Writing a Will

Auto-generated transcript:In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honor of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and his companions. May peace be upon him and upon his family. My brothers and sisters, may Allah bless the questioners. One of my friends asked me a question based on the Fajr Reminder which was sent yesterday. And he asked, he said that I said in the Khatira, which I did, that to make a will against the Hukam of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is haram. And that is true. If I did not say to make a will against the Hukam of Allah, my apologies, but that's what was meant. And JazakAllah for the question. The Khatira was on whether it is permissible for anyone to change the laws that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created. On the basis of times have changed, geographies have changed, people have changed, cultures have changed, whatever, whatever, whatever. The question was, is it permissible or would it be permissible for people? And by people, I don't mean ordinary people like myself. I mean, even the ulama, even the scholars of the time. If all of them get together, if every single scholar, on the face of the earth at that time, if they all get together and they decide and they pass a resolution or they pass a or they make a fatwa or they give an opinion to say that any of the laws that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala made is no longer viable, no longer permissible, no longer applicable, no longer valid. Then there. Their collective opinion would be trash, would be rejected, and they would face the wrath of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala on the Day of Judgment for trying to change what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prescribed and commanded in the Quran al-Kareem. They would, in fact, leave the fold of Islam if they pass a ruling to say that anything which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prohibited is permissible. And if anything which Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prohibited is permissible, then they would leave the fold of Islam. So they would leave the fold of Islam if they pass a ruling to say that anything which Allah has permitted is prohibited. Both ways, if they permit something which Allah has prohibited, they would leave the fold of Islam. And if they prohibit what Allah has permitted, they will leave the fold of Islam. Now, having said that, the question was therefore, can I write a will or not? There are two points to understand this. First of all, to write a will against the rules of Islam. The rules of inheritance that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentioned in the Qur'an al-Kareem would be haram. If somebody wrote that will, then that action would be an action of kufr. If somebody wrote that will with the belief that his reasoning and his logic was correct and that the Qur'an is faulty and that the Qur'an should be changed and therefore since the Qur'an cannot be changed, therefore I will change my will and I will write a will in opposition to the Qur'an. For example, in the Qur'an, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala gives the son two shares and the daughter one share. Now there are people who say this is unfair, this is anti-women, this is something which should be changed and they write a will giving their decision. So, the person who says that will, then he will write a will and the daughter will be given the same share. Now, this action is haram. To do that is kufr. And a person who does that with understanding, with believing that he is right or she is right has left the fold of Islam. Wallahu a'alam. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide us. Now you might say, well, I would like to give my son or daughter an equal, son and daughter in equal share. So, let me step one, take one step back. So, let me step one, take one step back. And say that first and foremost, your son and your daughter and you are the creatures of Allah. Allah created you. You are the slaves of Allah. Allah knows what is best for you. You do not know what is best for yourself. And that is the whole meaning of Islam to accept this fact. Number one. Number two is will refers to decreeing what should happen after you die. So, this is a very, something which is, should be clear and should be obvious, but it is not. Because many times, for example, in my business consulting practice, sometimes, mostly sons do this. They come to me and they say, what is my share in my father's property? So, I ask them, is your father alive? They say, yes, he is alive. So, I say your share is zero. You have no share in your father's property. Your father's property is your father's property. He can do whatever he wants with it. He can donate it to his cat. I am not saying that doing it is a good thing or that doing it is correct or doing it is something that he should do. But he has the power. Islam gives him the power to do whatever he wants with his property. He can sell all of it and he can go on a world cruise. He can do whatever he wants with his property as long as he is alive. Once he dies, then there are two aspects. Which is, that for 33% of his property, one third of his property, he has the right to do whatever, to write a will. He has a right to write a will concerning one third of his property. To give it to anybody he likes except those who will inherit that property as per the law of Allah . So, in the 33%, he cannot write, he cannot donate or he cannot bequeath. In that 33%, he cannot bequeath it to his sons or daughters, to his wife or if it's a woman to her husband, to their parents and so forth. They cannot do that because those people inherit in the other 66% of the property by the law of Allah . They have an inheritance there. So, 33% is not meant for them. It is meant for anyone other than them. For example, you might have some caretaker, some servant, some caregiver, some nurses or whoever who take care of you in your last days. May Allah save us from that. May Allah save us from being in need from anyone other than Allah. May Allah save us from hospitals and from hospice, from any kind of care. But if that happens and you have some loyal person who's taking care of you, this person does not inherit in your will because it's not related to you. And therefore, you say, well, I still want to compensate that person. And this 33%, you can give to that person in total or have that person as one of the shareholders in the 33%. In the 33% also, you might say my local masjid, to a madrasa, to a school, to this, to that. Whatever you want, you can donate in that 33% only. The 66% automatically goes to those who Allah made your inheritors. To those who Allah decreed that your inheritance should go to them. So the 66% is something that goes automatically. In that 66%, there's a certain percentage that goes to your wife or your husband. If there's a certain percentage, if they are alive, there's a certain percentage that goes to your parents. If they are alive, there's a certain percentage that goes to your children. In the proportion that I mentioned, which is the males get two shares and the women get one share. Now, this is not unfair. This is perfectly fair because the responsibility on the male, the responsibility on the son is for his parents, is for his siblings, and is for his own family. His wife and children. So the one, the son who's inheriting two shares has to necessarily share that with his own family, with his own wife and children, with his siblings, if the siblings are in need, and with including obviously his sisters, and with his parents, if the parents are also alive and if they are in need. Right? So now this, parents being one of the obviously one would have died. So the son has this responsibility. Whereas the daughter, when she inherits, she inherits this money, whatever she's getting from her father or mother, completely without any responsibility of sharing it with anybody. She has no responsibility to share it with her husband or with her children, or with her parents or anybody. If she does that, this is an ahsad, this is a, this is a something which is, you know, she is doing out of the goodness of our heart. But it is not something which she is bound to do. Therefore, Allah has given the male more than he has given the female, because the responsibility on the male is much more than on the female. So therefore, 33% of your wealth, you can bequeath. As I mentioned to you, please understand this. We are not talking about what you are permitted to do with your wealth in your lifetime. We'll come to that in a second. We're talking about what you are permitted to bequeath, to write as a will for it to be implemented after you've inherited it. So therefore, in that will, which will be implemented after you are dead, you are permitted to bequeath 33%, one third of it to anybody of your choice, other than those who will inherit in the 66%, which is other than those who are your blood relatives. And all of these categories are clearly mentioned in the Quran. Now the 66% or the 60% of the wealth, which is the wealth of the family, which is the wealth of the family, the 66% automatically goes to them. There is no necessity to write a will for those 66%. However, having said that, if you live in a country where there is the Islamic Sharia is not in force, maybe it's a country in which there is no Muslim personal law, which is enforced. So even though the country's law may be a different secular law, that country gives Muslims the right, to use their personal law, the religious law as a legal route. If that is not there, if you're, it's a country where only the local social or secular law applies, then it is advisable for you also to write in your will shares for your sons and daughters and your parents and whoever, who will live after you. So you can put that as a clause and say, if they live after me, then I am bequeathing. And in that,