Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
If someone stole in their youth and has asked for repentance, if they don’t remember which stores they stole from, how should they compensate for the items stolen?
Walaikum assalam,
In the Name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful,
1. You have to take all reasonable means possible to figure out which stores the money was stolen from.
2. If you are then sure of some of the stores, you would have to pay them. Use your reasonable yet conservative judgment as to how much you store from them.
3. If there are still unaccounted-for thefts, then:
The default would have been to actually return it to its rightful owners. Given that this is not possible, in the given case, 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 its rightful owner(s) 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 (=the poor and needy), or to general charities. The first is superior, as many Hanafi scholars only allow it to be given to it.
As an aside, there is nothing wrong or dubious with accepting such money when it is given to one in charity, because the sin devolved back to the dues person who wrongful engaged in the unlawful transaction and not the actual money one is taking from them itself.
[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 Shaykh Mahmoud Ashraf Usmani, and other scholars]
And Allah alone gives success.
Wassalam,