 Hey everyone, it's MJ the student's actuary and in this video I'm going to answer a student's question. Now the question is as follows Can I study actuarial science if I'm a Muslim? And my answer is I don't know but but I didn't make this entire video just to say that If anything this question fascinates me and I really want to know the answer So I'm hoping that the comment section below can actually be a place for a fruitful discussion I think the channel is mature enough that we're not gonna go into some sort of religious flame war And then we can actually have constructive dialogue around this topic What I do want to talk about is a little bit about just religions history in general to to finance I know with Christianity That usury is considered a sin now What exactly is usury that's where theologians have a bit of a debate for a long time? Usury was considered any form of interest Whereas nowadays is kind of considered excessive interest and this is something that even the law of the land of most countries Say that it's illegal to lend someone money and charge them an excessive amount of interest Of course, what is an excessive amount is is quite subjective and that's where this does become a little bit of a gray area In you know in countries laws and and with Christianity Whereas some of your other religions will just rule it out in its entirety now Christianity also had a little bit of a backlash against life insurance when it first came out because people were saying I don't want to buy life insurance that shows that I've got no faith in God and Only God knows when when I'm going to die and how can I profit off somebody else's death? So it was considered as Speculating against the will of God and it was considered gambling and in Christianity These are two concepts or two things that you don't really want to do now I don't know much about Islam and that's where I am relying on you guys to answer in the comment section But I think also in Islam Gambling and speculating against the will of Allah is is considered a sin So what you have to do with or what theologians and I guess financial people also have to do was they had to Structure their financial products or show that they had enough statistical certainty to show that these things were not gambling and that you weren't betting on whether somebody's gonna die or not but rather that these life insurance products were a cooperative Action taken by the community to safeguard widows and orphans so it does become more of a Philosophical debate and they you are gonna have differences of opinions Some Christians might say life insurance is wrong. Some Muslims might say life insurance is good Some Jewish people might say, you know, something else And and that is the thing that you need to to consider is you need to look at okay What is my what does my religion say and also what because each religion has various different branches What does the the branch of my religion say? Catholics will say something different to say Protestants In Islam, you've also got the two big branches Sunni and Shiite And and they will also might have they might have a different different outlook that you need to to consider So it's an important question to to ask yourself because the last thing you want to do is spend like eight years studying something and Then you can't get a job because you're working in an area that contradicts your religious beliefs So you want to think carefully just from say like a practical point of view There are places that do design insurance products or financial products that are in line with Islamic rules But you need to ask yourself are those jobs available in whatever country you're staying in if you're staying in a Christian country Then chances are that there aren't going to be a lot of financial companies designing You know products that are in line with with Islamic law So you do need to take that into consideration So even forget about say the logistics of all the philosophy think about the practicality of studying it as well There are other views. I mean just looking on the discord group There were some guys who said you know what I see that it is maybe something like a wrong thing to do in Islam But if I do enough good deeds, it can maybe cancel that out So there are people who are taking that route Of course, not everyone will agree with that some people some other people might might say that's actually the only way to do it It is a very it's a very sticky question that that you have have asked And I hope that this is this is beneficial It's not just me rambling about something that I really actually don't know much about so therefore I am going to say Do more research on your own But I do want to kick-start the dialogue because it is a question that I think a lot of people Will be looking for and hopefully our comment section below can point people in the right direction So feel free to to share links to post arguments But like always guys, I mean our channel. We are quite mature. We are respectful. So I'm confident enough that that job the comment section isn't going to go into a crazy flame or because at the end of the day, I mean, yeah, we we're religious people, you know strive to be righteous people and And that's what's always weird when they like go crazy on comment sections because they're like contradicting themselves But anyway, let me maybe end the video off here But like I say it is it is a big big big question I'm not qualified to answer it but I hope that this has kick-started the discussion and I look forward to to hearing your guys views on it. Thanks so much for watching And if you have any questions feel free to ask me and yeah, I'll make a video. Thanks guys. Cheers