Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
If you buy a house on loan and you have paid the installments for the year(s) gone by, then you may go for Hajj. But if there are payments still outstanding, then you cannot go unless you have paid the past dues.
In his response to the question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
If you buy a house on loan and you have paid the installments for the year(s) gone by, then you may go for Hajj. But if there are payments still outstanding, then you cannot go unless you have paid the past dues.
You don’t have to worry about the future payments that can be put off because they are not due yet.
If anything happens to you and you are not able to pay, then they can claim their money, as the house is a security for them. In other words, there is nothing wrong in performing Hajj in such a case.
Now coming to the last question, it is up to you to choose the last alternative, unless you are hard pressed because you need a proper shelter for your family, in which case providing for them a reasonable shelter becomes a priority for you; therefore it must take precedence over Hajj.
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.