Studying a person's diaries, letters and entries without his permission

4-1-2011 | IslamWeb

Question:

Al salaam alaykum I am studying writing at university and I have the opportunity to study a course about life writing. It is likely to include letters, diary entries and such, some of them were not intended for publication Would I be committing a sin by studying them? This is the description of the course: "This reading-intensive course will introduce students to the field of autobiographical and biographical literature known as life writing. Students will analyze writing strategies in classic and contemporary memoirs, confessions, letters, diaries, and visual portraits as well as autobiographies and biographies, through key themes of self, identity, secrets, truth, inheritance and ethics. " Jazakum Allah Khayran

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

What you asked about is not very clear to us, but we say that it is not permissible to publish the biographies and autobiographies and pictures whose owners did not explicitly or according to the customs allow to publish, and it is not permissible to benefit from them without the permission of their owners. That is because these matters are either related to the privacy of a person or to his intellectual right which is a confirmed right for him, so it is not permissible to transgress it or exploit it except with his permission. For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 82812.

Allaah Knows best.