How can I repent from buying shares in haram companies?

Question

Praise be to Allah.

First of all, we thank the questioner for his high level of concern
towards all people, and his love of good for them and his desire to ward
off evil and sin from them, and especially for his understanding of the
responsibility of calling non-Muslims to Islam in all interactions, even
if that is at one’s own cost. We ask Allah, may He be exalted, to reward
you and to help us and you to do all that is good.

It is
well known in fiqh that contracts based on haram matters are invalid
contracts; what results from them is not binding, and the burden of sin
rests on all parties to the contract. One of the consequences of their
invalidity is that ownership is not transferred by means of such contracts,
and that the price must be returned to the one who paid it, so long as he
has not used or benefited from what he purchased – although there is a
difference of opinion among the scholars – because the transaction is
invalid in the first place.

This
ruling is also applicable to the purchase of shares in companies whose
activities are haram, such as riba-based (usurious) banks, companies that
sell alcohol and pork, tobacco companies, gambling companies, companies that
deal in degenerate art, and the like. If anyone purchases shares in them,
his purchase is invalid. Sincere repentance from this sin requires giving up
any civil obligations entailed in this contract, because repentance cancels
out what came before it. Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, says
(interpretation of the meaning): “but if you repent, you shall have your
capital sums. Deal not unjustly (by asking more than your capital sums), and
you shall not be dealt with unjustly (by receiving less than your capital
sums)” [al-Baqarah 2:279].

If
the company recognizes that the purchase was invalid and agrees to return
the money voluntarily – but this usually does not happen except in the case
of limited shareholder companies – then the repentant shareholder is
entitled to take back what is rightfully his, by canceling the share
transaction with the haraam company itself. So he may take back his capital,
but anything surplus to that he must spend on charitable causes; it is not
permissible for him to benefit from it. And he must still repent and pray
for forgiveness in order to expiate that sin.

But
if the company or the body that regulates the stock market does not
acknowledge that the sale and purchase of shares in haraam companies is
invalid, or the company has public ownership and it is not possible to get
rid of the shares except by reselling them in the financial market, then we
have two options:

1.

To keep them, which is persisting in sin, because the
shareholder is a partner to the haraam actions that are going on in the
company, in addition to the fact that keeping the shares is participating in
transmission of something haraam to his heirs after his death;

2.

Or to get rid of them by selling them in the stock market.

In
this case the second option, even though it is not free of some
objectionable matters such as helping someone else to engage in the haraam
partnership, is less serious than the first option.

Hence
the Standing Committee ruled that they may be sold in order to get rid of
them, as we have quoted in their fatwa in the answer to question no.
35726.

And
Allah knows best.