We have in our street in Jeddah (in Saudi Arabia) a simple football playground which neither we own nor we know the owner of it (government or individuals we don’t know). We used to play in this playground since a long time, and as long as we take care of it since years (cleaning it…etc), it’s regarded by society to belong to us according to customs and traditions in our local area. In summer and during Ramadan month, we make football championships on this playground, and we spend money to take care of this piece of land; this is the streets’ system here in Jeddah. Dear Sheikh, we have spent big amounts of money to have pole lights installed in this playground in order to play therein at night, thanks to Allah this installation is finished and we managed to take electricity from a neighbor house after taking permission from the owner of that house provided that he will not be responsible for any troubles that may happen with government of local authorities), we agreed on this condition, and thanks to Allah, things go well.
Now, some people from within or outside our district come to play at night so they want us to turn on the pole lights for them, in return we asked them to pay small fees against this light source, and already they agreed. Now we hire these pole lights to anyone wants to play. So what is ruling on hiring these lights knowing that that we don’t hire the land itself neither do we prevent anyone from playing on it anytime? Only we take fees against the light source. Advise please Sheikh as we fear to be unjust. Also, must we tell the owner of the house from which we take light source about such a hiring? He is non-Saudi, so all he wants is just to avoid troubles with the authorities here.
