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ICYMI- my recent Ramadan Zakat post. https://ehsan.substack.com/p/guide-to-zakat-eligible-shenanigans?r=3n9g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter
There is a slightly different version posted at In Shaykh’s clothing https://inshaykhsclothing.com/a-field-guide-to-dubious-zakat-eligible-claims-by-american-muslim-nonprofits/
Here is a premise about Zakat: Messing this up, in a real sense, represents a theft from those who have a right to it. Mostly those who are financially struggling.
Many Muslims carefully calculate their zakat every year. A Muslim who earns 6k take home pay and has saved can give 10k in Zakat. For Muslim nonprofits, it’s real money. Not getting on this gravy train is just stupidly leaving money on the table, right?
Zakat-paying Muslims are fodder for abuse. Rightful zakat recipients are easy prey for theft from unscrupulous Muslim nonprofits. Shuyukh exist that will sprinkle holly water on this.
Then we all need to deal with the fiqh of zakat. Specifically who gets it.
Here is a fact about what passes as “charity” in the United States. The nonprofit world is mostly designed to benefit the affluent. For example https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/08/how-philanthropy-benefits-the-super-rich
There are some Muslim organizations that focus on poverty and bringing people financial self-sufficiently. This thread is not about them.
What should be plainly obvious now is that zakat among American Muslims is rapidly becoming a racket to transfer wealth from the affluent to the affluent. Muslim donors are being taken advantage of by shady Muslim nonprofit practices.
Zakat has become a vehicle for social injustice. We are letting this happen.
One of the biggest problems is with some “Islamic Scholars”- particularly the fiqh of Zakat, which has turned a pillar of Islam into a ruin. Let me explain:
Say you are an ordinary Muslim and you hear a Sheykh give you a fatwa that drinking beer for iftar is great? Yes, people trained as Shuyukh give beer fatwas from time to time. https://egyptianstreets.com/2017/02/13/drinking-liquor-without-getting-drunk-not-sinful-islamic-scholar/
You can find shuyukh that will validate any and all your desires, from zina to human rights abuses. Finding these people is not hard.
Perhaps you as a Muslim will have the good sense to double check that beer fatwa you heard?
If somehow we read a bonkers fatwa that effectively says you can give zakat to rich people for things vaguely connected to Islam, we don’t question it the way we do the beer fatwas.
But you are not a scholar right? So its not your place to question what Islamic scholars say? Maybe it’s time we start. At least if we see beer fatwas?
Take the fatwa from the Association of Muslim Jurists of America I wrote about in my recent post. https://ehsan.substack.com/p/guide-to-zakat-eligible-shenanigans?r=3n9g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter
The AMJA fatwa is unbearably weird for a few reasons. Here is the fatwa question.
So all this group does is gather detailed information about Muslims in “the west.” (A term I dislike but let’s roll with it).
Who obtains detailed data about Muslims “in the west” ? The Pew Charitable Trust does this. So does ISPU, the American Jewish Committee has done this as well. Is this person asking if they are all zakat eligible? Who cares? AMJA did not. The fatwa answers a broader question.
The question AMJA wants to answer: Can we brazenly steal from the poor? Answer: Yes, so long as we call the theft “fi sabilillah”. Makes no difference if the people you give money to even believe in Allah.
So they start their answer with the eight categories in the Quran. They even call it a “limitation.” Ha.
Then they decide the limitation is not really a limitation, because of unspecified opinions of “scholars” of the past, never mind who they are or their specific facts or reasoning.
Then we get to the fi sabilillah maximalism, legitimizing brazen theft
Remember what’s happening here, the question was about American non-profits that collect data about Muslims.
