Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Simplified Zakat Guidance Zakat to Hospitals, Orphanages and Transfer of Ownership
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One of the most fundamental rules of Zakat is what they call giving
possession. That means the Malik, what that means is that when you
are paying your Zakah to a recipient, they must take
ownership, you must transfer ownership of that money, or the
food pack or clothing, you can get sick out of all of these different
things, they must take ownership of it. So what that means is that
if I purchased food, or got some caterers to provide food for 100
people, and called 100 people to come and eat to their fill, right,
whatever is there, that would not be giving possession, that would
be more like hospitality, or just feeding them in a way that they
can't really take it away. Now on the other hand, if I got a caterer
to provide 100 packed meals, for example, and then we gave a packed
meal to each person said, Here you go, do what you want with it, then
that is different from inviting them over and saying you can just
eat in Arabic, you call this EBA, just letting them eat. The other
one is called them leak, which is to transfer possession over. So if
I provide a food back, that's worth two pounds, right to the
person and say, Here you go, 100 of them 200 different people, or I
get somebody else to do that. For me, I can intend that to be zakat,
because I'm giving over possession, but I can't just feed
100 people outside a masjid, or in a in an orphanage. Likewise,
I can't give money to an orphanage and say, just use it in general,
for your upkeep and for your expenses. Because I'm not making
any particular person individual as an owner. The orphanage is not
an owner, it's not an entity in Islam. So individually, what I'd
have to do is to actually tell the caretakers of the authentic
orphanage to individually provide material, whether that be food,
clothing, or whatever to individual orphans, not to use in
the electricity, for example, right. So it has to be going to an
individual in a way that they can literally do what they want with
it afterwards. They can't be any strings attached to that. I can't
give it to a hospital to do the general overheads. But I can give
the car to a hospital as long as they understand the laws, right of
how to Decemberists this, so that they can buy medicine, and then
when a poor person needs the medicine to hand them over the
medicine. So the medicine becomes the person's that is also giving
over possession. Right, but I can't do it where they buy
medicine and then they just basically let patients use it from
time to time it has to be handed over to the patient. Likewise,
with any other
situation like that, it has to be done in a way that you handed over
the possession, that you're transferring the ownership for
them, then because once you've given the cut over somebody, they
should be able to do what they want with it. Right, you can't
have any
strings attached to that. And once you've given it over. Likewise,
what I can also do is if I've got somebody who, I don't want to give
the money to them directly, but I know they need a house. So I tell
them Do you need a house, we can get one made for you, we can pay
for the building, we can pay for the material. So then what we do
is we pay directly on their behalf from that with their consent, you
have the authority to do this, you're actually paying on their
behalf. So now you're becoming like an agent for them for the
money that you're giving them to basically pay the suppliers, the
construction people, and for the materials of the house and so on.
That's also giving over ownership. I can't build a house and say to
poor people, you can live in it and consider that to be zakat. No.
But I can give the house over to them and say this entire house is
your socket, right is is for you. I don't even have to tell them in
socket. As long as they pour I can give over the house to them. And
that would be all gone from my zakat, which is fine. Likewise,
people say can I use the cat money to dig a well, right in a
community in a little village somewhere? Right? And everybody
can use it. You can't use the card money for that because you're not
giving ownership to any individual or any person or two people, for
example, right? It's for the public use. Again, that's what you
call EBA. It's just public use, right? Yes, what you can do is
that there's a family who's suffering a fight or two families,
right? Two families gets complicated because then it's like
they're 5050 shareholders, you can technically do that. But the idea
is that this is one family, I'm going to pay right with your
consent because you need it to have a well dug here for you. That
becomes your well now. Right? Nobody else has a right and it's
only they I don't even have a right hand anymore. So that's very
difficult from different from doing a Commonweal for everybody's
usage.
So these are the different aspects. So
We ask Allah subhanaw taala to facilitate for us and once we
understand this it becomes easier anyway because that giving
ownership is a very important condition of the cut just Sokolow
here