Selaam wahleikoem
First and foremost ramadan kareem,
As of recently i have been looking into the company Gamestop ($GME) to invest in. They used to be a dying company on the verge of bankruptcy, but as of recently the company has been through a complete overhaul of management and business plan. The company has made the shift over from mainly retail stores to an E-commerce based company with E-Commerce experts from amazon joining the management, leaded by R cohen who built a multi billion dollar E-commerce pet shop.
GME is a company that sells everything that can be seen as tech. They mainly sell things such as monitors, projectors, keyboards, mouses, gaming consoles, PC’s, videogames, accessories and other software.
All of their long-term debt will be paid off at the end of April which for me personally is a huge plus regarding the minimization of ribā. Although i am not sure if we can even partake in ANY form of ribā
Islamic Finance apps deem the company as “Questionable”. This is because some of the games they sell can contain haraam things such a gambling, alcohol and nudity(these games are M rated). I went on a search for their incomes on their 10K filing but i was unable to find a detailed breakdown of how much incomes comes from where. Their breakdown consists of:
Hardware sales
Software sales
Others
According to Pegi (Pan European Game Information) 7% of games are M rated
8% of the rated games have forms of sexual reference (including gestures and symbols)
1,4% have a gambling references
1.2% have a reference to drug use (including alcohol and tobacco)
I personally, along with many other people think that the social benefit of games outweigh the harms it can cause. The benefits being stress relieve, problem solving, active brain-function and mood uplifting. fatawaa’s on gaming that i’ve read consider gaming to be halal as long as they do not intervene with remembering and worshipping Allah.
Could you give your opinion on the matter of halalness and ribā?
I have also sent this question to another islamic banker to obtain multiple opinions.
Jazakallah khairan