Date : 30-07-2013

Question :

The administration of a hospital intends to offer goodwill loans to the employees against adding (3%) as fees of loan’s expenses and services. What is the ruling on this?


The Answer :

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of The Worlds, and may His peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all of his family and companions.


It is permissible to charge the loanee the actual fees of loans services since they don’t involve usury and the one who is actually benefitting here is the loanee not the loaner. As loan’s procedures going smoothly and services are provided, the loaner isn’t obliged to burden the above expenses, thus Hanbali jurists are of the view that charging the loanee the fee of writing down the debt is permissible and this opinion was adopted in resolution No. (13) of the international Fiqh Assembly.


To ensure the permissibility of the above loan, it is stipulated:


First: The added amount must equal the actual fee for granting the loan without involving any interest in order to avoid committing usury under the pretext of imposing administrative fees.


Second: The calculation of the aforementioned expenses should be based on precision not approximation.


In this regard, it is stated [Al-Ma’ayeer As-Shariaa pp.271] what follows: ” Accuracy has to be observed while setting the actual fees by which no usurious interest is involved as well the expenses of services shouldn’t involve indirect expenses such as employees’ salaries, rent fees, furniture, transportations and similar expenses due on the institution itself.”


Finally, it is worth noting that the calculation of administrative services due for offering the loan should be calculated separately from the calculation of the loan. And Allah knows best.