Depositing money in riba-based banks out of necessity, in order to protect the money
Question I read some of your answers about riba, and I found a contradiction that left me confused about my situation. You said to the one who wants to rent out a building to a riba-based bank that this is definitively haraam, but you said to one who deposits his money in a riba-based bank…
Question
Praise be to Allah.
Firstly:
Renting out
a store or house to one who will use it for sinful purposes is not
permissible; that includes renting out a building to a riba-based bank,
because that is clearly helping in sin and transgression, because the owner
of the building knows that the bank is renting this place in order to engage
in haraam transactions such as riba etc.
Al-Bayhaqi
said in Sharh Muntaha al-Iraadaat (2/358): it is not valid to rent
out a house to be used as a church, synagogue or monastery, or for the sale
of alcohol or for gambling etc., whether that is stipulated in the contract
or is known by other means, because it is a haraam action and it is not
permissible to rent it out for that purpose. End quote.
Secondly:
Depositing
money in a riba-based bank is haraam, whether one earns interest or not,
because the bank will take the money and lend it in return for interest.
But the
scholars made an exception in one case, which is when a person fears for his
wealth and there is no safe place to protect his money. In that case it is
permissible for him to put it in a riba-based bank, based on the principle
that in cases of necessity, forbidden things become permissible. In that
case he must put it in a current account that does not bear interest,
because in cases of necessity, things are only permitted as much as is
needed; he needs to protect his money, but he does not need to deal in
riba.
For
information on the conditions of putting money in riba-based banks, please
see question no. 22392.
And Allaah
knows best.