Fixing label of another company on manufactured goods

Nowadays, most of the good used are being made in companies.  In this connection, some companies are extremely famous and their name is considered as the trademark for quality.  We are noticing that some local companies manufacture the same products and fix the label of the famous companies.  In the religion of Islam, is such an act correct?

Fixing the label of one company on another is cheating which is forbidden in the Shariah.  Fixing the name of some famous company on goods means that that company has manufactured the goods when in fact it has not.  Here the aim is that the buyer should see the name of the famous company and buy the goods thinking that goods are manufactured by that famous company and their standard is that of the famous company.  All this is impermissible and Haraam in the Shariah.  

Here there is 2 kinds of cheating:

1.  Cheating the buyer.
2.  Exploiting the company by fixing its label which is also a kind of cheating only.

In the Shariah, there are strict warnings about cheating and deceiving people.  There is a Hadith in Sahih Muslim:

Translation: The one who raises a sword on us (Muslims) is not of us and the one who cheats us is not of us.  

(Sahih Muslim, Vol. 1, Pg. No. 70, Hadith No: 101; Jame' Tirmidhi, Vol. 1, Hadith No: 1234)

And Allah knows best.

Mufti Syed Ziauddin Naqshbandi Qadri

[Professor, Islamic Law, Jamia Nizamia,
Founder-Director, Abul Hasanaat Islamic Research Center]