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Is it permissible to participate in a social media project that has both benefits and harms, and its money is halal, despite the strong likelihood of its misuse?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

If it is expected that the misuse of a project will outweigh its proper use, then the advice is to abandon it, unless its application can be regulated and its misuse prevented. This is because predominant assumptions must be acted upon, and what prevails is what matters. Safety is paramount. The Islamic legal principle states: "If the halal (permissible) and the haram (forbidden) converge, the haram takes precedence," because prohibition involves forsaking something permissible to avoid something forbidden. As for the issue of missing guaranteed earnings due to abandoning it, this becomes insignificant as long as the abandonment is for the sake of Allah the Almighty. For whoever abandons something for the sake of Allah, Allah will compensate him with something better, as stated in the noble Hadith: "Indeed, you will not abandon anything out of fear of Allah the Almighty and Glorious, except that Allah will give you something better than it."

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

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