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What is the ruling on working for a company that ships goods of unknown content, which may contain prohibited items such as alcoholic beverages, and what is the ruling on working in a warehouse that sells clothes in the West, which may contain women's clothing used for ostentatious display?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Working for a cargo shipping company is permissible, even if some of the goods being transported are prohibited, as long as the worker is unaware of it. This is because he did not intend to assist in the forbidden act, nor did he directly engage in it. However, if the worker knows that the goods he is transporting are wine or something forbidden, then it is not permissible for him to do so, based on the words of the Almighty: "And cooperate in righteousness and piety, but do not cooperate in sin and aggression" (Al-Ma'idah: 2). This ruling applies to working in a warehouse for permissible clothing; there is no harm in it, even if the buyer uses some of it for a forbidden purpose, as long as the worker is unaware of the buyer's intention. All of this falls under the category of assisting in sin, which the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America has divided into four categories: three forbidden (direct intentional, direct unintentional, indirect intentional), and one permissible, which is neither direct nor intentional, such as the case of shipping packaged goods mentioned in the question.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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