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Aslam AbuIsmaeel
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« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2008, 10:09:14 PM » |
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Wa alaikumusalaam wa rahmatullahi wa barkatuh
Sorry for the late reply, I'm trying to first answer the ones of night prayers in Ramadan etc due to their urgency.
Zakatul-Fitr/Sadaqatul-Fitr/'Fitranah' ...
I personally am not aware that there are locals in Australia who are so poor to be given one saa of rice, wheat etc. Therefore, I'm myself asking my relatives overseas to give it to the poor in that country, and Allah knows best. Some of those I know are collecting $3 per person to be send to poor in Indonesia and given as rice. One saa of rice is just under one and half kilogram and that is less than $3 in Indonesia.
Who to give Zakat in Australia
As you know, zakah can only be given to one of the eight categories of people mentioned in Surah Tawbah/Surah Bara'ah.
Out of those categories, I recommend Zakah to be given to the following categories in Australia:
1 &2: the Faqir and Miskeen i.e. poor: these are people who do not have even the amount that is sufficient customarily for the person himself and his dependants. These kind of people in Australia do exist. Examples that I know are overseas international students from not-so-rich countries who are studying here full time, they have wife and children dependant on them, they have to pay fees, etc and they study during the weekdays and work driving taxi or cleaning etc during the night. These needy people with family dependants especially are deserving of zakah (so long as they dont have well off parents back home to given them money). If you know people like these then you can give zakah in Australia to them.
7: category seven is that of those 'fee sabil illah' in the path of Allah. This refers to giving zakah to those who are in the Muslim country military to protect the Muslims and their worship. However, in Australia we are not allowed to send money to such people, I assume. However, scholars (such as sh ibn baz rahimahullah) mentioned that the same purpose these days is filled by those who are helping to spread knowledge of Islam, i.e. Dawah to Muslims or non-Muslims. So, Zakah can be given to the scholars or such who are doing this and are not able to work full time etc for their own living expenses or for the spreading of knoweldge of Islam they do. Or zakah can be given to the work of spreading Islamic knowlege done by them or people like them as fee sabilillah i.e. in the path of Allah.
I strongly urge Muslims who read this to give a lot of their zakah at least to this category because many others give to the category one and two above but few realise and give to this category seven and yet it is the most important cause of our success or failure, our richness or poverty among muslims, i.e. our adherence to Allah's religion, i.e. spreading knoweldge of Islam and inviting people to follow its guidance via dawah activities.
In Australia, you can give zakah for this category to actively doing dawah Muslim scholars that you may know who are in such work of spreading Islamic knoweldge. Or, in Australia you can give zakah money to those Muslim organisations that are striving to spread the knoweldge of Islam and invite people to follow Allah's guidance via their dawah activities that are from the Quran and Sunnah - and they are following knoweldge of scholars based on Quran and Sunnah.
There are a number of organisations in Australia that are doing this. So I urge Muslims to give money of Zakah to such organisations/scholars dawah work - any or all such organisations in Australia. However, those organisations MUST be careful with zakah money to use it for this purpose of spreading Islamic knoweldge as opposed to other charitable work which may not reach level of faqir and miskin (poor less than sufficiency) - for that charitable work, you can give general charity but not zakah. But since some scholars did not believe in giving zakah to spreading knowledge of Islam, some such organisations may not want to collect zakah for this purpose, so you should check with them if they do or not.
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As I mentioend, there are other organisations and also we, at Sunnah Inspirations Inc also collect Zakah for this category of spreading knowledge of Islam in variety of dawah activities.
As for sadaqatul fitr/zakatul fitr, which is one saa' amount of staple food (e.g. rice) for poor people on day of eid-ul-fitr, we at Sunnah Inspirations Inc hope to be able to collect it and distribute it to Muslims in poor Muslim countries from next Ramadan (next year, i.e. 2009), if Allah permits.
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Wassalamu alaikum
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