In The Name of Allaah, and all peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allaah, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.
I trade in electrical supplies. Is it permissible for me to pay a sum of money to private electricians in order to bring customers to my shop?

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.

It is impermissible to pay money to electricians in order to bring customers to your shop because those workers are entrusted with the work that they do for their customers. The money that you pay to them drives them to persuade their customers to buy some goods that they may not be in need of or that are more expensive than they are in other shops. This is considered betrayal of trust. You are considered cooperating with them in doing so. Allaah Almighty Says (what means): {but do not cooperate in sin and aggression. And fear Allaah; indeed, Allaah is severe in penalty.} [Quran 5:2]

It is well-known that an electrician who receives money from you will not be free in his opinion and his choice of what is better for the client as in the case that he does not take money from you.

If it is supposed that an electrician’s opinion will not be affected by the paid money to choose what is better for his client, it is a rare situation that is unlike the predominant cases. The sharia rule states that the predominant cases should have precedence over the rare cases in terms of stating rulings because the ruling is about the predominant cases, not the rare ones.

Imaam Al-Qaraafi said, “It should be known that taking the predominant cases into consideration and giving them precedence over the rare cases is the approach of sharia.” There are exceptions to this rule however, but it is inappropriate to mention them in this context. It should be known that this question is not one of these exceptions; so the ruling remains according to the principle ruling. So, it is impermissible to pay money to electricians for this purpose because this most likely causes them to betray the trust of their customers. It is very rare to find people whose opinions are not affected by the money that they are given.

Allaah Knows best.