Working for an employer with mixed activities

Few large companies have activities that are all beyond reproach from the standpoint of Muslim ethics. A hotel chain serves alcohol, a retail group sells pork, a car manufacturer owns a credit subsidiary, a conglomerate has a gambling business. Does that mean you must give up working for these employers? Most contemporary scholars answer that the question is settled first at the level of the role you hold, not the company as a whole.

This page offers a method for assessing your own role with an employer that has mixed activities: what matters, what matters less, and how to respond if your role changes. For a personal decision, the opinion of a qualified scholar is still recommended.

The role before the employer

In Islamic law, an employment contract is analysed as a contract for services (ijara): the employee is paid for a defined service. What determines lawfulness, therefore, is first and foremost the nature of that service. An in-house lawyer drafting sales contracts for household appliances in a group that also owns a casino is not providing work linked to gambling.

This approach rests on the classical distinctions between direct participation and remote contribution, explained on the page about involvement in a haram activity. It is held by a large proportion of scholars, even though some prefer, as a precaution, to avoid employers whose main activity is forbidden.

Three questions about the company

What is its main activity?

A company whose core business is lawful (general food retail, industry, transport, IT) and which has a minor forbidden activity cannot be compared with a company whose dominant activity is alcohol, gambling or interest-based lending. The more central the forbidden element, the harder it is to regard support functions as neutral.

Is the forbidden activity kept separate?

A distinct subsidiary with its own teams creates a genuine separation. Conversely, an activity integrated into every department exposes each employee more.

How is it developing?

A company that is actively expanding its problematic division, or gradually moving its teams into it, calls for greater vigilance.

Five questions about your role

1. Nature of the tasks: do you yourself carry out a forbidden act (selling, serving, drafting a loan)?
2. Specificity: does your work serve only the forbidden activity, or the company as a whole?
3. Proportion: what share of your time involves that activity?
4. Room for manoeuvre: can you set aside the problematic tasks without disrupting the team?
5. Alternatives: do you have realistic options elsewhere?

A role can therefore be acceptable in a questionable company, and problematic in a company that is broadly sound.

Practical examples

• Supermarket: the fruit and vegetable manager, the stock controller or the security officer sells neither alcohol nor pork; the sales assistant on the spirits aisle does. The case is explored further on the page about working in the alcohol sector.
• Car manufacturer with a credit subsidiary: the engineer or production worker is not concerned; the salesperson responsible for selling interest-based finance is more so.
• Hotel group: reception, housekeeping, maintenance and reservations are generally distinguished from bar service.
• Airline: pilots and ground staff are not in the same situation as cabin crew responsible for serving alcoholic drinks, a question on which scholars' opinions differ.

Cross-functional roles

Human resources, IT, legal, finance and communications work for the whole organisation. Their situation depends on the place of the forbidden activity in the business as a whole. Accountants and controllers, who record mixed income and interest, face specific questions dealt with on our page about accounting for mixed revenue. IT professionals will find a method of analysis on the page about IT and unlawful projects.

Does the salary come from mixed income?

A frequent objection is that the salary is paid out of income that is partly unlawful. The most widespread position is that the employee is paid for their own work; if that work is lawful, so is the salary, even if the company has other sources of income. A similar logic is found, on a different scale, in equity screening under AAOIFI standards, which tolerate a limited share of non-compliant income provided the investor purifies it. To go further, see the page on whether a salary is lawful.

If your role changes

A reorganisation may give you new problematic tasks. Act early: explain the difficulty to your manager, suggest a different division of work and find out about your rights. In France, an employee cannot be penalised because of their religion, but refusing a task that falls within the contract is not automatically protected. In the United Kingdom, the Equality Act 2010 protects against religious discrimination, and the Acas guidance on religion or belief at work is a useful starting point. If no adjustment is possible, an internal move or a gradual job search is often better than leaving in haste.