Legal and Illegal Earning in Islam: A Literature Review

Wealth is one of the immeasurable blessings of Allah (SWT) that He bestowed human being with. There are various provisions for achieving the wealth. In human life earning plays an important role in making life meaningful. The aim of this paper is to discuss on how Islam encourages and prescribe Muslim legal earning and forbid Muslim illegal earning. Based on the literature findings this paper intends to see the Islamic rulings pertaining legal and illegal income earning. It is very common now to see a Muslim who are able to differentiate between legal and illegal earning. However, it is a shocking phenomenon and a sad fact that a large number of Muslims now do not differentiate between the legal and illegal earnings. Some people are involved in earning money and seeking employments in undesirable occupations (Khan & Halal, 2010).This paper used a basic qualitative research design. All data are analyzed by using secondary data especially from the Qur`an as well as Hadith and related literature. The findings of this paper show that there is a prohibition of illegal earning in Islam as well as the encouragement of Islam to legal earning and a punishment for a person who engage himself on illegal earning.