Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Simplified Zakat Guidance Zakat to Hospitals, Orphanages and Transfer of Ownership

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