Q. In my home country, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get a house on rent. The only way to do it is to give the owner, in addition to the agreed rent, a large sum of money as a deposit, and to agree a term of rental, such as 4 or 5 years. At the end of this term, the owner gets his house back, and the tenant receives the deposit back. However, the owner would have either used the money as investment, or kept it in a bank and got the interest the bank pays. Is it permissible to live in a house acquired on this basis?
H. Raza
A. This answer is not concerned with how the house owner uses the money. Some owners are not Muslims, and they will use the money without paying any attention to Islamic rules. Moreover, even if the owner is a Muslim, the tenant is not responsible for his actions. So, the tenant is perfectly entitled to live in his rented house. The question is whether the transaction itself is acceptable.
It is very difficult to give a verdict on this transaction, because we are not fully aware of its terms. Why does the tenant pay such a large amount? Surely, it is not the sort of deposit related to the fulfillment of the tenant’s duty to pay the rent on time. Such deposit is normally equivalent to one or two months’ rent. It is not a sort of guarantee. It is merely part of what the owner gets for letting the house. So we could think of it as part of the rent. Thus, the rent would be the amount of money one pays every week or every month for the tenancy, plus the use of the fixed amount agreed between landlord and tenant. This makes it like a loan. At the end of the agreed period, you get the money you have lent, regardless of what the borrower manages to achieve by its use.
Thus, if we make the contractual terms limited to the amount of rent paid, and we make the loan a separate arrangement, even though it is given for the same period, then the transaction is appropriate. If they are connected, then there is an element of coercion in the transaction, which could make it subject to a prohibition ruling.
Tawaf on behalf of others
Q. I have been led to believe that it is permissible for us to perform tawaf on behalf of any person, i.e. whether rich, poor, healthy etc., when we go for Umrah. A friend of mine who resides in Riyadh says that this is not permissible. It was said that to perform Umrah on behalf of a person, the person must either be invalid, poor, deceased or too old. From what my friend has told me, this sounds right if it relates to substitute pilgrimage. Please clarify.
H. Kader
Johannesburg
A. It is perfectly permissible to do the pilgrimage or the Umrah on behalf of someone else, because the Prophet has told us so. These are duties which Islam makes obligatory to all Muslims, at least once in a lifetime. A woman asked the Prophet whether she could offer the pilgrimage on behalf of her father who was too ill to sit still on camel back. He told her that she should offer the pilgrimage on his behalf.
The tawaf, although part of the duties of Umrah and pilgrimage, is a form of prayer. And prayer may not be offered on behalf of someone else in any situation. Besides, if it is not part of the Umrah or pilgrimage, it is recommended, not obligatory. It is much better to pray for the person you want to offer it on his or her behalf, because prayer said by one Muslim for someone else, in their absence, is sure to be answered.