Q.1. I know that it is appropriate to perform the pilgrimage or the Umrah on behalf of a relative who is dead, but is it permissible to offer either of these duties on behalf of a person who is alive, as many expatriates do?
Q.2. Is it appropriate to repeat the athan phrases if one is in the bathroom?
Q.3. If a married man comes here for work and stays two years before going back home, does he fail in his marital responsibilities?
P. Shareef Basha
A.1. Substitute pilgrimage may be offered on behalf of relatives who died without having fulfilled this duty. The same applies to the Umrah. The Prophet was asked whether one may offer the pilgrimage on behalf of a deceased parent and he said that this should be done. Similarly, if a relative is too ill to be able to do the journey, it is valid if someone else offers the pilgrimage on his behalf. This could be a relative who performs the substitute pilgrimage voluntarily, or the person himself may hire a man or a woman to do the pilgrimage for him, paying all the expenses of the person hired for the purpose. The only condition is that such deputy should have done his own pilgrimage first.
There are several Hadiths which confirm this. A woman said to the Prophet that her father is too weak to be able to sit on the back of his camel. Could she offer the pilgrimage on his behalf? The Prophet told her to do so. Another Hadith mentions that when the Prophet was traveling for his own pilgrimage with many thousands of his companions, he heard someone declaring that he is doing the pilgrimage on behalf of a man called Shibrimah. The Prophet asked him who was Shibrimah. The man said: “He is a brother of mine.” The Prophet asked him whether he had done the pilgrimage already. The man answered in the negative. The Prophet said to him: “Then offer the pilgrimage on your own behalf first, then you may offer it on behalf of Shibrimah.”
Some well-meaning expatriates feel that they should take the opportunity and save their relatives the trouble and expense of doing the pilgrimage or the Umrah by doing these duties on their behalf. Or they may do so because they know that their relatives are too poor to be able to afford the journey. This is not right, because if a person cannot afford the journey, he does not meet the ability condition which makes the pilgrimage a binding duty for him or her. This duty is conditional on one being able to undertake the journey, both physically and financially. If one does not meet this condition, he is exempt from doing it. If the relative concerned is one’s own parent, it is infinitely better to arrange for one’s parents to come over and do the pilgrimage themselves. If one cannot do that, he may pray for them in the Haram. If neither he nor they can afford the expense, he may do the pilgrimage on their behalf as an act of dutifulness, knowing that it is not binding on them. He will be richly rewarded for that, God willing. But he need not go further and do the pilgrimage or the Umrah on behalf of other relatives who are similarly placed with regard to ability, because they are not required to do it themselves.
A.2. No, this is not correct. The athan, or call to prayer, consists of phrases that mention God’s name, and it is inappropriate to mention His name in the bathroom.
A.3. One may be absent from home in connection with his work for a period of four months, without having to have his wife’s agreement to his absence, provided he makes arrangements for her and their children to be well looked after. If he needs to be away from home for longer periods, this must be done with his wife’s consent. If she does not agree to his prolonged absence, she is entitled to seek divorce.
Sexual desire and poverty
Q. A young man who is unable to get married because of poverty may find himself having frequent wet dreams. Does he incur a sin for having such dreams? Is his worship rewarded in the same way as one who is married?
R.G.S, Khartoum
A. It is a natural function of the human body that when semen gathers, it should be discharged. This is a physiological function. Therefore, an unmarried young man will have wet dreams to allow the semen to be discharged, unless one resorts to some other way culminating in such discharge after excitement through masturbation, sex play or unlawful intercourse. Therefore, a wet dream is a perfectly natural function, for which one incurs no sin.
Besides, when a person is asleep, he is not in control of his actions. God says in the Qur’an: “God causes all human beings to die at the time of their death, and causes those who have not yet died (to be as dead) during their sleep. Thus, He withholds from life those upon whom He has decreed death, and lets the others go free for a term set by Him.” (39: 42) It is clear from this Qur’anic verse that sleep is a state akin to death, during which we are not held responsible for what is not within our control. Thus, if you see in your dream that you are committing a murder, you are not responsible for that. Nor can you be responsible for a wet dream, which is a natural function.
Losing another person’s money
Q. A person collected an amount of money from several people so as to invest it in a commercial enterprise on a profit-and-loss-sharing basis. After working for a few months, all the invested money, including his own capital, is lost. The other people are demanding that he should return their capital in full. Is he liable to return it? Should he treat the money invested by the others as debt which he is liable to return?
After the collapse of this venture, the man was able to save some money from his salary. Is it liable to zakah when he has such debts to repay? If he invests this money with an Islamic bank in order to repay the debt, is it still liable to zakah?
Abdurrahman, Jeddah
A. The rule that applies here is that the terms of the contract are binding on the two parties. In any business deal, the terms should be stated very clearly so that no confusion or ambiguity is allowed to mar the transaction or cause problems. If the terms in this case were clearly stated that the investors are partners bearing their shares of loss and entitled to a specified share of profit, then that is what should apply. If the loss is total, then everyone shares in that loss. The person who conducts the business is responsible for his own share of the loss and nothing more.
Having said that, I wish to add that there are situations which may change the above and make the manager of the fund partially or fully responsible for the loss. One such situation is that of negligence, or not taking due care to ensure that the deals entered into are sound, or using the invested money in non-profitable aspects of the business. Let me give you an example. Suppose a person takes from others a total sum of 200,000 riyals. He then pays half this amount as rent, equipment and furniture, and a further 25,000 riyals in salaries of office staff for the first five months, and pays himself 3,000 riyals a month for the time he spends in managing the business. That leaves only 60,000 riyals to conduct a couple of transactions. If these make a loss and the money thus vanishes, how can he say to the investors that all their money is gone, unless it is clearly stated at the beginning that they will also provide for the rent, furniture, salaries, etc? If he has not specified these at the beginning, then they may be justified if they accuse him of deception.
Take another case: the man who presents himself as manager of the business has had no experience in such matters. He feels that all that he needs to be a successful businessman is capital. He persuades some relatives and friends to part with their own savings, promising them some large profits. He quotes them some figures about profits made by others in the business he wants to try his hand in, but he does not tell them that he knows nothing about that particular market and how the business is conducted. Trusting him as a good friend and relative, they give him the money hoping for some returns. However, like any new adventurer, he ends up in heavy losses. Is he responsible for such losses? To a large extent he is, because he concealed some material facts which would have affected people’s response to his project had they known them.
The reader seems to understand this, because he is speaking about these losses as a debt owed by the man to his co-investors. But I cannot judge in this case, because I do not know the details. I am only answering the questions put to me and making some assumptions in order to illustrate my answer. The facts should be put to a competent authority, preferably to a court of Islamic law, to give a proper judgment, defining responsibilities.
As for zakah on the man’s new savings, the answer is that if he considers himself in debt to those people, he should start repaying them immediately. In this way, he would not be liable to zakah because he is repaying his debt. It seems to me, however, that he wants to keep this money, invest it in some way for profit, without paying zakah because he claims that he is in debt. From the Islamic point of view, a debtor should repay his debt as soon as possible, unless the creditor agrees to deferment.
Arab News Islam 23 December 2002
