Accepting a gift from someone who won the lottery

15-9-2013 | IslamWeb

Question:

Asalaam Alaikum. I am married to a christian. She received some money from a lottery that her parents won. We live together and split the bills ( rent, electricity, and cable). I do believe lottery is haram in Islam. Am I affected if she uses the lottery money to pay her part of the bills. Is it allowed to receive gifts that she's bought with the lottery money from her? Salam.

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.

If your wife benefits from that money in paying off the bills or the like, then there is no blame on you because of that. As for accepting that gift from someone who won the lottery, we have pointed out in Fatwa 99768 that if the ill-gotten money is prohibited in itself such as stolen money (which belongs to another person from whom it was taken illegally), then it is not permissible to accept it as a gift. But if it is prohibited because of the way it was earned (but it belongs to its owner), then some scholars allowed accepting a gift from someone who earned it because of the statement of Ibn Mas‘ood : "Benefit from it and the sin will be on the one who gave it."

However, there are other scholars who prohibited it, and this is better to be on the safe side, as long as there is no necessity to take it.

For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 82754.

Allaah Knows best.