Salam aleykum sheikh @Mufti_Billal @Mufti_Faraz_Adam
I have read your article on IFG regarding your definition of stock and your Fatwa on the purchase of stock, and I have a few questions.
I do not understand what is the argument for saying that the stock constitutes a part of the asset (or to the patrimony of the company).
Because from a legal point of view (in France, but I guess that’s it’s the same in the UK/US) it is only a question of the purchase of rights (right to vote and right to profit).
The shareholder, even if he is alone, will not have the right to use any element of the asset. For example he could not use money in the bank (it would be theft legally), could not repay a debt, creditors cannot ask their money from the shareholder, he can neither move nor sell , nor reimburse, an element of the assets…even if at the end of the year, the income generated is positive, it did not owe him automatically, it is up to the director to decide whether he distributes it or not. And in the event of liquidation, he is the last to be paid, after employees and creditors.
The company is an independent legal person and it has an autonomous patrimony, it is separate from the patrimony of the shareholders. Shareholders can collect its profits (usufruct) but not own them. I understand that the stock market is only a place where power and profit are traded.
Is the company not to be considered as a Waqf or Bayt Al mal, that is to say an independent legal person whose heritage does not belong to anyone and whose usufruct can benefit certain people? Why is it different ?
I would like to understand what is the argument from a fiqh point of view that explains the ownership of the shareholder on the asset of the company? Because on this is based the rest of the reasoning as well as the screening method.
Allah y jazik bi Al kheyr and you may Allah grant you paradise for your answer.
I am a young person who is beginning to find out about this area of my religion because I am afraid of falling into haram. Do not see any form of haughtiness in my message, I am aware that I have little but of science, it is just the desire to understand that drives me to write this message.