The Permissibility of an IT Internship Related to Loto-Québec
Question
Dear Mufti Mirza-Zain Baig, I would like to ask you a question regarding the Islamic permissibility of an internship that I will be completing as part of my university studies. I am currently studying Computer Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, and this internship is a mandatory requirement for completing my degree. I have been looking for an internship opportunity and, so far, this is the only internship I have been able to find and secure. The internship is with Technologies Nter, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Loto-Québec. According to the company’s description, Technologies Nter provides IT services to other subsidiaries of Loto-Québec. My internship is specifically in IT infrastructure and does not involve directly working with gambling activities. My responsibilities would include: Participating in the design and evolution of technological platforms, particularly cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, networking, CI/CD, observability, and employee experience platforms. Maintaining and supporting IT assets, servers, and services. Providing support for production deployments. Creating technical documentation and guides. Working with technologies and practices such as Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, GitOps, GitFlow, CI/CD, DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering. Using or learning technologies such as AWS, Azure, Ansible, FluxCD, Dynatrace, Prometheus, OpenSearch, Vault, ServiceNow, and Backstage. Working with Linux and scripting languages. My concern is that Loto-Québec is involved in gambling activities. Although my responsibilities are purely technical and do not directly involve gambling, the company I would be working for is a wholly owned subsidiary of Loto-Québec and provides IT services to its subsidiaries. Is it permissible (halal) for me to accept and complete this internship? Is the salary I would receive from this internship permissible? Does the fact that the internship is mandatory for my degree, and that this is the only internship opportunity I have been able to secure, have any relevance to the ruling? Would it make a difference if my specific work is not directly related to gambling activities? I want to make sure that I am making the right decision from an Islamic perspective while also fulfilling the requirements of my degree. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on this matter. Thank you very much for your time and consideration. Kind regards, Asmaa Sabouri
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As-salamu alaykum wa-rahmatullahi wa-barakatuh.
Sister in Islam,
It is commendable that you have raised this question before accepting the position rather than after.
In principle, employment is impermissible in two cases. The first is where the work itself is a prohibited act or a direct assistance in one, such as running the game, taking the bets, or building and operating the gambling platform itself. The second is where the wage is paid from income that is wholly unlawful, so that nothing lawful can be identified from which the wage could have come. Where the employer's income is mixed, containing lawful and unlawful streams, a wage or a gift from that employer is permissible so long as it can reasonably be attributed to the lawful portion. The jurists illustrate this with a person whose wealth is largely unlawful but who also has lawful earnings. A payment from him that is within the measure of his lawful earnings is permissible to take, even though the unlawful portion is larger. There is a further consideration. According to one recognized opinion, non-Muslims are not bound by the detailed rulings of the Shariah in their transactions, so their wealth is not judged to be unlawful in the way a Muslim's wealth earned by the same means would be, and what a Muslim receives from them by way of wage or gift is permissible to use. Loto-Québec is a Crown corporation owned by the government of Quebec, and this opinion applies to it.
Accordingly, your work in IT infrastructure, meaning cloud platforms, deployment pipelines, networking, documentation, and support of servers, is technical work that is not in itself a gambling act, and it is not the direct operation of the gambling. As for the wage, Loto-Québec has lawful streams of income alongside its gambling revenue, including its restaurants, hotels, entertainment venues, and other services, and a technical intern's salary can reasonably be attributed to that lawful portion. On the opinion that the wealth of a non-Muslim entity is not judged by the rulings binding on Muslims, the wage is permissible in any case. It is therefore permissible for you to accept the internship and the salary is lawful for you.
It is important to note that permissibility is not the same as preference. An institution whose main business is gambling is not a place a Muslim should wish to remain, and there is a level of caution beyond the ruling that a believer aims for. We therefore advise that you limit your engagement to what the degree requires, that you not extend or convert the internship into continued employment there, and that you continue to look for another placement in the meantime. If a lawful alternative comes through before you begin or during the term, take it. Complete the requirement, and then move on to work whose source is beyond question.
Allah knows best
Mufti Mirza-Zain Baig
Canadian Centre for Islamic Research and Iftaa · This answer is provided for general guidance.