Court compensation for an employee who left a fixed-term contract

A question about court compensation for an employee who left a fixed-term contract, in which Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that the employee may claim the rights labour law guarantees him and take the compensation the judge awarded, except the legal interest, if his claim involved no lying or forgery. ¹

An employee on a three-year contract left after one year because his salary was paid late; the employer threatened to fine him, but the court ruled in his favour and treated the case as arbitrary dismissal. He asked whether he may take the money awarded. ¹

The Department answered that the principle is that a contract is the law of the contracting parties, so its terms must be respected, citing Surat al-Ma'ida 5:1 and a hadith that al-Bukhari cites in suspended form with certainty, whose meaning is that Muslims are bound by their conditions. ¹ It said the employee may claim the compensation that labour law sets for arbitrary dismissal, since the law was made to protect the interests of both worker and employer, a ruler's measures are tied to the public interest, and the law has the standing of general custom; what is customary counts as stipulated, so its provisions are implicitly part of every employment contract in the country. ¹ It concluded that he may take what the judge awarded under the law, provided there was no lying or forgery, except the legal interest; piety suggests that if he sees the award as larger than the harm he suffered, he takes the equivalent of his harm and leaves the rest. ¹

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published this fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 4480, dated 7 June 2026. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.