Muslims divided over fatwa against marrying bankers

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) on Friday condemned the prominent Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband's new fatwa directing Muslims not to marry into families earning money through banking and related jobs drawing income from interests.

"A large number of Muslims are working in the banking sector. Issuing a Fatwa asking Muslims not marry people employed in the banking sector is wrong. People who issued this Fatwa must review this because it will lead to further rift and confusion in the Muslim society. There is no need to issue a fatwa on such things", AIMPLB executive president Khalid Rasheed Firangi Mahali told ANI.

The edict was issued after a person asked Darul Ifta if he should marry his daughter to a man whose father worked in a bank.

Darul Ifta had stated that as per an Islamic law, earnings through interest and any transaction involving interest particularly investment is 'haram' (forbidden).

Islam also forbids business in alcohol, narcotics, school, and weapons as well as any business undertaken with the motive of earning maximum profits, the Islamic seminary informed.

Many Islamic scholars and clerics have upheld the fatwa, contending that the religious body's stand was in line with the Islamic law.

"Darul Uloom Deoband is correct in its decision. One should avoid having any social bonds with such a person because everything including his lifestyle would be connected with 'haraam', and then it would be harmful to the person religiously, socially as well as individually", Majlis Ittehad-e-Millat General Secretary Othar Osmani told ANI.

Muslim scholar and Islamic researcher Maulana Nadimul Vajdi said that if a person, knowingly or unknowingly, has indulged in 'haram' earning, the person concerned should quit the job and find another one in which the income was not considered forbidden under the Islamic law. 

-ANI