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November 13th, 2007 by Abdullah | Filed under Having Ihsaan, International.Bismillah. This is a very hot topic and it seems that most people have a lot of “logical” reasons why we should pirate Islamic content. Firstly I will tell you that I agree that in most cases in an ideal world it would be great if all this material was free, but lets look at this not from our own opinions and desires, but from what Allah Subhanahu wa taAla and His Messenger (alaihis salam) have decreed in this matter. Obviously there was no issue of “copyright” back at the time of revelation, but we can look at what the scholars have to say. Fiqh is not as easy as 123 tada!
You cannot become a Mufti on the weekend. Fiqh is a complicated process that involves looking at proofs, finding out if a specific rule overrides a general rule, looking at exceptions, understanding the language of the sources, and so on.
When Allah and his Messenger rule something, it is not for the believers to have any choice in the matter
And it behoves not a believing man and a believing woman that they should have any choice in their matter when Allah and His Apostle have decided a matter; and whoever disobeys Allah and His Apostle, he surely strays off a manifest straying. (Quran Trans, Shakir)
Most of the responses I usually get on this topic are “logical” answers, stuff like “it hurts the dawah”, and “we have to spread the deen”, and stuff like that. But In reality, are we following Islam, or our own hawa (desires)?
We have to look at the matter in question and see what scholars have said about it.
In regard to the matter of putting up Muhammad Alshareef’s copyrighted material (or Anwar Al-Awlaki, or Khalid Yasin for that matter) we have to keep in mind that
1. In a lot of cases, they do not have any other income. They spend a lot of time and effort propogating the deen of Allah full time, and this does not necessarily pay the bills. I personally talked to Yusuf Estes and told him I disagreed with sheikhs making it copyright, and he told me.. “what can they do? they need money to pay the bills for their wife and kids’. As far as I understand, he encourages the free spreading of knowledge and to not charge fees for teaching the deen, but does not criticize those that do.
Infact we live in such a pathetic world that most of these sheikhs, nobody provides them financial assistance for their hard work of inheriting the task of the messengers and awliya of Allah. SubhanAllah.. back in the day AlMaghrib (the OLD AlMaghrib not AlMaghrib Institute today) used to pay a stipend of money to everyone who used to study Islam and teach it, to encourage people to become scholars.
They dont have the luxury of being a so-called computer scientist like me, or a doctor like you, and having a comfortable living. We dont even know what difficulties their family has to go through to get the deen to us
Yet we take away what little funds they have. we have to admit that by making these lectures freely available online, it definately means a lot less people will buy the audio cds because they KNOW they can find it online
So we should really try to help them by directing people to purchase such audio CDs and videos.
And in regard to hurting the dawah by not putting up such audios, we can safely say that there is still another 36+ gigabytes of stuff on other sites that is not copyright that others can benefit from. In that regard we can say that they can always listen to the alternative. Noor Allah Productions (Ahmad Moait) also has a lecture set about the Prophets and Messengers which is freely available unlike Anwar Al-Awlakis.. so alhamdullilah we do we need to pirate the others?
Allah also says “Ya ayuhal ladhina amanoo awfoo bil Auqood” (transliteration)
5:1 O ye who believe! fulfil (all) obligations.
When we are pirating Islamic media (or any media), what we are doing is breaking our contracts..
first of all we are breaking the LEGAL contract we made for living in this country (because it is illegal)
Secondly we are breaking our contract with the speaker who made the dvd by copying their material when they specifically gave us the CD with the rule that we cannot copy it, and we agreed by purchasing the CD.
We have to fear Allah and realize that even though we wish for such material to be online for free, since we did not produce it, we have no right to distribute it in this manner without their permission.
If we really fear Allah and want the dawah to go, we should ourselves, first spend years studying islam, doing research on the topic (all this time finding a way to take care of our families), and then produce these high lectures with our time, effort, and money.
Then we can safely say to anyone, PLEASE put these up for free on your site. however since we did not go through all that, who gave us the right to use such media? infact most of us live very comfy lives and never have to go through this struggle ourselves.
We should first talk to the sheikhs directly and get permission from them, and if they allow us to use their lectures, alhamdullilah 
Yusuf Estes is a good example, he allows us to use his audios and videos at NO CHARGE fe sabillilah alhamdullilah we should go ahead and use it and make lots of dua for him besides the fact that he will have much less money as a result.
If someone says to me, there is a difference of opinion in this matter, and i think software piracy is halal, i will say to them, please, find me the daleel. Our religion is based on proof. You will see most scholars have very clearly said it is haram to do such a thing even if it “benefits the ummah”. Understand this well, if you want to sell pork sandwiches to benefit the ummah, it’s not going to benefit you nor the ummah on the day of judgement.
What i mean is that in the same manner, we can never do something haram, and try to do something good with it. We can never steal money, run a lottery or a prostitute house, or any of those things, in order to do dawah.
The rule is that in Islam the means does not justify the end.
EDIT: See comments, it is not always the case that the above is true
From Islam-QA
- Copying CDs for distributing
- Downloading lectures and distributing them
- Intellectual Property Rights
From IslamOnline
Ask Imam
Sunnipath
Actually it was not necessary for me to find references from all of the above, the several fatawa on IslamQA would have been enough (And Allah knows best), but I wanted to demonstrate how there is an overwhelming consensus/agreement on this topic.
And the last thing i can say is that I personally heard Muhammad Alshareef explain why he SELLS his cds and not gives the lectures out for free. He has some lectures online for free, and very few people (less than 1000) listened to it. However once he professionally produced it ( www.emanrush.com ) he said the production was in the thousands and thousands and so many people started listening to the lectures.. so he realized this is the best way to do it. And in the end since they put in the effort, it is up to them to decide.
If you want to discuss any of this, please do leave a comment here.
By all means, I agree with your main premise.
I disagree completely with bold blanketing statements such as “the means does not justify the end”–Machiavelli said that and Muslims make the mistake of applying the thinking of the kuffar to the nitty-gritty aspects of Islam. In Islam, we would imagine that desecrating the dead is a bad thing, but where do you think medical sciences developed from? Graves were indeed desecrated and only Imam Malik (ra) permitted this (the principle being: the well-being of the living takes priority over the well-being of the dead). I can go on, but there are moments in time where things arent going to be ideal and you have to simply make the best of it.
Whether we are in those moments of time, in the history of the Ummah –that is something we need to think about…world events suggest we are, where Muslims end up choosing a lesser evil over a greater evil. A little loss of money on the part of the shuyookh may mean more ilm and understanding out there and if this is the case, some of them may indeed agree to it, being men of the heart thinking in terms of the long-term and not immediate.
We SHOULD respect the rights of these lectures and this material. But the movement of countless lectures, pirated for the most part has set the premise in peoples minds that it is OK.
What CAN we do?
1) You need to establish a stronger understanding that the movement of pirated lectures is disliked among the scholars. You could do this through a website listing which lecture, by which shaykh is totally open and which is not good enough. Spread the word, get the shuyookh to become aware of this (because its to there benefit) and the problem will fade, insha Allah.
2) Or get the shuyookh to realize that the movement of pirated lectures can be a positive thing and if they are willing to forgive and find other means to maintain their families and lives–the issue will not be an issue. This is pretty unrealistic but they need to realize the value of (legitimate) piracy in spreading the deen.
I actually think that it is often the other side who uses logic in drawing the conclusion that violating copyrights is indeed haram….If one studies the reality of copyrights deeply, you can actually see that it originates from the capitalist aqeedah…Here is a small exerpt from Sheikh Abdul Qadeem Zallum who studied at Al-Azhar…
[A'isha (ra) narrated: That Buraira came (to 'A'isha) and said, "I have made a contract of emancipation with my masters for nine ounces (of gold) to be paid in yearly instalments. Therefore, I seek your help." 'A'isha said, "If your masters agree, I will pay them the sum at once and free you on condition that your Wala' (loyalty) will be for me." Buraira went to her masters, but they refused that offer. She (came back) and said, "I presented to them the offer but they refused, unless the Wala' (loyalty) was for them." A'isha (ra) mentioned that to the Messenger of Allah (saw) so he said, "Do (it)" so she did. The Prophet (saw) then got up and gave a speech to people, where he glorified and praised Allah, and said, " What about some people who impose conditions which are not present? Allah's ordinance is more deserving, and Allah's condition is more firm. Verily, the Wala is for the liberator." The wording (mantooq) of the hadith indicates that the condition which contradicts what is in the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger should not be adhered to. As long as the conditions of protecting intellectual property make the use of the sold asset restricted to one sort of benefit to the exclusion of another, then they are invalid conditions and contrary to what is in the Book of Allah (swt) and the Sunnah of His Messenger (saw). This is because it contradicts the requirement of the shar'i contract of selling, which enables
the purchaser to freely dispose of and benefit from the asset in any legitimate manner such as selling, trade, gift etc. The conditions which prohibit the Halaal are invalid due to his (saw) saying: "The Muslims are bound by their conditions except a condition which forbids the Halaal or permits a Haraam."
Therefore, it is not allowed in the Shar'a to protect publishing rights,
copyrights and patents. Rather they are permissible rights. Thus, the thinker, scholar or inventor of a program owns his knowledge as long as his knowledge is with him and he has not taught it to others. However, once the knowledge went out to others through teaching, selling etc then the knowledge is no more his property. This is because it went out from his ownership when he sold it. So he does not possess the right to prevent others from freely disposing of it after its ownership has transferred to them through a shari'a means such as selling or other means.
As for the Fatwa which some computer disks hold stating that: "It is not
allowed to copy programmes which their owners, except with their permission due to his (saw) saying: "The Muslims are bound by their conditions." And his (saw) saying: "It is not allowed to take the wealth of a Muslim without his permission." And his (saw) saying: "Whosoever got a permitted thing ahead of others he is more entitled to it." The error of their fatwa comes from their generalisation of the expression 'their conditions' without specifying it to the exclusion made by the Messenger (saw) when he said: 'except a condition which forbids a Halaal.' The last two hadiths have no relevance to the subject because of the subject of the hadith "It is not allowed to take the wealth of a Muslim man..." Its reality is the wealth of others, while the computer disk has actually become the property of the purchaser. As for the other hadith: "Whosoever discovers a permitted thing first he is more entitled to it." Its subject is the public property like the hadith: "Mina (a Hajj site) is the abode (halting place) of the one who reaches (there) first", whilst the computer disk is a private property.
Please let me know what you find confusing or contradicting since the evidences above make it clear that the issue is in fact, placing unlawful conditions once the ownership of something is transferred...You may also refer to Abdullah Robin's article which can be seen at
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20020913/1144236.shtml
That article was orginally printed in "new civilisation" magazine.
[www.newcivilsation.com] Abdullah is an english convert who also speaks
arabic. He currently resides in Britain and I believe his email is
abdullah.robin@newcivilisation.com. He is a very knowledgeable brother who is currently doing a post-doctoral degree in molecular biology which is a field that is deeply affected by patents…
JazakAllah khair for informing us with your study and understanding, couldnt agree with you more on the points you raised mashaAllah.
Some dawah organisation actually collapse due to lack of funding and support. Its hard to understand how business is run, and anyone with a business that is not a billion doller industry should know that business run within budgets and lack of funds means lack of improvement and raising standards and so forth.
I also came across this hadith
‘As for the evidence of the excellence of teaching Prophet Muhammad may Allah praise and venerate him said to Moaz before he sent him to Yemen: “”If Allah guides one person through you, it is better for you than the world and all that is in it.”‘
May Allah accept from us all. ameen
Wassalaam
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