Muslim women can work, but with veil: New fatwa

Days after a leading Islamic seminary declared that the practice of women working in offices in proximity with men was un-Islamic, another seminary has issued a fatwa stating that Muslim women can work in offices, but with a veil on.

Mufti of Darul Iftah of Bareilvi Sharif Mohd Ayyub Alem Rizvi has issued the fatwa that Muslim women can work in professional institutions after wearing the veil but with some conditions.

However, the conditions were not known. He also said in the fatwa that Muslims can work in banks under the Islamic law, because the interest earned by banks is profit. The fatwa was issued at Bareily in Uttar Pradesh.

Earlier, the Darul Uloom Deoband had held as un-Islamic women working in offices in proximity with men and decreed that the acceptance of her earnings by a family was against the Sharia.

The Sharia law prohibits proximity of women and men in a workplace, said a recent fatwa issued by a bench of clerics headed by Chief Mufti Habib-ur-Rehman.

The Darul Uloom had also declared that the job of writing and calculating interest in banks and insurance companies was un-Islamic. Both Deoband and Bareilvi belong to Sunni clerics.