Stolen Tools, Stolen Sweets

There is the account of a woman who came in tears, describing the troubles afflicting her life and her children, and laying the blame on her husband. Her husband had worked in a large factory, where it was the practice of everybody there, himself included, to take an expensive component, or some tool, put it in a bag and walk out — there being no security at the time to stop them. Their own garage, she said, was full of beautiful, expensive tools, every one of them stolen from that factory. All of this is a form of ḥarām. A man working in a sweet factory who wonders whether it is wrong to take a couple of lollies, a couple of smarties, home in his pocket — ḥarām is ḥarām, whatever the size of the thing taken; it belongs to the person paying him for his work, and nobody has the right to steal from another. There is no need to go into the sharīʿah's own ruling on cutting off hands for this to be plain: every need is already covered within the sharīʿah, so there is no need to steal from a supermarket while the money is sitting in one's own pocket — why steal even a bottle of peanut butter, unless a person is sick in the head. Cameras now watch for exactly this in supermarkets and petrol stations, where people come with large pockets stuffed with goods never paid for, opened up for all to see; the number of Muslims doing this is remarkable, and disgraceful. Larger companies, too, steal millions of dollars this way, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and this is equally ḥarām.

Nahb and taghrīr are further forms of extortion — of confiscation, of going into a place by force, bullying and taking over another's property through ẓulm — and this too is ḥarām. What is another's is another's, and what is one's own is one's own: Allah (swt) has said, there is no causing of harm, and no reciprocating of harm, in Islam. The sharīʿah guarantees a person's property; to take it is theft, and it is absolutely not permitted.