Assalaamu alaykum. I will try to explain my situation in details. I work as a secretary in a social office. I have many lawful tasks, like answering the phone, writing letters, and so on. We are helping people, socially, and also with their administrative affairs. Most of them have financial issues and cannot deal with these themselves. It means that all their bills and mails come to us. My question is about insurance. I live in a country where health insurance is mandatory for everyone and everybody has to pay premiums. So, as we receive the bills, some of them are medical bills (medecine, pharmacy), and I have to send them to insurance so they can refund the person. I was wondering if this was haram and helping others in sinning? Also, as we receive all their mails, we receive papers about their bank statements at the end of the year, and sometimes it shows the interest that they received. All I have to do is class these in their personal files. I hope that my question is clear. I really am afraid of gaining unlawful money because of this. If the activities that I mentioned above are haram, can I give theses tasks to my non-Muslim colleague and continue with the "halal" activities?

All perfect praise be to Allah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

The Muslim communities in those countries and others have special rulings.

The European Council for Fatwa underlined this in its decision on insurance, as it said:

"...There are situations and environments that require solutions to address special conditions and meet their requirements, especially the case of Muslims in Europe, where commercial insurance prevails and there is a dire need to benefit from it in order to prevent the dangers to which they are most exposed in their life in all its forms and the lack of an Islamic alternative – Takaaful (cooperative) insurance – and the difficulty to find it at the present time; so the Council issues a fatwa that commercial insurance is permissible in the following cases and what is similar to them:

1.     Legal binding cases such as insurance against third parties on cars, machinery and equipment, workers and employees, social security or retirement pension, and some cases of health insurance or school insurance and so on.

2.     Cases of need for insurance to repel inconvenience and severe hardship, whereupon the existing deceit in commercial insurance system is forgiven; for example in the following cases:

a.    Insurance on Islamic institutions such as mosques, centers, schools, and so on.

b.    Insurance on vehicles, machinery, equipment, houses and professional and commercial establishments, in order to avoid risks that cannot be covered, such as fire, theft, and the malfunction of the various facilities.

c.    Health insurance in order to avoid the high costs that may be incurred by the insured and his family; this is either because of the absence of a free health coverage, or its slowness, or its low technical level."

In any case, as long as the insurance is mandatory, then there is no harm on you in transferring its bills to companies in order to make the dues reach their recipients. Also, the mere receipt of their letters, including their bank statements, and classifying them in their personal files is not considered helping them in sin, as appears to us from the question.

Allah knows best.