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Fatwa CenterHe takes care of elderly couples and serves alcohol to them
Question
ASC WR WB My work is giving care to elderly Couple, in their home. I serve them Alcohol which the company says is part of their medication? If it's haraam, can I spend it on my parents, my wife, masjid? Jazaakumallah
Answer
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 
is His slave and Messenger.
If the situation is as you mentioned in the question that this work involves serving intoxicants [alcohol or any kind of intoxicant] to those elderly people, then it is not permissible for you to continue this job as this is helping in sin, and Allaah Says (what means): {Help you one another in virtue, righteousness and piety but do not help one another in sin and transgression.}[Quran 5:2] Therefore, you are obligated to abandon this job.
As regards the wages that received from this job, then you are obligated to get rid of the ill-gotten money in it, so you should estimate the money that you got in return for serving alcohol and give away the amount you think that it would acquit you from sin. The ill-gotten money should be spent in charity with the intention of getting rid of it and not with the intention of giving charity. Moreover, it is not permissible for a Muslim to spend from this money on himself or on the people on whom he is obligated to spend unless he is needy, in which case, he should take from it according to his need only.
An-Nawawi 
quoted Al-Ghazali saying: “He may give it in charity to himself and his children if he is poor, because if his children are poor, then the condition of being poor exists in them and so they are in priority over others in giving charity to them.”
Moreover, you are obligated to give the amount of ill-gotten money of what you had earned and had spent previously, unless you did not know the prohibition of serving alcohol. Shaykh Ibn Baaz said: “If he did so out of ignorance, then he shall not be punished for the past and his case is for Allaah (to judge), Allaah Says (what means): {But Allaah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest. So whoever has received an admonition from his Lord and desists may have what is past, and his affair rests with Allaah. But whoever returns [to dealing in interest or usury]-those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide therein.}[Quran 2:275] So, if he did so out of ignorance, he shall not be punished for the past, however, if he had known (its prohibition) and he was negligent (about it), then he should give the ill-gotten money in charity. If half of his money, or a third of it, or one-fourth of it was ill-gotten money, then he should donate that to the poor and needy, but if he did not know about it, and then he knew about it and repented to Allaah, then he may have what is past and his affair rests with Allaah.”
Allaah Knows best.
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