Some of the students give gifts to their
teachers on special occasions. Some of them are her current students, but some are
students who she is not teaching now but may teach in the coming years. Others are
students that she can never teach because they have already graduated. What is the ruling
on these cases?
We put this question to Shaykh Muhammad ibn Saalih al-‘Uthaymeen, may Allaah preserve him, who replied as follows:
There is nothing wrong with the third case, but the other two are not permissible, even if it is a gift for her giving birth etc, because this gift could be seen as an attempt to soften the teacher’s heart (i.e., a bribe).
