Sin of interest related to person, not to money itself
Fatwa No: 346615

Question

I have been given a large amount of money by the government in my country due to illness for a couple of months; it is completely halal money, Allaah willing. Now my father gave his bank details for the money to be transfered into his bank account rather than mine. In his bank account, he owes the bank money along with interest, which the bank will automatically take without permission if any money comes goes into it in order to pay that loan back. So now the money that was halal and supposed to come to my account has been taken. The only way I could retain that money is by taking that money back from my fathers account, which will be a loan this time, and not the money that the goverment had given me. If I take the money that was given to me by the goverment out of my father's account, the ammount of money that he previously owed will be there exactly the way it was before if the money had correctly come into my account. What do I do? Can I take out the loan money, which is basically my money that was accidentally transferred into the wrong account because it is not my fault and it was a mistake and in reality that loan money is the halal money from the goverment and given that my father's bank will be in the same position as before?

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 is His slave and Messenger. 

That amount of money is exclusively your right, and you have the right to ask your father to give you the amount that was transferred to his account by mistake. There is no harm on you in taking that amount from your father's account, regardless of the way in which your father gets the amount that you are asking him for and whether he borrows that amount from the bank as a loan or the bank returns that amount which was firstly deposited in his account to him. You have nothing to do with the sin of the forbidden transaction between the bank and your father.

Also, the prohibition of borrowing with interest is related to the person who borrowed the money, and not to the money itself. For more benefit, please refer to fatwas 102369 and 93774.

Allah knows best.

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