Question

Al Salem Alaykom,
I have a question about ALMT (Asset Liability Management Treasury :liquidity management, Foreign Exchange Risk management, compliance and risk, etc ) and I would like to get your insights because I got a job offer as a platform engineer (technical role) and I wanted to know whether it’s permissible or not.

my role will consist in making the computer infrastructure layers reliable,to deploy/install the application developed internally on the servers, to monitor those applications and infrastructure, to fix their technical issues.  Like if the disk space if full, we need to free it, like if the computer is down, we need to set it up, the application is not working as expected, we need to troubleshoot it, etc.
I am not developing the software, I am just installing on the servers and managing its computer underlying layers in the cloud  and enhancing it and making the tools used for risk calculations, liquidity management, Foreign Exchange Risk management etc are working well technically and to avoid they break down for hardware issues.

Allah bless you

Salem alaykom

Answer

The permissibility of this job would depend on two things: (1) your role in the job and (2) the source of your income. If your role does not directly or in-directly lead to or support unlawful transactions, as you have mentioned, then it will be permissible for you to take on that job, provided the source of your wages is lawful.

A bank’s income comes from a variety of sources. Some of them are lawful whilst others are unlawful. The majority is usually from deposits which are deemed to be lawful, which means the wages are lawful.

The technical role of a platform engineer would be permissible as the tasks involved are lawful. I would advise however that working for an ALMT department is not ideal as banks engage in many activities that contradict the Shari’ah.

Fiqh al-Buyu’ 2/1064

Answered by:
Ifta Research Fellow

Checked & Approved by:
Mufti Abdul Rahman Mangera
Mufti Zubair Patel