Trade

Q: Is forex trading halaal or haraam? While I use an interest free account, I use a swipe free and no commission account. My broker says its 100% according to Islamic Shariah. Kindly tell me about it in detail.

Q: I own a jewellery store. We offer our customers a 'trade-in' service where they bring their old jewellery to us, we evaluate it and determine its worth, and then the customer takes jewellery of their choice to the value of the jewellery that was traded-in.

Is it correct to deal in this manner? If not, how should we conduct the deal?

Q: I am a shopkeeper who sells general merchandise.

Sometimes, people come to my store and want to use their debit card to draw money from my card machine. They will swipe their card in the machine, enter the amount that they want, and thereafter I will take the corresponding amount of cash from my till and give it to them while their bank deposits that amount in my account.

Can I charge them for this service? In other words, can I tell the customer to enter R205 into the machine while I give him R200 in cash? I will make R5 on the service of giving him the cash. Is this permissible?

Q: I own a manufacturing business where I take orders from customers and manufacture according to their specification. Once their order is prepared, they are notified and given a ten day period to collect the item from our warehouse.

The problem is that many customers delay in collecting their orders. This causes a problem for us as the uncollected orders take up space in the warehouse. In order to avoid this problem, we want to stipulate, at the time the order is placed, that if goods are not collected within ten days, then a stipulated storage fee will be charged for every day thereafter. Is this permissible in Shari’ah?

Q: Is it permissible to buy items that are being auctioned off at a bank auction, i.e. items that were repossed by the bank?

Q: Is computer education halaal or not? I studied computer science and my field is game development and website development. Will my earnings be halaal?

Q: If a person gives his word to someone regarding a business matter, no legal papers were signed, are you allowed to cancel it Islamically?

Q: I want to sell physical health eBooks that may contain a few images of humans for the purposes of demonstration e.g. a fitness eBook demonstrating how to perform an exercise or movement. Both male and female images are found in the books and at times, a portion of the awrah of the males and females are exposed. However, this is for demonstrational and educational purposes.

What is the ruling on this and if I had earned wealth through selling these books, what is the status of my wealth, is it halaal or haraam?

Q: A common business practice amongst university students is to buy and sell their used textbooks amongst each other (as buying brand new textbooks from the publisher is extremely expensive).

1. Students, along with selling their textbooks, sell the notes that they made and the lecture slides (pdf version) for that module (subject) as part of one 'package'. Our question is regarding the permissibility of selling the lecture slides - which the lecturer uploads online during the course of the semester - as some naive first year students are unaware that they will be getting them for free over the course of the semester.

2. A lot of textbooks come in an ebook (pdf) format which the publisher sells online (also expensive). It is possible to find a 'pirated' copy of the ebook on the internet and download it. Students also sell these as well at a cheaper price.

2.1 Is this permissible?

2.2 If permissible (2.1), will one get thawaab if one distributes it to students for free instead of selling it to them?

Q: Recently, while in a supermarket, I picked up a bottle of detergent and placed it in my trolley to purchase it.

A few minutes later, I saw that the bottle was leaking as the lid had not been screwed on completely. Approximately one quarter of the liquid had leaked out.

I left the bottle on the shelf, paid for my other items and left. It thereafter occurred to me that when I had picked up the detergent with the intention of purchase, I became liable for it. However, either the manufacturer or supermarket had not screwed the lid on correctly, and that was not my fault.

Am I responsible for the item? Should I return to the store and compensate them for it?