Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
I have question about stuff I did when I was a teenager. btw the age of 10 and 14 I shoplifted alot and would steal money from people’s purses. I must have been sick or something. I did not smoke or drink or take drugs. I would spend the money on delicious food my parents normally considered too expensive. I sometimes spent it on tapes. When I was 14 my class conducted a donation drive for money that would be given to an orphanage. I was such a scum, I took the money from the bag of my classmate who was in charge. It was about $140. I have since changed completely. At the age of 14 I got caught for another offence by a teacher who later told my parents. The embarrassment and the ostracisation from this changed me forever. Many years later… almost 6 years later I started to practise Islam. Sometimes when I think about how I wronged the orphans who would have received that money I shake and cry with fear. Fear of being held accountable by the orphans on the last day. There is almost no way for me to find out which orphanage it was and whether the same orphans are still there for me to repay. I am so fearful…what shall I do?
Walaikum assalam wa rahmatullah,
If you know the specific people the money belonged to, you would have to do your best to get the money back to them. In such a case, it would not be sufficient to give the equivalent of the money in charity.
The default, then, is to actually return the money to its rightful owners. When this is not possible to do, we are legally obliged to effectively return it to them by giving it away in charity, so that even though their money does not go back to them its benefit does in the form of the benefit of charity given on their behalf.
It is only charity, however, with regards to the actual owners of the money. When you give this money away, you can only intend to get rid of unlawful filthy money from your holding, while repenting and seeking Allah’s forgiveness for disobeying Him in a matter He deems most hateful. To seek good’ or reward when one gets rid of this money would be a serious sin in itself, the fuqaha tell us.
One may either give this money to those deserving of zakat (namely, the poor and needy), or to charities. There is nothing wrong or dubious with accepting this money, because the sin devolves back to the person who wrongful engaged in the unlawful transaction and not the actual money itself.
It should be noted, too, that this lifts the material wrong. To ensure that one lifts the intangible wrong one did to those affected, one should supplicate for them, even in general, such as, “O Allah, forgive those whom I have ever wronged,” when making dua.
[Sources: al-Hadhr wa’l Ibaha of al-Nahlawi , al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya, Ibn Abidin’s Radd al-Muhtar, with some details from questions asked of contemporary scholars]
And Allah alone gives success.
Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani