Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Simplified Zakat Guidance How Much Can Be Given to One Person

Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim. The second issue for today is when you

give zakat to someone, how much can you give to someone. So let's

just say somebody's got 10,000 pounds of zakat to give can they

go and give that to one single individual. So we have some laws

in there. Firstly, I'd like to mention that if somebody does give

a single individual a huge amount, the Zakat would be dispensed. But

it would be mcru. Generally, it would be Makrooh and undesirable

and reprehensible to do this, if whoever you're giving it to the

recipient, the poor person, right, if he now becomes the owner of an

ESOP. So now let me explain that

if somebody has got a large family, or a few members of the

family, and you want to give them and today, you want to give them

maybe 1000 pounds, based on the silver nisab, which we've

discussed elsewhere, the silver nisab is around 250 pounds or so

that means you're giving him four times that amount. Now, generally,

what they say this is one way to look at it, what they say is that

if he's got a big enough family, and they're all in need, right, so

he's got several children. And if you were to take that 1000 pound,

and you were to divide that among the family members, the wife, the

children, then they would actually all end up with less than an ESOP

each, then that would be fine, because you would expect that they

would need this kind of money or funds to be able to spend in the

next month or two. All right, so that's one way, number two, if the

person is in need, and he's also in debt. So let's just say that he

has a debt of 10,000 pounds, you give him six out of 10,000 pounds,

that would be completely fine, there'd be no undesirability in

there, because you're giving the money so that he can pay off his

debt. And he would not retain any sub his assets. If you basically

take his net

assets and his his liabilities, he would not have any sub left. So if

a person is in debt, you can actually give them a more as well.

So that's two things. Now, today, people are going to be saying, if

I give 250 pound to somebody a practical whatever the nisab of

silver is today, 250 300 pounds, $500, whatever it is, if I give

that much, that's going to be for some people, that's half a month's

rent, or for some people's one month's rent, which in two days is

going to spend. So that's just going to go into rent, what about

for everything else? So I think in cases like this, we have some

leeway that we could probably go buy the gold nisab. Right, which

would be more in the in the few 1000s 234 1000. And until you

don't go beyond that we could for these particular circumstances,

maybe we could use that benchmark and say that, okay, as long as you

don't give too much, but the spirit of this, you should

understand that you want to try to help more people, rather than just

lump it all on one person, so that they become in Sharia terms,

wealthy now, right? Of course, if they're going to need some money

for the next three, four months, they have no other income, they've

lost their job, they don't expect to get it right, then maybe, you

know, the Corolla could be offset the undesirable it could be offset

if you gave them you know, 1000 or 2000 pounds if you're, if you

still want to go with the silver nisab threshold and you don't want

to go with the gold, but either way, I think yeah, otherwise you

can give them slowly, slowly. The best way would be that if you want

to go with the golden Islam, you give them to a 250 pound right

now, if they got no debt or whatever, and they just gonna need

it for the next two weeks and then you give it them again, but

sometimes that creates more logistics nightmare logistical

nightmare, sometimes that you have to keep remembering to give them

so that's why if it's for one or two months, that they're going to

need it and there's certain bills that they're going to have to pay

maybe we can just look at the gold lease for that instead. So insha

Allah Allah, Allah subhanaw taala allow us to dispense our zakat

carefully and properly and accept it from us.