Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Q&A Paying to Enter Competitions and Raffles

Is it permissible to participate in competitions, where you have to

pay to enter?

You can't do that that's that is essentially so for example, paying

50 pounds to enter a raffle for an iPad.

Clearly that's, that is gambling, that is gambling where it's just

50 pence. So it looks less, it's not two pounds, or five pounds or

20 pounds, it's the same thing. Now, you can't justify this either

by giving a lollipop or by giving a suite or by giving something

else. Because the MCSA the objective that you're doing is the

competition. If it's that, okay, buy these lollipops, these are

really nice lollipops, they're for sale, right? They cost 20 Pence

each or 50 Pence each or a pound each for that matter. But and

we'll also put your name in, you know, like a side thing, and is

seen as a side thing, and the objective is that lollipop, then

that's understandable. But when the objective is the price, and

the lollipop or the sweet or whatever is being used as a as an

excuse to justify it, it's not allowed, because people are buying

for that price. So that is what you call gambling. There are ways

to get around this, obviously, you know, where you do certain things,

and they people are just automatically included in this

raffle.

Now, this is the same whether it's done for charity or not. I've had

at least three discussions about this in the last few years with

different organizations that want to use because the raffle is a

very nice way of making a lot of money. Right? And you know in

forest gate I've dealt with two organizations if I remember

correctly, a number of others about this and this is the

conclusion we came to that you can't because it is gambling at

the end of the day. And the little token gift you're giving is just

is not is not right