In the Name of Allaah, the All-Merciful…
May Allaah’s Salaah and Salaam be upon His final Messenger, to proceed:
Bakkah.net offers, by Allaah’s Permission and Grace, original and precise translations from the scholars of Islam.
Therefore, as much as we would like to see the information here at Bakkah.net spread far and wide, we have to be careful about letting our websites get watered down. I mean by this that visitors go from site to site seeing the same articles on each site and do not value those sites anymore.
So we ask that those who want to connect their visitors to certain information available at Bakkah.net, please do just that – link them to Bakkah.net. Use a small passage (like a paragraph or two) to draw interest to the article, and then provide a link to its source page here on Bakkah.net. This will accomplish the goal, and no one will be deprived of any Islamic information.
For those who would like to use material from Bakkah.net for newsletters or books, in a non-profit manner, then you are welcome to use our materials with the following conditions:
1 – That you quote the source (www.bakkah.net).
2 – That you do not change anything in the article. If you feel there are mistakes in the article, then contact us.
Needless to say, we do not give permission for anyone to put our material in newsletters or publications containing ideas contradictory to pure Islam based on the Book, the Sunnah, and the understanding of the As-Salaf As-Saalih.
We do not prevent anyone from printing out articles and information from www.bakkah.net for:
(1) Their own personal use;
(2) To share with friends or family;
(3) Or to post at their area masjid or Islamic center,
So long as reference is made to www.bakkah.net.
Other than what has preceded, we strictly reserve all intellectual property rights to all pictures, articles, or any other content found at www.bakkah.net.
We want to share the knowledge of the Quran and the Sunnah upon the understanding of the righteous Salaf with everyone. With this policy, we are only preserving the individuality of our websites, without denying anyone access to any information available on www.bakkah.net.
Furthermore, our rights that we have reserved in this policy are protected by our Religion, wal-hamdulillaah. If you have any doubts about the legitimacy of these rights we have claimed, then please read up on the topic of intellectual property rights in Islam.
May Allaah grant us Success.
peace of allah be upon him my name is abuukar axmed axmed raage i live in Somalia specially Mogadishu i am twent i am student i apply to give me scowler ship i hope to except my request if allah wells
As-Salaam ‘alaykum,
dear ustaadh, I would like to know how shaykh Muhammad Bazmool feels about his books/lectures being translated to a language and published as a book? (in terms of copyrights/permission etc.). I hope you’re able to provide me with an answer, since someone was thinking about publishing a book originally by the shaykh. Baaraka Allaahu fiek.
Wa ‘alaykas-salaamu wa rahmatullaah. You should contact him directly regarding that.
Can I copy articles in my tab or mobile or computer for personal use (reading & storing)?
Sure.
Asalaamu Alaikum,
Brother please forgive me. At my workplace they have a weekly jumu’ah newsletter and due to them providing incorrect and articles of innovators I decided to provide them articles from here and other salafi websites. However due to complaints of salafi material from readers at work I would provide it without the link so that they would not see the source website and complain.
I have now stopped doing this for two reasons:
1) The articles were being watered down and others were contributing non-salafi articles in other weeks when I didn’t contribute.
2) By removing the links I can now see I am failing the copyright rules in place.
I have stopped doing this and quit the newsletter as I see no benefit if one week my articles are salafi and the next week non-salafi articles are published. As well as having to hide due to complaints from sufis and having to avoid topics.
May Allah forgive me and then I ask for you to forgive me.
BarakaAllahu Feek
Muhammad Ibn Hussein
wa ‘alayk as-salaamu wa rahmatullaah. May Allaah reward you for discontinuing that practice, and may He bless you and accept your repentance. Indeed, Allaah forbids us from mixing the truth with falsehood in the Quran (2:42). The people need to hear about pure authentic Islam, not mixed with messages of deviant methodologies. May Allaah increase you in goodness!
As-Salaamu ‘Alaykum,
On social media, many laymen Muslims, when spreading quotes from the Salaf or Ahadeeth from Allaah’s Messengerﷺ, they quote the source from the book, volume, page, etc. Usually these people would find these quotes on a website, and they would take the references that the website used and they would use them as their own references. Is this a form of deceit? Considering people who come across your postings might think you were the one who did the research to find the quotes?
Wa ‘alayk as-salaamu wa rahmatullaah. See this: http://www.salafitalk.net/st/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=14&Topic=1991
Assalaamu ‘Alaikum. Is it permissible to use and share pdf books which are free on the internet when we do not know if the website owner asked the author(s) permission to post their work online for free? If you were to search for that same book online, you would see that it is being sold and it is not something free. If it is not permissible to do this, are we wronging the author(s) by way of doing these things, and do we have to seek pardon from them for this? Also, before guidance from Allah I would watch tv shows and movies on websites that post them for free. Usually, if you wanted to watch them you would have to buy the movie/tv show by subscribing to a service like Netflix and the like, or go to the movie theater and buy a ticket to watch it. If we use and share these websites, is this wronging the people who make this content since we are finding a way to watch them without paying, and do we have to seek pardon from the people who make these tv shows and movies?
Wa ‘alaykum as-Salaamu wa rahmatullaah wa barakaatuh. Sending copyrighted materials to people, without permission from the copyright holders, should not be called “sharing”. Sharing is taking something you own or have a right to, and giving that to others. As for taking other people’s property, in this case, legitimate intellectual property, copying it (without permission from its owners), and sending it to others, through modern means of communication, like messages or downloads on websites, then this is a violation of legitimate rights, and not permissible. This is something upheld in Sharee’ah courts (example), and something enforced strictly in Western lands as well (example). As for the latter part of your question, then fear Allah, and abandon falsehood in all its forms, repent to Him, and do not cooperate with anyone in spreading corruption in the land. And Allah knows best.
NOTE: Copyrights in Islamic law are upheld because they are needed to preserve the legitimate rights of content producers. Whenever poorly thought out fatwaas are followed, and Muslims violate the rights of content producers, they cause great harm, which can lead (and has actually led) to the prevention of those content producers from continuing their important work. It is not as simple as, “I want to spread good, so I am sharing beneficial knowledge,” or the likes. If you believe in this approach, then YOU YOURSELF are invited to produce original content, and then YOU are free to make it public domain, or “shareware”, and apply this approach to YOUR WORKS, not other people’s property.
As salāmu alaikum wa rahmatullāh, Ustādh. Ahsanallāhu ilayk,
Based upon your latest reply above (Oct. 21, 2024), what would be the evidence of a *Sharee’ah basis* for the concept of “intellectual property”?
As far as I’m aware, this is a Western concept that was introduced to protect people’s inventions & ideas, and it extends to academic or fictional “content” that is “original” in its composition (even if it was composed of freely available information that doesn’t “belong” to/wasn’t invented by anyone).
In other words: according to the Sharee’ah, how can someone “own knowledge” (especially Islāmic knowledge compiled by scholars who (as far as I know) had no concept of “intellectual property”)?
To keep the tone of my question light (because I’m genuinely asking): would the descendants of Bukhāri or Muslim have an *Islāmic right* to demand financial royalties/compensation from everyone who “profits” off of the original Imāms’ work?
Jazāk Allāhu khair, wa bārakallāhu feek
Wa ‘alaykum as-Salaamu wa rahmatullaah wa barakaatuh. The scholars approach this issue as a naazilah, a new issue, with modern parameters and nuances, not the same as publishing in the past. There are new factors and a set of modern harms and benefits to consider, things that are specific to the modern publishing industry that did not exist previously. Understand that in the past, there was no printing industry. There were no publishers or printing presses. There were only scribes who copied books. They received compensation for their work, either by being contracted to copy a book, or by selling their works in the market. There were no factors involved that would harm them and block them from continuing their work, so as to need something called a “copyright”. This has arisen due the harms and benefits that come with the modern publishing world. So in brief, the scholars apply broad maxims and fundamentals to new scenarios. They give heavy consideration to the maxim, “Laa dharar wa laa dhiraar” (the removal/prevention of harm), and they look at the long-term effects of the people’s actions with insight. With proper research, discussion, and gathering of the various issues involved in the topic of modern copyrights, they do not simply dismiss the whole concept under the claim that “No one owns knowledge.” Copyrights, when applied and preserved properly, are not meant to restrict the flow of knowledge or hoard it, but rather preserve it long-term, enabling content producers to have fair compensation, so as to continue their work.
Think about this: You have been trained with specific knowledge and expertise, which enables you to produce a beneficial book for the Muslims, by Allah’s Permission, perhaps an accurate translation of an important text. You spend about 75 hours of your time producing and preparing the unique and beneficial content, something needed in the printed world. This is your first project and you are just testing the waters to see if you can justify spending that amount of time on a project and maybe doing more like it. You decide to publish a modest run of 1,000 copies. Your printing costs can be covered if you sell 300 of those, and then the rest is profit, hopefully enough to justify you spending 75 hours of time on the project. If you sell 600 copies, then you could justify more projects. Yet, shortly after you launch your book, someone places a digital copy of it on a website and shares it. The people love it and share it everywhere. Your sales never got off the ground, because the digital version is already everywhere. Your sales trickle down and come to a near halt, after selling a total of 150 copies, and you take a loss, not even recovering your initial investment. You do not complain or raise the issue. You are happy to see people benefitting from your work, wal-hamdu lillaah. But as rent and bills are real, and you have to make a certain amount of income to take care of your family, you are forced to redirect your energy and time, and to spend your time in the future on other projects, and you simply cannot justify any large project like that again. Notice: Had people respected the copyright and allowed you to sell your 1,000 copies, you could have re-printed it, or released it digitally yourself, and then continued this kind of work which not everyone is proficient in, bringing out another unique project to benefit the people, and then another and another. Maybe dozens or hundreds of beneficial projects. Yet, sadly you needed to move on to other things.
Please understand: This scenario is real. Taking people’s intellectual property has a real impact on the world around us. These are things beyond saying simply, “No one owns knowledge,” they require care and concern, paired with knowledge of Islamic principles and insight. And Allah knows best.
ALSO: Regarding copyrights being a “Western concept” – So are commas, periods, quotation marks, and even paragraphs and modern typesetting. So are traffic lights and stop signs. These are dunyaa (worldly) matters of benefit. If these things are beneficial and/or prevent harm, and they are not religious, then Muslims have no problem with them.