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Fatwa CenterAn employee partially rents a flat provided by his employer
Question
Dear Brothers in Islam,
May Allah be pleased with you for this service. My question is a little bit complicated. Thanks for your patience.
I work as a lecturer in a university in the Middle East. As part of the contract, the university provides lecturers with free apartment buildings in a compound. The apartment buildings are really big: there are 3 bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. I am a single man.
One of my friends wanted to stay with me and told me that he would pay me monthly for staying in my apartment. He has been with me for about a year now.
Before I made this decision to let him stay with me, I went through the apartment building contract and could not see any article that mentiones this specific topic. Although some of the lecturers hire maids and they stay in their apartments, I am not sure how the university would react if they learn that someone else is staying with me. It makes me really uncomfortable thinking that the money I get from the rent is Haram.
The apartment complex doesn't belong to the university. The university rents it from a private owner.
The advantages of my friend staying with me are as following:
1. I make money.
2. I help my Muslim brother. If he wanted to stay in such an apartment himself, he would need to pay more and live in a poor quality place.
3. I have a Muslim friend in the house which is great companionship in the absence of any family or relative in this country.
Also, in this country there is a shortage of accommodation and the apartments we have are too large for one person.
Am I doing something Islamically unlawful? Is the rent money Haram? If it is Haram, what should I do with it? I can not just ask my friend to leave the house. What can I do? If this is a problematic situation, how do I fix it?
Jazakallah Khayran Kathiran
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 you had taken this accommodation from your employer as part of what you deserve in return for work, then you have the right to let whomever you want to live with you, either with payment or without payment, because you are considered as a tenant who is renting from this government institution, or from the landlord, and the tenant – because he owns the benefit of the property – has the right to rent it to others, this is the view of the Shaafi’i, Hanbali and Hanafi schools of jurisprudence. Ibn Qudaamah 
said: “We do not know any difference of opinion about this, and the situation is so because the tenant has the right to get the benefit of what he made the contract on either by himself or by his deputy.”
On the other hand, if your employer volunteers to give you an accommodation [without it being part of the package from your employer, and this is not included in the contract], then it is not permissible for you to rent the accommodation to someone else if you know that your employer objects to this either by text or according to the existing customs which serve as a text.
However, in case it is permissible to let someone else live with you in the accommodation, and this is the principle, then this is permissible whether in return for payment or without payment.
Allaah Knows best.
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