she wants to withhold it till her passing?
Q: I am a housewife/stay at home mother.
My husband is doing his aalim studies and does not work, thus he does not have a set income. However, he is not zakaatable and neither am I.
Is it permissible for us to apply for the Sassa Grant which is R370 per month?
Q: I am a female and went to a male naturopath and he checked my pulse which I thought he won't and felt really bad about it as a ghair mahram touched me. But now I really need treatment and haven't heard of a female naturopath. Is it okay for me to go to the male and is it fine if he touches my hand to check my pulse?
Q: Alhamdulillah, I have a job offer, but I am not sure if it is Islamic.
The working hours are 48 hours per week. I queried as to how many hours per day, I was told it is a 6 day a week job with the amount of hours per day, the timings and the number of shifts per day left up to the discretion of the employer.
My question is, is this arrangement permissible in Islam? Is it permissible for me to take up this job offer?
Q: I wanted to know the Share'ee ruling on "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" deals that many merchants offer in their stores.
For example, buy 1 case of water, get 1 free. Or buy 1 cellular line and get 1 free. These are offers that are conditional on a purchase of 1 item at least. They're usually incentives to get the customer to buy them for various reasons (they want to remove the item from their shelves, or it's a sales/marketing strategy, or simply a competitive deal in a free market). Is such a deal permissible for the buyer, or is this considered riba?
Another type of deal that's similar is buying a certain quantity to get a better deal than buying 1. For example, 1kg of tomatoes is RS 50 but 2 KG is 40 (a savings of RS 10). Is such a deal permissible for the buyer?
Q: I've heard girls say that they romanticize their future by making up imaginary scenarios of them with their imaginary (non -existent) husband like holding hands, forehead kiss, etc. Is this fantasizing? Will one be sinful?
Q: My question is regarding the recent advancements in the computing world in “Artificial Intelligence”, specifically around Generative AI. Generative AI algorithms have advanced the field significantly where we can now generate text and media that is virtually indistinguishable from one created by humans. The AI is trained on large datasets of existing text and media. There are a growing number of software services offering these capabilities to businesses and consumers. While many of the use-cases are likely permissible when it comes to text generation, a growing number of impermissible applications will likely become available to the masses soon.
I will list some of the applications:
- generating audio: will allow generating any type of audio using any voice. Could be Quran-like verses from a renowned Qari, a fake conversation/dialog between public figures, or songs and music. Since these are generated by computer, the voice could be the emulation of a person who was not involved at all. Audio generation has quite a lot of harmful applications which could mislead people, given that it is human nature to trust voiceprints.
- generating text: enables consumers to generate prose in any style desired. Innocent applications are where we can use it to author content, summarize content, explain content, etc. The prose generated could be the emulation of anyone we desire. Therefore, harmful content could be something like generating fake verses of Quran, fake hadith, and worse.
- generating images/videos: enables users to generate images/videos just by providing a text prompt describing the scene/image desired in the output image/video. It may generate fake images, sow distrust, and increase immodesty significantly.
Note that all these generations are possible by a variety of input to the application (text-based prompts, image-/video-based prompts, sound-based, etc.).
I have some questions regarding the generation of content that would have been deemed impermissible if generated by a human:
1) Do the rulings of digital photography extend to photos generated by a computer through Artificial Intelligence? i.e. if one believes that capturing/drawing photos by hand or through camera is haram, should that belief carryover to computer-generated media? It seems like there’s a nuance here in who’s generating the content — human vs computer. Does that change the Sharee’e rulings of digital photography?
2) There’s a hukm regarding the purdah of a woman’s voice when speaking to a non-mahram, even when separated by a door/wall. Women are supposed to use harsher tones in those situations. Regarding generated audio, would the Sharee’e ruling of purdah apply here too? For example, if a female-emulated computer-generated voice is used in a maps navigation program, would that violate the principle of Purdah?
3) Until now, if anyone wanted to photograph me, they would require my presence. With the new technology, it may be possible to generate a person’s face that looks very close to mine. Would it be my responsibility to make sure nobody generates my image?