By
Ahmed Peerbux
6th July
2020
The
coronavirus crisis has dealt a colossal blow to the UK economy. The Bank of
England has warned that we could be in for the worst recession on record; many
people will soon come off their furloughs into unemployment, and businesses —
big and small — will continue to go bust.
The UK’s
Muslim population is poised to disproportionately feel the effects of all this;
already, we are the most economically disadvantaged faith group in Britain.
Even prior to the pandemic, 50% of British Muslim households were living in
poverty. Almost half of us live in the most deprived areas in the UK, and
according to the think-tank Centre for Cities, it is the most deprived towns
and cities that will be hit hardest.
Currently,
charities spend something like 98% of our zakat abroad. But doesn’t the
contemporary situation make a compelling case for it to be locally collected
and distributed? The sunnah itself certainly does. During the time of the
Prophet ﷺ, after all, what was collected in an area was also distributed in the
same area.
When the
Prophet ﷺ sent his companion Mu’adh to Yemen, he said: “Inform them that Allah
has made the zakat obligatory for them, collected from their wealthy and
distributed to their needy.” There is profound wisdom in this; years later,
when Mu’adh sent one-third of the zakat he collected back to Medina, he told
Umar: “I would not have sent you anything had I found someone [here] to take it
from me.” Such was the impact of locally collected and distributed zakat, that
after a few years Mu’adh could no longer find anyone in need around him. Only
then did he send the zakat away from the area in which it was collected.
This is
buried treasure in our tradition, and the impetus behind the Local Zakat
Initiative, a growing group of British Muslims who are passionate about
reviving the sunnah of local zakat. The Local Zakat Initiative wants to see
more communities come together and appoint their own zakat collectors to
collect and distribute zakat locally, thereby improving the situation of the
Muslims in their towns and cities. With local zakat, we can strengthen our
communities in Britain, foster local leadership, show our non-Muslim neighbours
the incredible impact of Islam up close, and eventually become even better able
to help our brothers and sisters abroad with more Sadaqa (voluntary
charity) from more people who are better off.
Zakat taken
during the time of the Prophet ﷺ and early Muslim communities was not administered by large charities and
complex organisations — not least because zakat is not charity. It was taken by
appointed collectors on the ground and then given to the needy without delay.
The transaction was simple, human, and clear.
My fellow
co-founder of the Local Zakat Initiative, Rahima Brandt, pays zakat to her
local collector Abdalhakim in Norwich. He comes to her house with the imam to
take it and then prays for her: “It’s a gift I am grateful for which I would
have been denied had I just done a bank transfer to a charity.” Rahima’s
experience gives her nearness to the ayat of Qur’an in which Allah says: “Take
zakat from their wealth to purify and cleanse them and pray for them. Your
prayers bring relief to them. Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing” (9:103).
When I
spoke with Abdalhakim, he said:
If I’m
sending money abroad, I don’t know if that money is actually getting where I
want it to. But I know I can have an effect locally. I’ve seen it. I get the
messages; I get the calls. I know this person has cancer; they’re struggling. I
can actually help the people around me.”
As the
zakat collector and local leader, Abdalhakim is recognisable and reachable to
Rahima and others in her community. Crucially, they trust him; it cannot be,
after all, that only charities are capable of being trustworthy. It is the
appointed collector’s duty to ensure that the needy in the community don’t go
unnoticed. In order to reach those who need assistance, the collector must ask
people in the community, encouraging them to be on the lookout. In this way,
the prophetic tradition of locally collected zakat nurtures a greater sense of
social responsibility towards those in need around us, strengthening the bonds
of our local communities and making them better, fairer places for us to live.
Charities
have made zakat convenient but cold, discharged with a few clicks and online
calculators. Islamic Relief, for example, tell me to ‘automate’ my zakat over
the last ten nights of Ramadan, and then ‘relax’ knowing I’ll ‘never miss
Laylutul Qadr again’. There is something deeply cynical — and lacking — in this
approach. There’s even now an app called Zakatify — because it’s not an app
until it has -ify on the end — which lets you ‘Set it and forget it: Set your
annual [zakat] goal and let Zakatify do the rest.’ The founder of Zakatify says
zakat ‘can feel like something we do alone,’ and that ‘with Zakatify, we can
turn Zakat into something that’s social’.
But there’s
nothing remotely social or satisfactory about trivialising the third pillar
with a ‘set it and forget it’ attitude. User-friendly interfaces and online
forms are no substitute for the tangible connection that comes through so
clearly in the experience of Rahima and others who have the privilege of paying
and receiving zakat in person.
Zakat is an
act of worship, and a blessing for both the giver and receiver. Think about the
other pillars of Islam, and how near and direct they are. The fast, prayer,
hajj, and shahada are intimately felt and immediate in experience. They can’t
be discharged with a click and a swipe. We can’t place our hands on the pillar
of zakat if it’s on the other side of a screen. The pillars of the Deen
are things Muslims do together, acts of worship that nurture a sense of
community and mutual concern. We strive for presence and improvement in
upholding them.
With zakat,
it’s the same. By collecting and distributing it locally, we can feel more
connected to it and to each other. In Arabic the verb ‘zakka’ means to make
grow and thrive, to purify, and to improve. By coming together as stronger
local communities, supported by the pillar of zakat, we can grow, thrive, and
utterly transform our situation as Muslims in Britain.
Original
Headline: The Case for Local Zakat: Give Back to the Community First
Source: The Muslim Vibe
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-spiritualism/zakat-act-worship-giver-receiver/d/122316
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