I was offered a position at a startup that helps restaurants compare invoices from different suppliers and manufacturers to find better pricing and options. However, one feature of the platform includes alcoholic products. If I tell them that I will not work on, support, or develop the alcohol-related feature, would it be permissible for me to work for the company?

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I was offered a position at a startup that helps restaurants compare invoices from different suppliers and manufacturers to find better pricing and options. However, one feature of the platform includes alcoholic products. If I tell them that I will not work on, support, or develop the alcohol-related feature, would it be permissible for me to work for the company?

The ruling here depends on the nature of your actual work and your level of involvement with the alcohol-related functionality.

If the company’s primary business is a general restaurant procurement and invoice-comparison platform, and the overwhelming majority of its activities involve lawful food, supplies, inventory management, pricing comparisons, and business analytics, then the company itself is not primarily an alcohol business.

In such a case, if your role is confined to permissible aspects of the platform and you are genuinely able to avoid developing, maintaining, supporting, marketing, or facilitating the alcohol-related features, then there is a strong basis for permissibility.

On the other hand, if your responsibilities would include:

building the alcohol-related modules,
maintaining them,
improving them,
providing technical support for them,
or otherwise directly facilitating the buying, selling, or promotion of alcoholic products,
then that would be problematic because it would constitute direct assistance in a prohibited activity.

Allah says:

“And cooperate in righteousness and piety, and do not cooperate in sin and transgression.” (Al-Mā’idah 5:2)

The key question is therefore not whether alcohol exists somewhere on the platform, but whether your work directly contributes to that specific prohibited aspect.

By analogy, many scholars permit working for large companies whose overall operations include some impermissible transactions, provided the employee’s own work is lawful and not directly connected to the prohibited activity.

Therefore, if all of the following are true:

  • The company is not primarily an alcohol business.
  • Most of its services are lawful.
  • You can clearly exclude yourself from the alcohol-related feature.
  • Your work will be on the permissible parts of the platform.
  • You are not expected to support or maintain the alcohol functionality.
  • Then there is a reasonable basis for permissibility, especially if employment opportunities are limited.

However, if the alcohol functionality is deeply integrated into your responsibilities such that you cannot realistically avoid contributing to it, then the matter becomes much more difficult and would lean toward impermissibility.

My practical advice would be:

Before accepting the position, have a clear conversation with the employer and determine:

  • Whether your duties can be restricted to non-alcohol-related features.
  • Whether you may decline assignments connected to alcohol products.
  • Whether this arrangement can be documented or clearly understood by your team.
  • If they agree and your involvement remains confined to the permissible portions of the platform, then the position is much easier to justify from a Sharīʿah perspective.

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