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Spending Charity in Real Money to purify Ill-gotten E-Money

Question

Salam Alaykum, I have an account in some e-commerce where i can store balance in the form e money, the emoney balance I have was syubhat because the emoney can be purchased in the form of gift card say 10.5$ for 10$ balance which im sure it was riba transaction, Im not sure whether it was halaal or haraam because the extra 50 cent is for the seller not the buyer(me) but i already give more than the amount of e money I have in the form of physical money to the charity as a way to clear the sin/syubhat without intending it for reward from Allah Subhannahuwattaala, now does that make the amount i have in emoney halaal? because i cannot withdraw it and the only way to use that money is by purchasing thing from the e-store and I accidentaly used the money when purchasing something using debit and the store also in addition uses my emoney. I afraid I may fall in riba.

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah, and that Muhammad  sallallaahu  `alayhi  wa  sallam ( may  Allaah exalt his mention ) is His slave and Messenger.

The conclusion that can be said about your queries is that there is no harm in making use of that money. If you had any ill-gotten money, then you had already gotten rid of it, as you mentioned. You will be rewarded for acting according to Islamic texts and seeking to gain lawful earnings only. However, you do not get the reward of spending it as charity, because when a person gets rid of ill-gotten money, he gets the reward of his righteous deed (of ridding the money), but not the reward of spending it as charity.

Therefore, there is no harm if you make use of the e-money that remained with you.

The fact that you already got rid of the forbidden amount as cash money is enough to purify your money, as the prohibition is not related to the very exact money, but rather to the person who had taken it.

For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 319606.

Allah knows best.

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