Netflix has seen a massive surge in the number of users subscribing to the platform ever since it was made available in Pakistan. The purpose of netflix is to enable users to view unlimited number of tv shows and movies for fixed price, which even though has increased in recent years, is still considered a steal by all the users who have moved away from buying and renting dvds and stuff.
However, not every user gets a failed payment notification on the basis of the local bank considering the payment un-islamic. For those of you who find it extremely difficult to believe, this has actually happened with a pakistani user who was an avid subscriber ro not just netflix but other subscriber services as well. He has been using the streaming service for quite some time now but never did anything like this happened According to Muhammad Ahmed Tariq, the payment was rejected which was obviously peculiar at first but the later was clarified that the paymeny was rejected on the grounds that the payment is against the bank’s shariah policy. This explanation was not even close to giving Ahmed a valid justification as to why the payment was rejected. Ahmed quotes the situation in the following words,
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‘. First of all, I hadn’t asked them for all the information that the bank had given me over the phone. And it wasn’t even in my mind that the Netflix payment would be rejected because the bank deems it ‘non-Islamic. “
The name of the bank is undisclosed for obvious reasons.
The reason for writing this article is primarily to allow people to give explanations in accordance with the matter because there seems to be no valid explanation as to why such a payment would be considered unislamic. Not to mention all the other practices that banks perform which puts their shariah policy into question.
