Zakat is a central part of the Deen al-Haqq, Islam. It is often coupled with Salah in the Qur'an and as such should not be thought of as charity but as a tax on wealth which must be paid by all whose wealth is over the Nisab. For more information and a general overview of Zakat please see the following: Zakat: The Fallen Pillar of Islam.
Properly speaking, Zakat should be distributed among the local community before being sent to far away places. It is to help build community in the real sense of the word by protecting the vulnerable and making the locality a place where Muslims are looked after and to rectify the hearts of the people. Zakat also implies the need for an Amir as it cannot be collected without a political authority who has been given the responsibility for its collection and distribution. It also implies the need for a currency with an intrinsic value, such as the Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham as mentioned in the above article.
Leeds Muslim is dedicated to the local collection and distribution of Zakat, under the authority of an Amir, and since Ramadan 2011 we have been active in this pursuit. Since this time we have given Zakat and Zakat al-Fitr to local families and individuals who are within the categories mentioned in the Qur'an and explained by our noble fuqaha.
If you would like to give OR you believe you are eligible to receive Zakat, please contact me at:
Email: britishmaliki@gmail.com
Tel: 07736041237
Facebook: Jeremy Yusuf Rowland or BritishMaliki
Ayyuhal Walad! Lesson 10: A Collected Zakat
by Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi - 27/08/2011
Allah the Exalted says (2:208):
You who believe! enter Islam totally.
Do not follow in the footsteps of Shaytan.
He is an outright enemy to you.
Tawus and Mujahid said that it means, “Enter under the authority of the Deen.”
The entry of a new generation of Muslims obeying this ayat will mean a revival of Islam and the end of “Islamism”, that is the Deen reduced to a political doctrine like communism or liberalism.
The Deen is transactional – Mu’amala.
Islam has always been understood, until the modernist politicised sects, as being set up on rulings concerning Salat, fasting, Zakat, Hajj and all the specific and general rulings on trade and contracts with specific indications to assure avoidance of usury. In this last Imam Malik used a method specially to assure application of the Shari’at in this matter which he defined as Sadd adh-Dhara-i’, that is “cutting off the means to wrong”.
‘Umar ibn al-Khattab said: “No one should trade in our market except someone with Fiqh. Otherwise usury will be practised.” The Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “A time will come upon people when there will not be anyone left who does not consume usury, and even one who does not consume it will be touched by its dust.”
Allah the Exalted says (2:275):
Those who practise usury will not rise from the grave
except as someone driven mad by Shaytan’s touch.
Our great mufassir, Ibn ‘Atiyya, said on this: “The words of the ayat contain a simile for the state of someone who engages in trade in this world with avarice and greed, comparing him to a madman because greed and desire affect him to the extent that his limbs become disordered. This is like when you say, ‘He’s mad!’ about someone walking quickly whose movements are agitated, either by anxiety or something else.”
This confirms my position that capitalism is not in fact a system but a psychosis.
Political democracy which pretends to permit elected representatives to make laws on your behalf has altered its writ of governance in order to take on debt on your behalf which now you are liable for – to the usurious institutions. That contract itself is criminal for us. Doubly so. Since the debt incurred on you as citizen is then sold on to other national banking entities.
Allah the Exalted says (5:1):
Fulfil your contracts.
Mass or group, indeed national endebtment is simply inconceivable within the deep sanity of Islamic Law.
Do not be misled by people who imply that our opposition to usury/capitalism implies some disdain of or recommendation to avoid wealth. What is at issue is practice by which wealth is acquired.
Rasul, Allah’s blessings and peace on him, said: “Nothing helped me like the property of Abu Bakr.”
And he told Sa’d: “It is better to leave rich heirs than to leave them poor, begging from other people.”
Talha left three hundred thousand measures and every measure weighed three hundred-weight.
Az-Zubayr left two hundred and fifty thousand.
Ibn Mas’ud left seventy thousand. Sufyan left two hundred Dinars. He used to say, “Wealth in this time is an armour.”
The civic responsibility of Muslims today is to make Jama’at and appoint an Amir. The Fuqaha are advisers and not necessarily leaders. He in turn must appoint the Zakat Collectors. It must be understood that there is no Zakat on paper money and this has no debate since the matter was definitively clarified by our Mauritanian scholars.
There is one further matter which will have to be confronted especially by our poor lost Arab brothers plunged in the crisis of the paper-money capitalism which they have mistaken for a political matter of dictatorship when it is clearly a fiduciary collapse – why else did they wait forty or so years to cry “freedom”?
There is Zakat on oil. It clearly comes under the heading of Zakat on mines and minerals, rather than that of treasure. If it is defined under the rulings concerning treasure the Khums is payable, but since oil is effectively mined, using labour, the normal Zakat on the extracted mineral will be the same amount as taken on gold and silver mines.
The only path to a return to Islam for the Arab peoples is to restore the Zakat on oil. The only path to a return to Islam for our Muslim ‘Umma is to restore a collected Zakat overseen by an Amir at the level of the local Jama’at.
Remember the fast purifies the body. Zakat purifies wealth and property. Without Zakat – Tasawwuf simply cannot exist.
We ask Allah’s tremendous Bounty and Sakinah, and Fatihah on all the followers of the Best of Mankind, Allah bless him and grant him peace.
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