I previously worked in the customer services section, not sales department, of telephone banking in a mainstream bank, where a small contribution from my monthly wages and employee contributions was paid into a work pension,
I now want to look at changing the pension fund to an Islamic one, I haven’t worked there for 8 years and have forgotten about it.
But My question is, would I need to write the whole pension off because it’s was wages from the bank or just the earnings from the fund itself? the problem that particular fund is invested in 800 companies (legal and general) some companies are ok but some won’t be and I wouldn’t even know where to start with working out which profits have come from the permissible companies and which aren’t permissible.
At the time this was the only employment that was available
May Allah bless you.
Your question covers several points. Firstly, is earning a salary from a bank job permissible (halal) in Islam? Some scholars believe it is not, while others consider it halal if the job itself is permissible. if we go with the latter view, both your salary and the employer’s contribution to your pension are halal. However, the earnings from pension fund investments are only halal if invested in a permissible manner. Determining the halal nature of these investments can be tricky, as it depends on whether they involve interest-bearing assets or equities etc. It’s difficult to precisely separate the halal and haram (impermissible) portions of these earnings. Therefore, my suggestion is to estimate the amount derived from haram sources, donate that sum to charity, and transfer the remainder to a Shariah-compliant fund.