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Paying Commission to receive contract Order.

Q:

Salaam Alaykum,

Dear Respected Scholar,

I went to a company to seek a printing Contract Order from them. The manager in charge asked me to give him some gift/commission in order for him to approve my order. Would it be permissible for me to pay him inorder to get the contract?

Thank you.

A:

Wa Alaykumussalam

I appreciate you are serious in fulfilling your Islamic duties.

Nowadays the concept of bribery is present but with the new names such as gifts etc. but a person should refrain and stay away from these things.

Bribery has been condemned in Ahadith. In one of the hadith Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.w) has cursed the one who gives bribe and the one who takes it and according to the other hadith “The giver and taker of bribe go to Hell”

One of the other things to identify whether the manager or worker is doing right or not is, if you give the present or gift and if it is known by the company and owner and beside knowing, the owner or the company do not react then that means there is no problem in it. But if the manager or worker is condemned after receiving the gift from someone to give a contract, then that is problematic and not allowed.

Ayatullah al-Udhma Sayyid Ali Sistany:

Question: What is the ruling for bribery?

Answer: Bribery is Haram

https://www.sistani.org/persian/qa/0924/

Question: What is your ruling on getting one’s work done through bribery?

Answer: If someone’s duty is to do a job without getting money but he does not do it without receiving it, giving money to get something done is permissible but it is haram for the recipient to use the money.

Yes, there are cases where bribery is Haram (forbidden), for example, in judiciary cases bribing the judge.

https://www.sistani.org/english/qa/01143/

The above mentioned ruling and similar cases are ONLY allowed in cases;

When the worker do not perform his duty at all without getting the money from others;
There is no other way available at all’
The work is to get your right back and not killing the rights of other people.

We shouldn’t mix it with the general ruling which says Bribery is not allowed. In many cases, if the worker doesn’t perform his duty one can meet the manager etc. and many problems can be solved this way. Otherwise if one thinks the worker wouldn’t perform his duty without bribery and bribes without considering the other possible ways by which his work could have been done, then this is not the correct way of understanding and implementing and would be Haram.

We can even hire someone to do our work. Hiring someone, we pay for the struggles the person does for us and this way that will not be considered as bribery.

Wassalam,

Syed Haider