Setting up a charcoal factory

A question about setting up a factory to produce charcoal, given that charcoal has many uses, in which Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that making and selling charcoal is unobjectionable when it can be put to a lawful use, while a type made only for a forbidden use may not be made or sold. ¹

The questioner said they wished to set up a factory making all kinds of charcoal in different grades and sizes, noting that charcoal is used for several purposes, and asked for the legal ruling. ¹

The Department answered that there is no objection to working in the making and marketing of charcoal, because it is a pure, useful commodity of neutral nature: it may be used for permitted purposes such as cooking, heating and burning incense, or for forbidden ones such as lighting a water pipe or cooking forbidden food, and the sin lies with whoever uses it in a forbidden way. ¹ It said that if a type of charcoal were exclusively for a forbidden use and could not be used otherwise, making and selling it would be forbidden. ¹ It concluded that making and selling charcoal is unobjectionable when it can be used lawfully, as for cooking and heating, but that a type assigned only to a forbidden use, with no other possible use, may not be made or sold. ¹

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published this fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 4021, dated 13 November 2025. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.