We all know the Islamic injunction to pay the laborer before the sweat on his brow dries
In the past week two pronouncements have been made by Saudi scholars that bear reflection. The first, from an imam in Buraidah, was a call for sex education in schools. The second, made at a symposium in Riyadh, is that it is unlawful in Shariah law to delay wages to workers.
The latter comes as no surprise. It is not merely that scholars have been saying it for years. We all know the Islamic injunction to pay the laborer before the sweat on his brow dries. The fact that the law needs to be stated loud yet again is what is so uncomfortable. Workers (invariably foreign workers) unpaid for months, sometimes years; salaries of expatriates leaving the country for good deliberately blocked; employers inventing stories about workers stealing so as not to pay them; maids unpaid on the wholly immoral grounds that their employers have spent thousands of riyals sourcing them and that they should not receive anything until they have worked long enough to cover the outlay. There are so many stories that no one expresses the slightest shock any more.
Categories: Human Rights, Law and Religion, Middle East, Saudi Arabia