Booking hotel room for alcohol drinker

16-1-2016 | IslamWeb

Question:

Assalaamu alaykum. I work for a governmental department in international relations. I am in charge of applying visa, hotel booking and plane tickets for all formal delegations and personnel travelling. My boss is going to travel to abroad, and I have to book a hotel for him while knowing that he is drinks alcohol and might be travelling to a country to do some devil things there and to drink or do other bad things there in the hotel or somewhere else. Am I sinning when I book the hotel for him or people who are traveling with him or not? I want to be sure of my work. Allaah will never lose track of the good deeds.

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

It is permissible to make a hotel booking for the purpose of housing, even if the person whom you mentioned in the question and those accompanying him will commit some forbidden acts, as long as the original purpose of making the hotel booking is that they stay in it, which is permissible. It is for this reason that the scholars stated that it is permissible to rent houses and the like to non-Muslims, and it is known that they commit acts that violate the sharee'ah in their homes, such as worshipping other than Allaah, eating pork and drinking alcohol, yet it is permissible to rent to them.

The Indian Fataawa reads, “If a Thimmi (non-Muslim living in the Muslim community) hires a house to live in from a Muslim, then this is permissible, even if he [Thimmi] drinks wine or worships the Cross or enters pork in it, and the Muslim is not sinful for this, because the Muslim did not rent it for that purpose but he rented it for residence.”

Allaah knows best.