Sajid Ahmed Umar – Hard Talk – Charity Right
AI: Summary ©
The speakers emphasize the importance of providing school meals and community involvement to alleviate poverty and empower people. They emphasize the need for education and community involvement, as well as finding a community to lead and bring others' knowledge to the organization. The success of a school program in Afghanistan is also discussed, with a focus on educating children on their programs and bringing others' knowledge to the organization. The challenges of finding quality donations to charity are discussed, along with the importance of showing personal successes and challenges. The pandemic's impact on the company's performance and outlook is also discussed, along with the need for flexibility in workforce due to the pandemic. The speakers emphasize the importance of working from home and being flexible in their work schedules to ensure the safety and well-being of employees and their families.
AI: Summary ©
Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh everybody
smarphone Rahim hamdulillah salat wa salam ala Rasulillah who ala alihi wa sahbihi Omen wala, we always begin in the name of Allah subhanho wa Taala we praise Allah Subhana Allah to Allah, we request his blessings and we request praises and blessings upon Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, to my brothers and sisters in Islam. Welcome to a long overdue session. I know I've been away for a while and in all honesty, there's no better time to get into things especially since Ramadan is only a few weeks away, it's an honor to have you all and from the outset, I'd like to apologize for the technical difficulties as advertised Inshallah, today we will be discussing
charity and in particular, the charitable activities of
an organization that is known to many of you a charity that is known to many of you, charity, right. And I have with me for the session, the CEO of charity, right, and Inshallah, he will be answering questions that you've sent to me about the charity about the charitable activities, and rightly so, rightly so, because the idea of charity is an Amana. And
last year, I remember we had a similar session. And, you know, during that session, many, many opined and many commented
that, you know, charities have become contentious, there have been too many
dramas associate associated with charities and charitable events and so on and so forth and insha Allah. In this session, we'll be able to get our questions answered pertaining to this particular charity and our brothers and sisters in Islam. You know, Islam is not just religion, but an entire way of life. And this is why we are actually having this discussion. In the first place. We know that the idea of Tawheed is not just to worship one Allah alone, but it's about the system of worshiping one Allah subhanho wa Taala alone, right the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as he taught us to prostrate to one Allah alone, he sallallahu alayhi wa sallam also taught us law you
have a Hadouken Allah you know I had to compete there you have Bulli, a Hema you have belief see that none of you truly believe until you love for your brother, what you love for yourself. And here we see this idea of selflessness being attached to the concept of Eman and the Sahaba robiola, who emerge from it no doubt they were learning directly from the best of all teachers sallallahu alayhi wasallam and they acted upon his teachings to the extent that Allah subhanho wa Taala revealed verses about them, which we will read to the day of TM verses which described them as Ruhama obeying them, they are merciful to each other verses, which describe them as a villain letting meaning they
are humble, and in the service of the believers. And we have countless inspirational stories from the Mahabharata Allahu anhu, much mainly in terms of this idea of selflessness. And then those stories continued on across the generations of Islam to those who came after them that have been and those who came after them the Utterback attributing so this idea of selflessness and being charitable is part of the DNA of la ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad Rasul Allah. Without further ado Brothers and Sisters in Islam, I'm going to bring our brother Brother sujet Muhammad, um Sajid, he's sujet insha Allah I'm gonna bring him on we have him Alhamdulillah with us Bismillah let's see if we
can get him on. Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Welcome
to mashallah Tabata kala Can you hear me clearly brother suggests you loud and clear. MashAllah UK as well and it's also nice to see you so nice to see you. Mashallah. COVID has kept us apart but recently affirmed Allah Subhana Allah to Allah brought us together, physically and honestly for me personally, meeting my brothers from the Muhammad Sallallahu wasallam gives me that Eamonn rush and Alhamdulillah now we get to continue that meeting online. Mashallah. And male accept your Amara, by the way. Misha Bethabara Kumba. Assume shift I've been to
this court just specifically for this YouTube Live. Why Shut up let the water come on my shop. I suppose they say
A bald head is a sign of righteousness. So you're trying to really come
to the sea, a very righteous, welcome, heavy Welcome to this particular session Hamdulillah we have people watching us on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter as well. And Alhamdulillah people are commenting and they can all ask the questions in sha Allah and I hope they ask you difficult difficult questions. I hope they don't make it easy
on you, not for the sake of making your life difficult but inshallah just to test the level inshallah of your philosophy that you have in your work and charity, right? Mashallah. We have mashallah Prakash have with as cash or view as well, who is the CEO of a well known charity as well, Muslim aid? I hope I didn't get that wrong, read the cash. All right. So we're the subject from the outset from the outset very quickly for those joining in and those who are watching later. Tell us about charity, right? When was it founded? And what's its vision? How many countries do you operate in, give us just a macro overview of the charity just up from nowhere.
I think very quickly, for those people that may not have followed our journey or haven't heard about his charge, right started in, in the UK 2014. I was a product of Mercy mission for the first couple of years, and then from the law itself, in its own right as an independent charity. The idea is very simple shift, we focus on providing food, and food that alleviates people from poverty. More recently, we have been focused for the last couple of years, and now sort of almost focuses primarily on providing school meals to children. And the idea is the shack wherever you look around the world, you see illiteracy, and you'll see that those countries will also have a large group of
people that will be falling under the poverty line. And there's no coincidence with this, that those things go hand in hand, when you find that people are trapped in the cycle of poverty, they are unable to get out where the unable to make it to schools, unable to go to any form of education, learning, training, whatever it might be, that at the same time, you'll find those countries are struggling, they're always looking for, for handouts. So that's a very simple sort of synopsis and how we deal with it is by providing school meals, to children, and the easiest way to explain this. So anybody who's visited, you know, countries in Asia or Africa, you, you will know that once you're
driving around, for example, and you stop at a traffic lights, and there's a child there, they usually try to sell you a towel, so peanuts beads wherever they possibly can, right in terms of trans flower, they'll be cleaning your windscreen. Now those children, sometimes as young as six or seven, you know, they've been sent out to go and feed themselves essentially go out and work. And hopefully by the end of the day, you'll have enough money to go and buy a pet food, you buy a pet food, you eat it, something left, you take it home, you sleep, and you wake up the next morning and repeat.
And usually you find that that child grows up.
And then they're not able to provide for their family completely. So their children will also go through the same cycle that once they hit the age of six or seven are able to walk and they want to just, you know, sell some products on the street, or beg or whatever, then they're put through the system as well. And there is no end to that, because it's a vicious cycle, I'm not educated enough money, so my children will have enough money and then the cycle continues. So watch I try and look at doing is at some point in actually, if it's just a food and water you send them to school will cover the cost of the food at the school, that way they're getting an education, and at the same
time, they're getting a full belly, they're in a safe environment and all those things that go along with a safe school environment. Yes.
And the idea is that if we can stick with children for you know, 710 How many ever years they need us for from the age of six, let's say all the way to 16
that there will be the position where not only can they provide for themselves that they can support family members they can support the community. And the idea is never state that you know sometimes you think well education well you know your son, you know, if Sudan for example. Yes, sir, in rural parts of Afghanistan, more benefit will educational but there's lots of studies to say even if you're in farming, even if you're running a coffee shop, in fact that you have some level of primary education, some sort of education, training, whatever it might be, you're able to do better even in that environment. Imagine you're running a coffee shop or you're running a shop in you know small
towns and when you've got primary education you're able to at least tightly you're able to say well look we're gonna run out of this soon or whatever to do X y&z You're able to comprehend and deal with things. So education isn't lost in any way, shape, or form.
That's that's kind of what we do and humbler we be working now.
In I think, eight countries now 100 And each with the same focus of making sure that we're providing some
meals to children. It's the art of education to ideas to bring them to school, and then keep them in school for as long as possible. As boys and girls, we have a big agenda to make sure that our sisters, our younger generation, the girls don't miss out on education. Just like the boys are going to school, that girl should also be attracted and going to school.
Michelle, I mean, this is an is an interesting concept, because this whole idea of feeding, and it's normally associated with fighting hunger, it's quite a reactive initiative.
I mean, you know, the charitable sector, you would have two types of activities, the proactive range and genre of activities and the reactive genre of activities, but from what you've just described,
it's sort of meaning the understanding you get from it, is that it's not a reactive kind of project. I mean, you are reacting to a situation, but in a sustainable way, which sort of, we sort of, you could say, carries a balance between being reactive, but then also proactive, right, in that if you focusing on schools, and like you said, it keeps people in schools, and then they become educated, and the hope from it is that they will graduate and work and also then become income earners. Right. So, so this way, they no more hungry, and then they able to contribute to other people not being hungry. This is this is what I've understood. But a question to you. I mean, just looking at this
idea of
fighting hunger being a form of reactive mandate, what do you do with people who are not in schools? Right, but but they also they also hungry? And obviously, funds are collected.
And those funds, even from an Islamic perspective, they would qualify to receive it. So what's the idea here with regards to those who are not in schools, but they also hungry?
Yeah, it's interesting, because this is something that we've recently done, like we've, we've said that we're going to completely focus now on on children and schools, and education. And the thinking behind this is, of course, check this, this people around the world in many different situations that need food, for example, you know, if there's a tsunami or earthquake offers any sort of natural disaster or farming, usually the first thing that people are thinking why suit, food aid, Mr. Bit, deliver to the people, because this is something that you need, every couple of hours, you know, every six hours, you need another meal, so it's gonna be the first thing that's affected.
But that's not to say that every single charity should focus on and that's, I think, where what we're looking at now, 100, like, you know, in the UK shape, you're involved with so many different charter projects, how many charities are focused on, on providing food, and how many charities are focused on providing Short Term Food Programs, you know, we're going out to Lebanon, we're going out to sit here, we're going out to different parts of the world, even Sudan, and we're providing, you know, a family with a food pack for the month, and the next month, we're gonna have to provide again, and the month after we're going to provide it again, shake this really started when I
remember, like we went to when I went to sit down for the first time, I remember growing up and watching. So you know, money being collected on terrestrial TV for, you know, this region that was I was senior Eritrea, Ethiopia, south eastern Sudan, and these refugees that were being created from the war that was taking place at the time. And when I visited, and we met the families, that they've been people that have been there for 40 years. And those people were relying on, you know, the World Food Program or another charity to come out and deliver food back now, nothing was done, people just about to say, oh, we'll make sure the food comes to you.
And their children were accustomed to the same thing they knew no different, like, this was the way of life, you know, this, this person came to the doctor for food. But now from our size, yes, it might take a little bit longer. And yes, we won't see the results of our work for 510 15 years time. The idea is if there is a community of people that will come from, you know, all these children that will come from this community, and they'll be able to take responsibility for the entire community in a few years time. So once all the charities are looking at all the organizations are looking at the short term support, we've decided just to focus on the long term, and of course, Chiquita, we're
not in a position to be able to do anything. So just like you asked, Well, what about people that are hungry, and they don't qualify the record school, for example, a 50 year old woman, for example, whose children well, she qualifies for food. But at the same time, for example, you know, why don't we do water? Why do we do shelter because we were going to go somewhere, if somebody is missing water, they want to do water and the list is endless. And then you become, you know, an organization that's just trying to do everything. And in fact, you're not making any long term impact. You're not looking at a community and how you can actually change it in the future. We're all focused on the
short term. So just like we need the charities to focus on the short term
If there's a natural disaster, like charge, like won't be responding, we'll leave that to the people that are qualified that know what's going on, know how to deal with those situations can deploy mass number of volunteers and people on the ground. And where we're focused on is making sure that, you know, there's this communities that hopefully in 1015 years time we'll be wrestling, and hopefully in 50 years time won't need any support from from Western sort of charities or any charity from any part of the world. Sure.
Yeah, no, I mean, you what I understood from you is you complimenting the sector. I mean, you're not sort of taking away from, from the need of fighting hunger, and being reactive to it. It's something that that does exist. But you know, the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam, I mean, I was just listening to you speak and I was thinking of, of a teaching that we have in Islam, you know, about Allah's Mercy being upon a person who knows the level, right, they know who they are, and they know who they're not. And Allah subhanho wa Taala also did,
you know, places,
you know, as communities with different skill sets with different abilities with different levels of intelligence, like I said, with different abilities, as Allah subhanho wa Taala says in his book, and that he distributed his mercy amongst us in different capacities, so that we could leverage of each other's strengths, we could complement each other and reaching an outcome that's fruitful for so so you complementing the sector now. I mean, you know, every project, when it starts it, it starts obviously, upon a particular mandate, and you're trying to reach a particular end and a particular vision, but it's like, I mean, from my personal experience, it's similar to a child in
the in the womb of a mother, when Allah subhanaw taala blows that so and then it takes on a life of its own. You know, there's no guarantees, right? There's no guarantee. So, I mean, in terms of charity, right, and you understanding of where it started, and where it was supposed to go and where it is now.
Would this be true to sort of the idea taking a life of its own, and then it sort of evolved into this always, this whole idea of going into the sector focusing on on school meals, was this idea, the foundational idea upon which the charity was founded?
Yeah, 100%, I think the product is genuine, why we're doing it. And the difference that we want to make is exactly the same.
You know, when we start shipping, you know, I don't know if your viewers know that you involved in that initial consultation, the initial, you know, defining the product, and why we should do it. And it's very simple, like, you know, we're here to make sure that Allah has his command, that we want to be an organization that is not a reactive organization, is a proactive organization, and we're looking at change. We're looking at how, you know, Muslims and non Muslims, you,
the Muslim community, and the people that are involved in the sector, we're looking at how people can learn, and see the mercy of this theme in action. I know a lot of times, we talk about, you know, we have a merciful religion, and we had, you know, a prophet of God. So Saddam Hussein as a mercy to mankind, and we have a, you know, a merciful God. But, you know, very, very often we don't really see that, that mercy being manifested in our daily lives, or people around us will be able to see that and say, well, actually, yeah, these people are merciful people. But, you know, we have many examples, for example, in Sudan, where we were, you know, of course, you know, the car goes to
the Muslim in there, but some of the surgical phones are provided to non Muslim. You know, in fact, Christian families that are in the, in the refugee camps, they also, you know, they're from Ethiopia, or from Eritrea, they're Christian families escaping the same issues in Eritrea, but we will provide for them so they can see again, that the muslimeen are taking care of them. So for us, this is, you know, this is the reason we started this the reason why Korea continuing, we want to see, specifically Muslim communities being stronger, is that comes through, you know, learning when it comes to literacy, then Hamdulillah we can we can do that and check, you know, you're no stranger
to this, that, you know, when we talk about the golden ages of Islam, and we talked about, you know, time where everything was coming from Islam, and we want the people that were taking from the rest of the world, you know, people that were giving to the rest of the world. That was a time where we were the learned people, we were the scholars, we were the astronomers, we were the people, physicians, we were the mathematicians, we were those people that were leading all those fields.
We seem to have fallen back because, you know, more than half of the Muslim community is focused on how to get from day one to day two,
to day three, you know, our, our, you know, short sightedness is killing us in that in that respect.
So this is why I think, you know, even like, you know, when I talked to a lot of other charities and Ashleigh, we talked to so many of the leaders of
The charity sector always say, Look, we need to try and focus if Muslimeen. And the charities and the leaders of charity started to become a bit more focused on
a specific area and a solution for that specific area, and they had Islam at the forefront, and they had the Canada Muslimeen, that you will find that very quickly, we'll be able to make those changes. But sometimes our work is very short sighted, you know, I'm not disrespecting anyone, just to ensure that we need those people, you know, we need the people that are going to be able to respond to earthquakes and natural disasters and, and go and help in those situations. But there has to be a group of charities, or at least looking at the long term.
Jimmy, Jimmy, the article on Fico.
So, obviously, you know, from your introduction, the charity has been around for a long time. How many territories are you are you currently operating in? So currently, when
it comes countries, don't ask me to name them.
But, you know, we started our journey with Sudan. So this is still one of our biggest regions. There's around
eight to 10,000 children that receive a daily school meal in Sudan alone of the law, which which part of Sudan is this? The eastern Sudan where the Eritrean refugees have migrated from, from Eritrea and Ethiopia, I guess.
Anything between 350 and half a million refugees. It's a lot and
these children are in school. Yeah, so these these schools, they run jointly by, like local organizations that exist in Sudan, the government, and then majority schools that were operating in run by the UNHCR. So you see our go where they set up the schools, but they don't have a budget for food to the whole budget to do anything else. Our journey actually started the shake because we went to one UNHCR school. And it was a brand new building, Mashallah. And it's in the middle of nowhere, it stands out, obviously, everybody else is living in a mortar. And then lo and behold, you have this fantastic new school with funds and tables and chairs and blackboards, and, you know, all the
rest of it.
And the school was built for maybe 400 500 children. And I remember going there and there was like, 40 children, it was like a ghost town. And they had reasons for why children weren't coming to school, maybe because it was this, maybe the parents don't want them to come to school, the girls, you know, they want to keep them home. And they had all these different reasons for why.
And then obviously built the school thinking that it was going to go and as I look, when you find out deeper, and you do a deep dive into why children will come to school, most of them were helping their father, they were helping their mother that was incentive there was
we sent out a message and said like, go tell all the the local tribes that there's gonna be food at the school and if you want to register your child be here to
share that kid, you know, there was a line, you know, and that their child in whatever clothing, their hardware, whatever shoes, a bargain book they have.
They just drag them there and say, Look, I'm going to make sure my child is registered to school. That school now is like, I think it's got 800 and some odd kids in it. It's oversubscribed, the attendance rate is like
you know,
I put that down to food. I put that down to food in that
spot for it. So so basically you are feeding children in school, but also through the project. You actually got children into school. Yeah, is that a fair comment? It's hard. It's unbelievable power on attracting children. Let me check sometimes your entire earnings for your month goes on providing food for your family. Now if one of your children could just go to school and he could build a healthy meal be completely full. We're not looking at these three meals a day type stuff that I guess we have in the west you know, a good a good solid meal in the day and something to bite on when you get home in the evening. This is more than no sometimes those kids then this is a child
taken care of if you can imagine a mother and father got three children or three children are taken care of in school, you know a lot of weight off your shoulders you know you can start thinking and planning and you can start looking at what you do with your life in the little forms that you have left. You know, maybe you need to invest in something or whatever
food is,
is taken care of. Then we have the same ship shipping like some of the new countries that we've launched are Ethiopia, Malawi.
And Malawi, I remember visited
just have to call in 2020 December visited and when we talked to some locals about how much money they earned and how much a sack of you know, flour, wheat, barley, something like that. And there was a half the salary was being spent on one cycle
of this barley or or wheat. And I was amazed like you spent half your salary forget education, forget travel to get your drink, forget rent, forget everything else. Half of your salary immediately goes to the cycle all week and I can imagine how their kids are going to the schools that I have to buy a whole bag even
about halfway through
doesn't make a big big difference. Here. I mean, so So that's that's Sudan mashallah debacle. I mean, I have a follow up questions from this, but you mentioned this other territories. So you mentioned Malawi, alright, you've mentioned Sudan, Sudan. We started in Pakistan and Bangladesh around the same time about 2015. Same concept schools softens.
So in Bangladesh, we work in the Dhaka slums.
There's a network of schools now.
There's around 20. I think.
In the slums in Dhaka, they have different problems, but hamdulillah we're dealing with those as well. We work in select, as well now a large community of people from sulla in the UK, and and specifically so there's, there's that and also with the Rohingya refugees, in coxless as three locations in in Bangladesh.
We work in third which is like one of the harshest places to live on planet Earth.
Yeah, I've heard about that.
It's a crazy scene on the law. But again, we're providing education some of those children you know, they can't remember forefathers or anybody ever going to school.
This is the first round of children that is actually going to school I don't know if I shared with with you, we shared last time I remember, we set the school look and we employed this teacher and we did all this stuff. And you know, part of the program is that in lot of the schools we provide education from an Islamic point of view on so people can choose whether they pick that up or not. If you're Muslim you can if you're not if you're not from the Muslim faith, and you don't have to attend.
And I remember going into the school back in entering Karachi in in Pakistan, and it's a desert share. You know, literally you've got this sort of mud hole with some straw roof in the middle of nowhere.
And you can still hear the wind when kids are memorizing Quran you can hear this coming. Yeah.
And I thought it's only been a year but mashallah, these kids have learned something. And I walk in, and it gives me great pleasure shake, you know, when I see this something or bring a kid, I want to listen to the listen to what they're memorizing. So this child came, and he recited sort of Fatiha with all the three that was required. And he translated it for me in in Cindy, but I kind of got the gist of it.
It's a local dialect.
And then, you know, asked his name. And he replied with like, Oh, my name is, you know, Ramesh Kumar or something.
You know, I looked at the translated 100 minutes, it was always the kids gone. It was what's the story, like, you know, his name or what's happened in the tech on a local end, he was actually not Muslim. Yeah, he comes from a Hindu family. The Hindu family is quite poor. But once they heard there was food in the school, the mother said, just take the kid. Okay, well, you teach him just as long as he's is eating, and he's learning that the
father of this child is,
you know, a veteran, he's got to know Allah through just by attending the class and, and eating the meal. Obviously, he's getting primary education as well at the same time. But he's got to know, Allah, and he's got to know this thing received me and showing mercy Samba, this has always been
a great thing. That's been amazing, amazing. We, couple years ago, we launched the Eagle project in Turkey. So these are, these are from from China.
A lot of them are single mothers, the, you know, the father stayed behind and set the family forward first, and then tried to get out of himself, and, unfortunately, hasn't made it or has been trapped somewhere else, or whatever's happened. The mother finds itself with young children, and she's stuck. And again, our program is connected to education. So the idea is that we're providing
so like, at the moment, we're providing Family Food pipes,
but we linked it with education. So the idea was that you learn Turkish language skills to be able to speak, you know, Turkish language fluently. And that would set you up because a lot of them they're talented. So they, you know, they're engineers or they've, they've got an educational background. The problem is in Turkey, obviously, you've got to know Turkish it's not like you could speak English and and get away with it.
So we're training them up on that and our humble love have launched three new schools for the deaf community as well for the feeding project. You know, you're not you're not launching schools. You're working with schools. Yeah.
We say schools as well. It's a place of learning as long as it's a place of learning. So for the community, for example, there's
it's almost an orphanage. There's 47 children there at the last board both parents somehow
so they stay within the campus. They are on site at the school. We are there when looking after them solely in terms of their food requirements.
So that's still a place of learning might not necessarily be a full on school, but it's because education is taking place at the at the orphanage.
So humbler where we're looking after that community is also last week and then recently we've launched Ethiopia.
Yeah. Tell us tell us about that. Tell us about that. Because that's that's something new. Definitely.
Because that has, so heritage there for you. Yeah, Africa
was an interesting one. Like we we heard some news about it. We were looking at launching a new territory.
And then we met
or we spoke to above the office vessel. MashAllah lantai. Blantyre, Islamic society. Absolutely. What a beautiful brother mashallah, you got a good chat with him about the opportunities and what was happening. So we went to visit. Like as during the visit, we were convinced that this was the place we came back
and did everything else and humbler we
place a lot. A lot of these places are not random. And this is the interesting thing, like compared with launching new countries, like, did you just pick that our heart was was Milan? Yeah. Yes. So this is this is the question that I had because mashallah, you've mentioned all these territories that you had Malawi that Ethiopia jumped in. So what is the mechanism here? For opening in a country? Is it an application that comes in or is charted right proactively looking,
proactively looking to expand? So just walk that through, let's say, there's somebody watching this now from somewhere in Africa, they have a charity, they have schools, they're in a similar situation, and they, they sort of fit within the mandate of charity. You know, what's, what's the process? What's the process flow for charity, right to begin collecting funds for a country and working in that country. So first and foremost, it is our responsibility to make sure the schools that we have that we are safe, we secure funding for them first.
Because till today, we haven't defaulted on a meal. There's never been a case where we didn't have the funds to be able to provide the regular kids are on the program already. With Neil. So first and foremost, that's what we need to do. And then we look at expanding. So if our income is increasing, and we know that you know, more people are making a donation to charity, right? Then we'll say, Okay, actually, we have a forecast in this one. So we can actually expand now we decide on whether we go deeper into a country that has more territories within Bangladesh, for example, can we launch most humans in a territory? Are we ready? Are we equipped? Do we have the capacity? Or does it make
more sense to add a territory and start learning in a new region? So we can actually start starting queueing in that place and humbler we've decided just to have hopes. So if you look, for example, at the moment, we were already in Bangladesh, you already in Pakistan,
the missing bit from that is Afghanistan, Afghanistan, I think, is number one or number two, with the highest number of illiteracy in the world.
And obviously hasn't had a good sort of last 1520 years.
And that's definitely a place where we want to go into help build the country through education.
And hopefully, you know, in the next 2030 years, we should see some sort of reform that so we were interested in that case, little triangle there of of regions, and South Asia is, you know, I think,
a whole fear of not making this stuff up. But around 60% of the world's homeless people like those three countries,
in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, and then obviously, we were already working in Sudan, and neighboring Ethiopia was where a lot of people are coming into Sudan.
And some of the selection is based on the team as well. We're always looking for, like, if we're partnering with somebody, if we've got an organization that we want to work with, how strong is the partner? What are their abilities? So some of its from our side, like, yes, we want to work in a certain territory, but we won't launch until and we've had a desire to launch for example, in Afghanistan for a number of years, not been able to do so because we didn't have the right partner but humbler we've got
comfortable.
But but whatever, we're just listening to you. I mean, Mashallah. You you at the top, the apex, and it comes across that there is an appetite within charity, right? To educate, it's, it's as if, you know, of course, it's seen as a feeding project. But you can see the education mandate comes comes across very strongly from everything that you've just said. Because, I mean, you're you've clarified that you do have a sort of like a waiting list, right. So, you have areas that require expansion into and then when the funds come then you know, you have those areas ready that okay, we have the funds we can now we can walk into this country. You also said that some countries come about out of
personal interest of charity right and some come about as you know, as a result of people bringing to charity rights, attention a need, right? So mashallah, Annie. You're everything you're talking about sort of
It doesn't set the path of just feeding, there's a strong education mandate, like you just said in a funny stand that you want to bring about a sort of revolution of education and moving into into the territory and sort of bringing people to schools, through the meals, and so on and so forth. Is that, is that a fair sort of summary? Yes. Yeah. Like, we always say that the food is a means to a great, you know, and like the food, it shouldn't be, it shouldn't end with food. So if we're providing meals for something greater than that, which is to liberate people from, you know, the situation that comes to the education to the training to the learning, so, yeah, definitely should
we never look at it as in, you know, we're providing food and that's mashallah the end. So even in our importing in our, you know, so metrics are looking at whether a project is successful or not, you know, indication plays a big part, like we're looking at attendance rates, for example, we're looking at dropout rates, for example, we're looking okay, you know, all those things matter to us. Because we, if we just wanted to feed the people, we could do that anyway. But here is the fair comment, you want to make sure that children are coming to school. That's why we started this feeding program. So food is what brings them there. But in the end of it, they leave, you know, of
course.
Yeah. Yeah. So So tell me about this now. Um, you? So obviously, there's a focus in schools, you working with a demographic of people?
How does the feeding process happen? Are you sending? Are you sending food in refrigerated containers? Or is it locally sourced? What's the mechanism here to manage the countries that you're in? Yeah, so first, we don't send food from the UK, it doesn't mean, for me, it doesn't make any sense. Like every country that you go to less, there's a lack of food within the country or neighboring country, that doesn't make sense, you're always able to bring in food from someone.
And usually find in any country food is available, it's just not available to the for
buying, purchasing and providing. So we don't send any free food from the UK. Anyway, I know there's containers going left and center to lots of countries, but we're not involved with that. We'll look at providing or purchasing food from local farmers, some from the local, okay. Because again, that supports them and for sure, a light bulb went on in my head. I mean, that bringing you bringing capital
to the locality, you also incentivizing innovation, incentivizing people to get out until the land and farm because they see they see an end game, but if we get it, then obviously there's a charity operating, they will purchase the stuff from us. Alright, so but what about what about, you know, cooking and stuff, I use it, obviously, I'd imagine you sourcing it locally, and you're getting local people to cook it as well, as further employment. There's a whole ecosystem that emerges ship. So once you're providing food, and you're purchasing it locally, then the local, you're employing people. So the moment you know, in Sudan alone, I think we've got like 70, or 80 stuff, in terms of
cooks coming to school every single day. And that's increasing, I don't know how many around the world. But you know, for every other students, for example, we've got two books where they might be cooking daily, so they've got jobs now as well. Because Because kids are coming to schools as a demand for new teachers, more teachers with people that are professional, where they're getting jobs now. So even, you know, looking at children graduating from from school, they've got somewhere to go, because there's a school feeding program. So it kind of, you know, all of that starts to gel together, you know, all the all the things come together, we're building, for example, in all our
schools, we have kitchens, there's some jobs for builders to build the kitchens and set the kitchen out, we're buying pots and pans in the local community, all martial art becomes a little bit in the ecosystem. And this is why check for us, it's always been important not to get involved with all the other stuff.
For example, if we need somebody to build a well at the school, or close by, look, we can contact somebody who's a specialist in well building to say, come come to the school, you can help build as well. For example, if for example, there's no toilets at the school, and that's preventing maybe some of the girls reaching puberty to come to school.
We've got a charter that we'll be speaking to now to, to help work with us in those schools that are already working in we're adding value. What do you go there? You know, hydrogen is cleaning whatever it might be. We were talking a couple of years ago to, you know, a charity that just provides wash training just goes into the schools and teaches the kids and the children, the teachers and the cooks just about how to wash their hands, or how to wash the containers, the pots or pans where to leave them to make sure to try to make sure like because
we were not able to do all of it. Okay, who can we bring in to make sure that certain parts of them
Yeah, you don't mashallah, any as you speaking? I'm sure you can see I'm smiling because there's a lot of thoughts in my mind because I'm thinking to myself
as a donor, if I knew that this charity is number one, bringing children to school
To a place of education. Number two, it's, it's keeping them fed. Right? Number three, I'm bringing, I'm incentivizing the local area. Those people who have skills, I'm incentivizing them to work with incentivizing farmers to farm incentivizing laborers to, to cook. And then also, if there's entrepreneurs, they have their natural unit plates, you need to pots and pans, as you rightfully said, so, you know, they, you know, they become more stimulated in terms of,
you know, their potential, return on the investment and the equity, as a donor, if I am donating, thinking of all these things, I can be more sophisticated in my intention to capture all these rewards, as opposed to I'm just donating an amount. And I will put this to you, but you know, is charity, right? Actually conveying the impact of charity, then through charity, right, whereby, you know, I can also then become more impactful in my intentions, and take wholesale from all these added benefits and Hamdulillah. You know,
our deeds, Allah subhanho wa Taala protects them from from from being lost. But personally, personally, I feel more inspired. If I sold the value proposition that this is the ROV. This is the ROI potential. Through doing this, it's not just an end, but it's a means to many ends, right? That this donation is a means to many as like you initially said, it's not just a pack, and then you know, you need to give another pack and then you give another pack, but through these packs that you're doing within this particular mechanism, there's so much other impactful outcomes that are come to be so I'm putting this to you, what is charity, right doing to get this message out to the
Omar Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam so they can build their agenda through their charity in a more impactful way. What we're doing events like this year, we're doing
educate some people, but we try our best to, to videos, to social media content to emails, if you're not subscribed to the email list, and the easiest way to learn about on a day to day basis, you know, what the child is doing, you get a monthly email sent with all the kind of key values, how many meals are distributed, how many children are in school.
Inshallah, in the next couple of weeks, we're launching our annual report, which details a lot of, you know, additional information about attendance and, and everything else. It's a lottery. But the easiest way is to if if people are subscribed to our newsletter, or they like our social media accounts, were sharing so much content on there now. Every other day, there's something to share in terms of, of these kinds of impact related results that we can talk about, and generally shake sometimes, you know, even I'm amazed, like, when we speak into our programs, our head of our programs, is currently in Malawi at the moment, but you know, speaking to him and just saying, you
know, what's the impact of the project in Malawi and Malawi is fairly new finishing, you know, so it's our news program so far. And, you know, I think was like a 30% increase in attendance in schools. That's crazy, you
know, good school now, is 30% increase in attendance already.
In some of those schools, I think what you said was, was key shift that, you know, this is, I always say that this, this is one donation is, and I'm sure it's not the only type of donation, there's one donation prevents so much evil, and it promotes so much good. And so much of it, we won't know, until, you know, we have a meeting with Allah that we genuinely want know, like, what our meals prevented in a certain community, and what they promoted in the same community, I'm sure there's some others making dua for people of charge right now that you know, for sure their child is going to school when they've been at school.
exams can be known for their pastor, or whatever it might be, you know, and those are, those are the critical things. And generally, should I say that because I myself sometimes, you know, I learned about these things from the team.
I guess that's what happened. Yeah, that's, like we will we went to Sudan. And I was there, I think, not four weeks ago. And, you know, visiting was, like, this is the number one school in the region. I was like, this is just making this
up. Number two, number three, is it just like, this is making this up, because then the ball like these kids, and like, this was the number one kid in the region, this was the number two kid in the region. It's like, the whole region in like a school that we've been supporting for like, you know, six years, seven years now. And these children, they've grown up with the school meals, and you hear the stories directly is, is very impactful. You know, there's, I bought back a letter, this township from Sudan. And it was this girl she had written this, we didn't ask her to write anything and also the school asked to join. We just said look, we want
To speak to some of the brightest students in the school. I just read this letter about how you know her father was struggling.
And he taken the son out of the school to help him. And they were contemplating about taking her out of school also. And then just at that time the school feeding program started
and allowed her to go back and slowly help rather than back to school as well. And I was just saying like, he was the number one student in the region.
This crazy marks Well, she was a refugee in Sudan. I think I saw I saw some messaging going about this on the chatter right channels. Yeah, yeah, I was I was a mistake. Because mashallah, I think, yeah, you know, she gets back into school, but she excels like, she achieved her potential, she achieved a potential. Yeah. And she's, she's gonna be like, you know, we'll say that maybe she do. You do end up in university, you may get to the point heights, but the fact that she's going to that communication, if in fact that she's going through that secondary education, she's going to make sure that her children go all the way. She's gonna know. Just like our parents, you can show me show
me my dad didn't go to school, but he made sure I went to school. I went to school now. And you know, I had the privilege to go to university. I'll make sure my children get a few, you know,
a few miles ahead. I love
Jimmy, Jimmy, here's one for you. We have someone asking how do charities justify raising funds for the same projects over the course of the year after hitting the Ramadan numbers? I presume that's what NS means.
Yeah, so let's put that directly to charity. Right? Obviously, all charities in Ramadan,
at least from my experience, they go full out. In racing, obviously, many people pay their soccer. And the money will come to them. We do have questions about charities, right and soccer. So regarding this particular question, and we get it back up, there we go. So, you know, I presume what they're saying is, when these campaigns go out in Ramadan, there's target numbers that are set that we need to hit this particular target, right. And by the end of Ramadan, sometimes those numbers are surpassed, then in the middle of the year or during, for example, hedger, or sometime during the year we find the campaign for the same, you know, for the same project. So can you relate to this?
And, you know, what would you say? So, for example, let's let's bring it specific to charity, right? Let's say we spoke about Sudan, right? So we're raising for Sudan, these are the numbers we have for Ramadan, we need to feed orphans or children,
refugee children in Sudan, in the schools, and then these targets are hit mashallah Tabarrok Allah. And then, for example, a few months down the line we raising, again, for children in Sudan in those schools.
First, it doesn't happen. And if it does happen, how do you explain this? So we will never first of all, we will ever raise money for the same school vertical furniture. We work on a year to year basis. So hamdulillah for example, in Ramadan, especially if you are fundraising for a school last year, let's say we hit the target for that school that school is now almost adopted by you You're responsible for that school your phones will be deployed at school, we will take somebody else's money for that school also at the same time, we wouldn't do that we will raise for the region so for raising for his school in Sudan, for example, Jenny, so I think that's you're raising general funds
first
for his schools, and let's admit the target for all the we had so far for hip schools in Sudan they were met and mashallah we don't have no more histories. And if we're launching a new campaign, you usually will mean that we're adding to the program Okay, mashallah, we've we've had our quarter we all the 1000 children in this this hit schools that we met for
his students that we have incidents, or 2000 have been sponsored. Right, but we have no ation for 15,000 More students also incident also in his schools. Some of them if they're close by and we can cater for them quickly and from the same place or it's easy for our team to take a logistic to the number we will launch a new problem there is no there will be no way to do that. What we won't do, like I said is for the same program raise more and more money. So for example, this year, we're not taking any more donations for
refugees, because, you know, this is a passionate sort of drive and people feel quite passionate about giving to this region, but somehow we have enough funds to take us to, you know, past Ramadan to the end of the year, maybe even beyond to raise funds for that place. Not so hot anymore public fundraising for them, but other places, you know, subhanAllah we've we've launched this Afghanistan appeal now the schools or something in a matter of two weeks now. So how now so children Afghanistan will be getting their first hot meal in Shabbat and hopefully through Ramadan, we're providing them with some meals to take home so the education isn't interrupted and keeps them instead
The device this will be, you know, a lot of students it's almost 5000 students so we will be launching within Afghanistan so there's a lot to do in those seats. So you might find that we start with one school and we say, mashallah, we supported the school, but then at the same time, once you go to these things in the same place, right, so So if a new campaign does crop up for the same region, it means you've, you've taken on new schools, there's more students, and now you need to cover them. Yeah, and perhaps this is something that needs to be explained. Or charities need to do this better. You know, obviously, we have charity right in front of us. So this is something perhaps
to take on board from from from this question, and that whenever a campaign does happen, after Ramadan, or in the months after Ramadan, then it's important or it's, it's beneficial. It's productive to let the people know the reasoning that these funds are being behind why these funds are being are being collected. Here's one from Iran and we will come to you know, just the previous discussion but just to get the the questions on air I'm saying not sure if this is the right question to ask you should zaka be given to where you live I live in the UK so my car should go in the UK or some can go to charity charity right right now from an Islamic perspective,
obviously, is the car has recipients this compulsory matters in terms of the
the disbursement of Zeca but then there's this preferred there's preferred matters Alright, so if a person did give the you know their charity to a cause further away that qualified for soccer then in terms of this cup being completed there's no issue so from an Islamic perspective, there's no issue if you give it locally or you give it abroad but no doubt the Sharia prefers looking after a cause which is closer than a cause which is further but what does charity right normally answer people when they come up with this with this particular question
so it's a difficult issue because you know, as you know, we're involved with charities also collect funds for
for the car in the UK and
I think you know, sometimes there's so much focus on on the car we don't talk about the subject
we point to focused on whereas the car should go away should gotcha Gomez actually yeah, I understand that you can decide you know, like you what you said this is what people should take as advice and they can decide on where they are local or
abroad I think what we should be also looking at is our self condemnation so many people in Ramadan unfortunately they stop at the curb so I have extra miles to come together and that's because I'm finished. I've given what I need to give them you'll miss out on all those opportunities to get some
Yeah, and that's where that's where we should we should really excel I think in charge right most of our donations
which is a blessing on them interesting questions with as a covered also touched on with so
when you say most you mean most of the fun you get most of the time in soccer. We get most of the interesting it because I mean you know from from from everything you've said the projects are also catalpa right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so so that's it. That's interesting. That's inspirational actually, because mashallah it's nice to know because you always read these figures of how the Muslim in the UK are very charitable in the most charitable and mashallah the breaking limits in terms of the total number of the fingers of charity given a four year I mean, even during 2020 When lockdowns happened in Corona peaked, and, you know, people were feared losing their jobs. There was
you know, it was really an uncertain period Subhanallah and, and, and to be honest, charities did feel that perhaps this year, they would, they would,
you know, they wouldn't hit the numbers, right? They wouldn't hit the numbers because because,
you know, when people fear a job, when they have a job insecurity, then they're not really selfless but Subhanallah that year, mashallah Muslims gave in an unprecedented manner, and the figures surpassed the year before, but whenever I read these figures, I think that you know, is the soccer or is the sadaqa because we can't, or we shouldn't sort of, you know, feel that we need to Pat to our backs, because we give the Kosaka is the right of the recipient. It's a test from Allah that that amount is with us. So being praised for doing what we have to do. It's obligatory upon us to do it personally.
I mean, I suppose given people's attachment to wealth, we praise them for having taken care of the obligation. But generally, you know, selflessness is not doing that which is obligatory upon you to do. Right. It is going far, far and beyond. And you're right, you're absolutely right. People generally focus on soccer. But what about sada I mean, we could say keep your soccer local, and then take your set apart for the causes that are abroad. It shouldn't be an either or circumstances situation or have both soccer and soccer
For local and abroad, no doubt, Sakai is an obligatory charity. So it comes with its threshold of rewards that a soda won't have. And, you know, you might see causes. Some people obviously settled in the UK so they do have attachment to the homeland. So in that capacity, they do feel the need to give some of their soccer abroad but this point is absolutely true that the focus shouldn't be soccer. Soccer is only 2.5% If we look at the soccer of previous nations and we know that soccer is not specific to this OMA it's something that existed in
in the messages of other prophets, the figures or the threshold figures with a higher sometimes even up to 10%. Right. So Allah made it obligatory upon them to give 10% for example, but Allah Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam 2.5% Because Allah knows this OMA and this organizer is one of selflessness and Omar of ether, the more ether that they will go beyond by themselves Subhan Allah. So Aram I hope, I hope that shed some light, we have a should I say a country would want to say controversial, but it can be controversial. We have brother for us on YouTube. Aaron was on Facebook, actually, mashallah we have viewers from Twitter as well, for the for us is saying are
crypto donations acceptable? So I presume the CS asking asking it from a fifth perspective, it's upon the view that Kryptos are permissible than the donations would be acceptable. So it depends on which view of the scholar you follow, especially since this is a contemporary metal, but in terms of charity, right, let me bring this to you. Does charity try to have the mechanism to accept crypto donations?
Depends on how large this donation is in crypto
because of the platform.
But yeah, this is this is interesting shape, because obviously, things are changing very, very quickly now. In terms of like the crypto scene and people are making money there. This is NF T's and all this other stuff. And people want to delay in irregular ways. Are you counting website? That's a key point irregular? Irregular? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, upon the view that it's permissible, the cash to be paid on it? Yeah. Yeah. And people with for example, a crypto account and they've got X amount of cryptocurrency in there, they want to pay from the cryptocurrency, they want to be able to give you one of their Bitcoins, as basically, I guess, the charities have to, to kind of adapt and,
and be able to accept that because I don't know, again, you know, I'm with Dr. Shay. And you're able to answer this question a little bit better than me, but I always say that no irregularly irrelevant is how the person has earned the funds, you know, if somebody has made, you know, made wealth from something that's illegal, or something else, whatever, if they still hold or the wealthiest need to pay the college, right? Yes, yeah. So and it's the same with the crypto people have crept in, whether it's, you know, it's got to build wealth, it has to be paid, you need to pay on it. So I think we need to be able to adapt to be able to have those mechanisms in place where we can accept
those donations.
Yeah, but obviously on the side of the charity, then you would need to ensure given how volatile Kryptos can be in terms of not just looking after the operation, but also the responsibility of taking care of the donation of the donor because a charity is an agent for both the donor and the receiver. Right it's a bigger man right? Mashallah. That's why I always say you have big shoulders on yourself or the agenda No, and everybody we had brought the Kashif from Mr. Meat as well, it's a big Amana because, you know, ALLAH SubhanA wa, tada has been a question you are on both rights, you took this wealth as an agent for the donor, right? So there was a level of Amana and trust and
expectation on you. And then also, in terms of the recipient, right, there was a trust on you there was a level of expectation
upon you from their part as well. So, you know, just just just as a message for those who might be by what you're given how volatile the scene is, you would want to definitely act quick in ensuring that the rights of the recipients are protected, right if sometimes it's kept in any crashes and that affects those who have a right
to it but we want to make this a crypto session. I have a whole two hour discussion on it on my channel, which has been also transcribed you can find it online if you just type up. Cryptocurrency masterclass, Sajid Roemer in shall buy it should it should pop up, you know, you mentioned Zika. And you mentioned Sarah, and this is something also that is asked about charity. Right? And I've been asked to put this to you in terms of Zika. Right, and this whole idea of
charities taking funds from the donations for the, for the running cost of the charity or for the the salary, salaries of the staff and so on and so forth. What does charity right do with Zika particularly
So at the moment share, and I always say at the moment, because this is, you know, a charity that could we could change the policy next year or the year, a year after. But for now, it's the policy has remained the same for the last couple years. Anybody who donates the, the calculus, we don't take anything from it, all of that money is is is cordoned off to be spent on on programs and program delivery. So we don't we wouldn't spend from the marketing or fundraising efforts. So.
So it's connected directly to, to the feeding, to the everything about the feeding. It's directly connected to that. And I guess a lot the UK costs a bit from from soda phones and from gift.
show me show me okay. All right. So you mentioned that this is the current policy, but the policy can change, what would need to happen for the policy teacher? Is it just like Sajad makes a decision policy change? And the change happens, you know, for people who are watching, you know, is the process, how does that policy end up just changing? Yeah, so the reason why the policy would change at the moment, like I mentioned that majority nations
are able to sustain approval. Now, obviously, we have that discussion. Last time I checked about the 0% army and, and all this sort of stuff. And I made it quite clear to me, I think the charity should start thinking more from more of an admin, rather than less of an admin, you should be taking a lot more to be able to run the organization properly. So we're, we're future proof, essentially.
And anybody who Yeah, but for those for those who are listening, what does that mean? What does future proof mean? Take more so that we future proofed? Like we're talking about this cryptocurrency stuff now, like most people will have the budget to even look at an investing even those portals we have to do that the banking system is changing now. So what's stopping us for example? You know, at the moment, it's very difficult to get funds into Sudan, for example. Sudan is one of the countries as emerging as one of the places where cryptocurrencies we know
there's a lot of miners, there's lots of people that was topping the chart in the new case any cryptocurrency to charge in Sudan, for example, traditional methods of, of sending funds around the world are becoming more and more difficult, especially for Muslim charities. Let me know, I don't mix my words for Muslim charities, it becomes more and more difficult, then why are we not adopting any of the features and you're not able to even look and consider any of that research or even consider or speak to scholars or speak to financial leaders? If you don't have something to invest with? Like, what are you going to invest with? You know, this is number one. Number two is, you
know,
all our talent so far, you know, he's not interested in the charity sector because, you know, you'll see adverts like you know, most have 40 years worth of management experience must have, you must speak English, not in Spanish Arabic, must be able to do x, y and z must bring in 4 million pounds a year. And when you look at the salary is you know, you know, with all due respect to 15,000 pounds and 20,000 pounds let's say you're asking for the cream of the crop and you're still willing to pay X y&z And I think this is where we need to be investing with, we're investing in our people, we're investing in good quality people we don't want you know, when you look at the time of the process,
Salam on the Sahaba like they had Salalah Allah, Allah, Allah was running XYZ already I was really thought that the best people and the cream of the crop, they were paid well,
they were doing the job but at the moment we're looking at okay, I will say, you know, as I say, you know, you have three children and one of them mashallah is a doctor and you the two they are you know, that okay? You make one of them the Imam of the Masjid. So you get into this, Madras. Let him learn about Quran and one of them you give to the charter, you say, Okay, you're gonna charge you. It's like, you know, you the best one you've given someone else? Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. I hear you're able to do anything. So yeah, this is PJ. And for me, one thing that we won't move on is the quality of the thing. You know, this is, this is from our deen show, you know, like, like, yeah,
we're not, we're forced to be people that have a quality intervention. And that's when it will look like it's too. For too long. We've been dictated upon by the donor dollars, or 20 pounds, and I don't want any of that going anywhere. It has to go to Sudan, and it has to go to pocket.
Price and delivery for him.
But that, but that's the nature of being approxi destination. I mean, if if, if the paradigm of the donor isn't conducive to creating the transformative outcomes that the charity wants to achieve, shouldn't the charity take it upon themselves to educate the donor? Tell the donor that look, this is where your donation is, but this is where it can be. How are you? No, I'm just going to put it out there. How much work at the church is the charity sector doing to transform the paradigms of the donor? Yeah, I think it's a it's an ongoing process shape, like, I'm sure a lot of people talk about it especially the charges are not 0%. I mean, we talked about
added a couple of videos last year.
Throughout, we got some support from law school, the chocolate thing, this is stuff that we should be talking about. And it's something that just needs to stay at the forefront of our minds. Like, you know, if you're able to run a 0% charity admin, then mashallah, you, you're amazing. And you should carry on. And there's no harm in it. But I've seen for charity likers, that, you know, like, you know, can last couple of months check, we've been doing BMI checks, and all the children to see the work that we're actually doing is actually working, is it working, you know, where, like, in Bangladesh a couple of weeks ago with the teacher training, or the madrasa for all the teachers that
are there actually making the change within the children, you know, we facilitated, we didn't do the training ourselves, but we're able to go out and reach out to a lot of that stuff can happen if we're always focused about 0%, and 1%, and minus three, because I've been personally listening to you, I wouldn't have an issue, any donating. But if you tell me this, you know, your one pound is feeding two meals a day, for example. Right?
Then you've set an expectation, in my mind,
that's what's happened. But if you tell me that it's feeding one meal, and it's going to get the BMI, check that you just mentioned that it's going to help with curriculum development, and it's going to ensure that, you know, we can actually audit the process every quarter or twice a year and actually look at the nutrition, the nutritional value that were given to the children and also the educational value. That's a different matter. I might even give more, if I knew that this is exactly what is being done. You get what I'm saying. So, you know, I mean, let me ask you, I mean, you in the sector, our charity is actually sitting together and saying, Guys, you know, let, look, there
have been mistakes. Right? So on the side of the donor, unfortunate, as you know, when it's drama, when there's drama, it spreads, the good work doesn't spread these videos that you're doing, you know, I'm not sure how dramatical they are. But people probably didn't watch them to actually understand what you're saying. But the drama does spread. And I can tell you now, you know, people do come to me and say, Chef, the money is with the charities. And when I tell them, what do you mean by this? What do you mean by this? Right? I come to the UK, Scotia the money is with the charities, I find that a very an ethical value to be existing amidst the community. Right. And you hear this
from people working in the charity sector is very unethical. So there's also there's one thing is halal haram, is it Yeah, Jews, Maya Jews FICON, meaning it's permissible, not permissible. But the other thing is don't ethical, the whole ethical boundary. And if charities are not looking after the ethics, then they shouldn't be expecting favors, because at the end of the day, from a fifth perspective, they are agents of the donor. Yeah, I know the charity has a vision, the charity is good, but that at the end of the day, you asking the donor to choose you and not somebody else. So there's a level of expectation, we can't just blame, blame the donor. So other charities sitting
down and saying, Guys, we need to really fix up clean up the image, we need to do that we need to be more accountable, more transparent. And we need to work together in shifting the paradigm of the donor, making them see exactly where the money can be, as opposed to where they want it to be currently, when they donate it to us. Is that happening? Are these discussions happening behind the scenes? Yeah, to a certain degree shift the picture from I mean, maybe not as a collective, but definitely, you know, we can see from lots of different charities that we're having those conversations and they're trying their best to educate the donors without kind of, you know, going
out and telling other people and maybe kind of off putting, like information that actually starts doubting, you know, the charitable sector and all the rest, but I think some of it is, you know, our perceptions, you know, we still think that some things are acceptable. I always say that, you know, the chart is on the, on the Imam of the masjid, they're exactly the same, you know, we're expecting miracles from them. And we also,
you know, in this country, especially, you know, if you said, an Imam was going to get paid 100,000 pounds, you know, even if he was the best Imam, even if he was the most qualified, even if he was,
he would say 100,000 pounds. Why does the manuka honey, you know, like, we will have the analysis if the chart is accurate, the moment that we see that somebody is getting a high salary, or she was wearing, I remember last in COVID.
I was wearing a branded t shirt to make a video on it to talk to people now the t shirt. The Buddha said, I don't know. The Buddha said the teacher costs around 70 pounds or 90 pounds.
And he said you shouldn't make the video with the teacher.
You know, I've been doing this for 10 years. I'm almost a 40 year old man years ago. afford the 70 politician even if I want to do on eBay, then there should be like there's something wrong right? I hear you. There has to be balanced. There has to be balanced. Absolutely. And this is where the mashallah you know, he has, you know, 60,000 banca
mashallah, you know, many of our business? For me, he was like, Yeah, you know, as a charity sector you shouldn't be.
Yeah, look,
I'm not gonna say that you can hear me, right? I'm not gonna say that there's
that there's that there's no imbalance also on the, on the side of the donor. Right. But you know, there has to be some effort to educate the donor that education has, you know, has to be there. But what about this, you know, even if it's educating the donor of the importance of investing in endowments endowment drives, right, so that we can come out of this whole discussion of cytokines, aka and how much to take for, because let's face it, the need for the Sadaqah and the saqa is only increasing. Right? Like you said, now there's a funny sign in the pot. Now you're raising for Khalistan, Eritrea came into the pot, and I'm sure you have already awaiting a list of countries
that are, you know, that are what schools that are trying to, you know, create the same impact that you're speaking about, right? Bring the kids to schools, the meals will help that the meals will get them educated will make them people who are donating tomorrow, and so on and so forth, right? So, you know, and this, again, is where sometimes the stigma comes in, but hold on a second here. Any you know, there are people who need this money. Right? So
what about this idea of charity sitting together and saying, Guys, we need the work for Dr. educate the people educate the OMA about the importance of a workflow for a charity so that we can cover up the whole discussion of how much soda is taken? Is it 12 and a half percent 1/8? And so on and so forth? Is it me, Lina Alia, our meeting fee? How are you know, what are the 15 junctions of, of Allah subhanho wa Taala saying what he said in the verse and all this gymnastics that we sometimes want the scholars
to do to try and reach an outcome that's favorable for the charity is, are these discussions happening? Or is the charity sector but fragmented?
No, I think a lot of the largest charities especially looking at work for already have sort of what's
explicit, but those conversations happen. What about charity? Right? Anything in the pipeline? Yeah, we have we have a word for the moment we have. Mashallah, Yeah, hello, we're just, we've had one for the last four years or so. Mashallah.
Flat in in North London, all the proceeds from the rent, go to the charity, go to go to some level, just reforming that now looking at the structure for that. And hopefully, we'll start making some public announcements on where people can actually start.
fundraising for our parents, for example, fundraising for our family members, you'll be able to set a walk in the name of your parents, for example, something that will be continuous and then hopefully you have a
work agency that will manage all that follows and all that. So yeah, I'm good. I think there's many opportunities. Now there's a couple of different
organizations that have been settled when it comes to work, but they're working with the charities now.
You know, one of them. So I think there's those opportunities are there. But regardless of that shape, I think, you know, people just as gluten as it might sound, people just need to let go, like, you know, you've given your circuit, you've given it to Allah subhanaw taala, you've done your due diligence on the charity, you've, you know, you've talked to the sheriff and you listen to this lecture and website, you've seen who their board members, are you. You've seen the annual report and make a donation and so so but the people don't do that suggest what you just said, people don't do how many people go and do exactly what you just said, right? It's like Kryptos, for example, how
many people read the white paper without going back to crypto? So So I would say people are more trusting they trusting? That's what it is. Many people just, it's not you, are you absolutely right. It's not an excuse. It's not a reason. It's not a reason, and it shouldn't be an excuse. People are trusting it's a reason and it shouldn't be an excuse, but people are trusting. And then these WhatsApp messages comes to come to them top 10 charities who are taking who CEOs are getting paid X amount, and this is what they're doing. But this has been the leak and this is what has been. And then what happens is, you know, naturally, people, you must remember as the pious before used to say
that the knifes and wealth are attached to each other. Because to earn that wealth, you spend a lot of the neffs it's sweat and blood that you spend to get that money. Now when that money is in and you donate it, you want to make sure that there's no Shubha there's no misconceptions about it. Things are so I mean, look, I understand like I said there is an imbalance on the side of the donor as well. But you know, we just got to understand that there's a psychology as well that we need to we need to work with here. I know you said the people should let go but sometimes it's not so easy to let go. Right but we need to educate the people do do the diligence. And I guess I guess this is
a question to put out to you because
Ramadan is coming, right? People are already preparing this aka working on this account, choosing
the charities that they're going to put this money the money in?
Why charity, right? As opposed to
another another charity. I mean, you said a lot, you said a lot, I can tell you why, but just just just for the last hour and 15 minutes.
Like, I've never, I've never had to go out and really sell and say, you know
so many opportunities like the system who asked about, you know, should I give my money here or abroad?
You know, we always say that for a child to write, you know, the cost of providing meals to one child is around on average 120 pounds. Now, you know, invest that, unless you've got, you've got something that if you have more to give than invest one or two children, five children, 10 children, and they still have opportunities to do other things. If you want to build a water bill, you know, we know we're not going to get into the, you know, situation where we're comparing, you know, what's better to give Sheila feed somebody in Ramadan now or wonder what's that and watching it, or just Just do as many of those as you possibly can, you know, myself being very honest, like, you know, in
Ramadan, I don't give all my money to charge right. You know, I go, you know, even though I work here, I diversification diversification, because, again, you make a investment bulletproof.
My children, and we're looking at something, like I have a funny story, you know, like, even my grandma, you know, protector
is now and you know, I went to her
in Ramadan, or just before Ramadan. And she's worked out my uncle's car and how much the car she has to give and everything else and she's given me this number, right? You know, so John, you know, you're gonna come on, in Ramadan, just come and see me and this account is yours. And I'm going to give it to you. And, you know, Donna wants to good work with it. And Michelle, and she's, she's my grandma, she's, you know, we have a, I meet once a week, we have a chat on the phone a couple times on FaceTime or whatever.
So she's there. She's following my journey.
Account grandson.
And I remember when I said
I'm here for the car. And she goes, Oh, I'll mention it. She said, Oh, you know, you know, Cassie was on TV. And you know, there was this child who was talking about and so
she was I sponsored a couple of children, Michelle,
just a couple of children's, you know, no, no.
Well, then I was watching this channel. And they were talking about this machine that was broken, and they tried to fix it, you know, so I've given to that. Oh, so So you decided you decided you taking the TV out out of her room
given to building programs you've given to some children, so
you have some money leftover isn't in the best position to say, you know, we need 100% of your account, and psutka This is the best chapter in the world, there are many good causes, you need to be
equal to. But chatra is definitely a worthy cause. I think maybe even like when when I speak to some of our high net worth donors, I will say, you know, split your donation.
Also, then your if you are passionate about like immediate action, then you split your donation or give 20% to something that's gonna have direct impact today, tomorrow, give for the Ramadan food packs, give to, you know, starving children immediately, that will get something about emergency situation. And then, you know, a large chunk aside for the long term development, so you're not going to have to be in that situation again. So there's no Jimmy, Jimmy and Jimmy. And that's beautiful. That's beautiful, because we are brothers, we are brothers. And it's nice to hear that from you. Because this is also my advice to the sector, that we should complement each other, we
shouldn't compete with each other, we all are trying to please the same Lord upon the mandates of the same messenger. And we all trying to compete for the same paradise and or to get into the same paradise or feel those. And it shouldn't be that we do what we do at the expense of somebody else. But rather, we grow and we help other people grow. And that's a beautiful, beautiful mandate to have, especially since look, you know, this whole idea of feeding and I always say this, to those in the sector, that this whole idea of feeding it's Allah who feeds in Allah who are reserved or Quwata limited, right? It's Allah subhanho wa taala, who is ultimately the sustainer. He is the sustainer.
It's not about you know, you and how hard you raise, of course, take the means, right? And even yourself. You've contacted me sometimes. I remember vividly you contacted me once it's a chair, there's a bunch of schools that they've asked the charter to take over and I said what are you taking over? And he said, well, we need to do the assessment and we need to, you know, share what we will be managed and I said brother Allah feeds you remember that I said is Allah Who
feeds is Allah who feeds take it, and Allah will feed them through you. That's what you're doing. Take the means it's Allah who will send will fill their bellies through you So alhamdulillah you know, when you in the feeding game? It's easy. What can I say? easier? It's easier because you have Allah who is or Rezac is Allah honey is Hamid is the perpetual Sustainer is the praised one, he's, he's perpetually rich, and able subhanho wa taala. And, you know, sustenance is in his hands, what we meant to eat, we will eat the question is how we go about receiving,
you know, that sustenance and I think you know, the whole mechanism that you're using whereby Subhanallah look how Allah is you want to feed a chat, right in school, but through it Subhanallah other people are being fed, the farmers being fed entreprenuer is being fed, the place is becoming incentivized. So other people are getting jobs, are they being fed as well? This if this doesn't teach us Subhan Allah, how Allah feeds, what will
this I mean, one of the things we've done again this year, is like, and this is why I will say like, especially for charities that claim to be faith driven charities. And if we talk about religion, we talk about how we take his name, when we're doing our marketing, you know, in Ramadan, every charity, whether they claim to be faith driven or not, they have the same eyes of the Quran about, you know, the righteousness of those people that feed for this, for Allah sake alone, and they don't want to what do we have, we use the same, you know, we take Allah's Name, and we use it for marketing campaigns. But at the same time, we should be looking at, like, I always have this
conversation with our our team, about every action should be pleasing to Allah. So that whole journey needs to be pleasing to Allah. So right from the time where specking the campaign out the conversation should involve What does Allah want? What is the process? And and what Jimmy have been know, have you got any examples of things that we can follow, and then the campaign should be doing that, and it shouldn't stop at the time when, you know, the donation has been received, the way you go about delivering the age should be in a way that, you know, the process single has shown us the way that Allah smart Allah we think would be would be pleased, like, you know, I show me to have
this conversation a lot about these photographs, where people are sat on, you know, in the middle of the desert, and it's a blazing heat, and they've got this 40 Turn food park next to them, mashallah, we've done our job of providing the food, but we dehumanize these people, and we've and you always look at this, was this ever something that the process alone would have done? Is it too much from the marketing perspective and the fundraising perspective of those, all those teams within our organization, and they got a grip on the overall organization, you know, even if it was programs driven, you know, I will say that this is like, like an Asian wedding, sometimes, you know, the
cameraman is, you know, he says, come in, and you stop, let's stop allowing you to move forward and not look left now look like and if the customer
and everybody's coming out just to the company, the wedding is gone, everything is around the company. And, and some of our organizations have become the same check. Like everything is driven by the quality of the photograph, the quality of the camera, the quality of whatever's happened behind the scenes.
Nobody knows what's really going on. And we did this same thing. Last year, where I remember we launched our campaign and I just sat back and I just stopped looking at, like, what childhood I was putting up. And I thought, you know, this,
I don't think this is the right way to do things. Like we were sharing pictures and videos or, you know, children in Afghanistan and children, Ethiopian, you know, the, it's heartbreaking, yeah, no doubt, but we were just part of the same emotional mix of, you know, let me let me share with you, you know, how bad this person in our OMA is and how, you know, defeat his his whole life is and now you have an opportunity to help and I always thought to myself, you know, we always a community that you know, we hit that stuff and we always rose out of that we always say look, look at the good qualities that are coming and we always now it seems like you know, even within the chart and we're
competing for you know, I've got this video on his channel saying that, you know, lost my father and I don't have any food to eat and he's crying mashallah isn't very popular and this child in you, we won't use this one because it's money
we will use because it's a lot of stock. And you when you were talking to shake about Allah feeds, like the one who is using you, it's like, if you're sincere in, you know, doing things in a way that the person prescribing shoulders and the way that Allah has, you know, has guided us in a lot of decision making becomes easy like this year, we said a lot we're not you know, same story shake is which lens you put on, you know, this was a discussion we were having, like, we have this child in Afghanistan, he's cleaning his shoes are these cleaning people
On the streets of Cabo, he's, he's eating just a biscuit during the day, he goes to school, at home, he's got his father's not there. He's looking after his mom and his younger sister,
one of the house and we obviously depicted this person in a very, you know, almost not shallow, but you know, it's, like, so hard, I look at this child, and, and I just sat back and I thought, you know, take a different view of this, yes, it's the same, but this child is so brave. You know, he knows about responsibility. And if you actually look at look, he is he hasn't let go of his education. Because he wants to go do that. He's looking after his mom. He's looking after his sister.
And we should be portraying him as a hero. We should talk about an example to our children, not as somebody we should say, Oh, look at him. This is a good point. That's a good point. Because you're absolutely right, right. And, obviously, I've grown up in Africa, been to the Middle East, and we were talking, spent over a decade in these places, it's not just visits in and out.
It's, you know, you see Western Augs come in, and try and depict people in a region based on their standards, not looking not looking at the reality of their standard that this person in his capacity, he's a very comfortable person, but you are depicted as someone impoverished and in need, and sometimes sometimes the zeal to be charitable, we sort of trot people at the knees, I don't mean to be to sound controversial. But what I mean is, from an Islamic perspective, we should always set people up for success, not for failure, right? So even in this sense, if we're going to our charity should be smart charity, that our charity should set people up, not set them to fail, whereby
they're doing something, when we make them, we lift their standards upon a process of dependency, and then when the charity is out of the equation, we leave them to fall, or we've left them to fall. Now, we could say that No, it was it's a circumstance beyond our control. Okay, but why did you create a situation that never needed to be created in the first place, it's also about understanding, really, at the base level, what constitutes a want what constitutes a need, what constitutes a necessity, on the ground, where you at? Where you operating? Okay. And there will be 1000s of those same children that were talking about what polishing shoes or day jobs, and then they
go to, you know, the, the providing for the entire families and whatever, it's just, it's just a lens by which we're looking at them, we can we can make the story go whichever way we can, through the video into the editing of the video, or through the storyline is on track, you know, we can make it sound like you know, to have a child about to die, and if you don't help him today, isn't over or we can depict him as a hero, because mashallah, he's not giving up on his education, he's not giving up on his family is still looking after them, you know, he's sacrificing himself to a certain degree to look after his family. And this was all about perception. So, like, even for us now, you know,
I'm saying this, you know, as, you know, difficulties were amongst those charities, we were doing exactly the same, like, we made a conscious decision since last year to say, actually, we're going to stop doing that now. So a lot of the videos that you'll see from chakra this year, the pig, he rose, from the love of life, all power to you, Allah, all power to you, and just like a lot here for, for being candid, for being candid and saying it as it is. And, you know, we've had those discussions about what if we lose the funding, because some videos instrumental in bringing in the donations and what will happen here, you have the same discretion that Allah beats, and if you can
see the sincerity, and if we, if we actually sincere,
the results won't matter. You know, they're the same. If not, Inshallah, they will, they will increase like, you know, we, we did this, like real example of the School of Medicine in Pakistan. And there was this young girl that was a really small 1213 year old girl. And, you know, I was still with a representative of our Pakistan team. And we were both listening to the same story. He was about to cry. And I was overjoyed.
And it was like, you know, how we both been the same, because his mindset was already fixed on this is a poor person. And this is a wonderful story, and they've gotten to fly. You know, she was, she was at school. Her mother doesn't speak the local language. They're refugees. They're Afghan refugees. So she has to go out and do all the buying like she's 12 year old but she goes out shopping for the family to buy things for the money. Mom doesn't know her mom's amongst those clothes. She helps with the with the stuff and she had like pricks of needles on a on a thumb because she's not as good as a woman. She picked herself. And you know, he was kind of just like
such a bozo. And I was like, oh, I should let you help your family and it is really good and you're still coming to school and you're doing so
Well,
two very different perspectives. And I thought, you know, realistically, you know, we as charity leaders, you have so much responsibility on how the OMA feels about what is happening in the world. And if we're always focused on the deaths, the destruction, the, you know, the humiliation of our brothers and sisters around the world, and that's all we will find, you know, and that, we will find that almost depressed and is us downtrodden. Like, I don't know if you saw politics going on about this point. But there was, there was a really, really nice set of photographs that came out after the struggle of the Palestinian people, post Ramadan last year, and it was just people that were
getting arrested, but they were smiling.
It was every time that somebody was getting it, and they have like this collection or like 12 or 15 photographs. And they were smiling. And usually we're used to seeing the Palestinian people and they're crying. And here it was, like, some of these, you know, the heroes, you know, the Koreans, the people that are standing, people feel that they're representing and they're smiling through that whole process.
Oliver
Allah, he suggests mashallah, US unlike chef, so just now mashallah the vertical line you spoke it you you said it as it is now you said it as it is just like a locker, because it's absolutely true at the end of the day, you know, we and this is my my message the charity sector, you have to ask yourself, you know, are you doing what you do for the sake of Allah and His Rasul to benefit Allah, you know, meaning.
Many people say, We're doing this for the sake of, quote unquote, the dour we're doing this for for the sake of pleasing God Almighty.
But is it a case of doing pleasing God Almighty, for the sake of me and my project? There's a difference between doing this for the sake of Dow and Dow for the sake of this, that sometimes we, we, we sort of, we have this cognitive dissonance, it's a type of
mentals compartmentalization that we placed ourselves into justify what we do. Right, so. But you know, when push comes to shove, without realizing, and I don't want to doubt anybody's intentions, but sometimes when push comes to shove, you sort of find it's a circumstance whereby Subhan, Allah Subhan Allah, it's the dour being used, it's the please Allah is also being used for the gain of whatever ambition we have the vision we have this desire to achieve, sometimes that's what it's about. Right? And this is where we sidetrack it's important to, to have that the ability to recalibrate ourselves, you know, like Allah gives us sort of two covers the weekly recalibration
process, read it weekly, because the week's going to shift to you. And this is going to recalibrate the messaging, especially in the 10, first 10 verses, and the last verse is really recalibrate, it's important that we have that so that we always on track recognizing that, you know, or being being upon what you just said, why do we do what we do. And this is something similar that I sent to a group of investors.
Last month in in a session in a closed session, they asked, you know, why is it important to invest from an Islamic perspective? And I said, it goes back to the beginning, and why do you invest in the first place, if you are created to worship Allah, then everything you do should be to earn his pleasure, and that makes it an act of worship, which means your investment should bring you closer to Allah shouldn't take you further away, your investment journey should bring about closest to the Sun of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam as well, because that's going to bring you closer to Allah if you're going to turn over a profit of 50,000 pounds, 100,000 pounds, but in the process of
doing so, your Salah became rushed, your recitation of the Quran became reduced. Any your your direct acts of worship became affected in your pursuance of this turnover, then? Is that an investment ready? Or is that a different form of inflation? Same thing we say in the charity sector sector as well, that as you go about this whole process? Is it bringing you closer to Allah bring you closer to the values of the Sharia and bring you closer to the Sunnah of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam or not, when you if you if the charity moves from half a million to a million, a million to 1.5 1.5 to two, are we also experiencing 500,000 pounds of risk giving, you know, an
arbitrary figure here worth of closeness to Allah subhanho At the end of the suit in terms of the mandate of the charity. And I guess that that lies with the CEO, right that lies with the CEO because he has to ensure that that culture transcends all the way to all the way to the other end of the organization. In the data. We don't say the bottom of the organization everybody's the top but we have an end and we have an end. So this is this. This is
The point this is the point such as I cannot hear any fault for what you said.
I'm conscious on time.
But this suggests So on that point, I will ask you if there's any closing
words that you want to share for the Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam.
Watching in I believe this is our brother, mashallah someone who's also beautiful brother part of the hour. Also well respected in building community, his brother Omar. Suleiman, Allah subhanaw taala bless him, I'm guessing from the US
meaning that his brother, almost anyone from the UK, but he's just like us. Yeah, we all love let him go ahead. rather sad yet.
Nothing more than shift and I remind myself, when I
was able to recruit new people, I
always start with
his slick verses of the Quran, the, you know, really, for me show the importance of feeling like nothing else. The specific verses that tie the feeling of the pole with,
with gender and gender. And I remember, like, you know, we have this volunteer meeting and Oh, sharing this.
This is where Allah subhanaw taala says that, have you seen the people that deny the recompense meet me that they will have this meeting with me, and it will help this, you know, it's um, and those are people that repel the often and the next few words, were the ones that really normally deal with the people that didn't urge the feeling of the poor. And all the time we're looking at this and you know, we're looking at the charitable, or charities, we're looking at simply just making a transaction we're looking at, you know, I'm here, now I've got X amount of pounds, and I will donate them or X amount of dollars, I'll donate them and that's it, my engagement with the charity is over.
And what law doesn't allow you to get free from is the fact that the people to feed before
another that's why every Ramadan, we have this into six, five, and we do the same collection, it's like, it's so people, like me shake, like, you know, we maybe we don't have a lot to give finance, you know, we haven't had that blessing or not, select a million charities and give every night whatever. But Allah has given us a route that, you know, you're able to urge other people to pick up on I share this, usually with my team, because they're essentially doing the same thing every day. They come in the making a marketing plan, or a fundraising plan of doing the accounts or writing an email. All that is what urging the people to feed the phone we're not we're not doing ourselves,
we're not physically going out and doing it. For the people.
Listening nobody else's
mission. Yeah, how do they become part of it, they set aside those who are watching now those who will watch
I know it's pretty late.
Or pretty early in the east. So we will have to do we are depending where you are, we will have people viewing the so. So you mentioned Team 365. And you mentioned that it's a program to help people feed others they might not have the money to donate themselves but they become a means for those who have money.
Donate is beautiful, because remember, at the time of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam when the Sahaba went to the prophets or a group of them went to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and said they have to do to reboot that the the financially capable once I've taken all the rewards that the prophets of Allah it was asked in what capacity in what sense and they said that well you make the call, you know to donate and mashallah they are there in those courses, feeding and helping financially. And we don't have the we don't have the ability to do the sadaqa that they doing. So the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said you say subhanallah, hamdulillah Allah, Allah, Allah,
Allah Hawker also be sadaqa. So they were pleased, they went ahead, they went away and they can they did this, but then the rich people or those with with with financial ability, financial standing in material ability, they caught on to the VVb lesson and they were giving the sadaqa and they were also doing the Rika. So then they came back to the Prophet SAW Allah Allah Allah He was element and said this The Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said Delica for bIllahi min ash that is a blessing from Allah, that Allah subhanho wa Taala gives to him He wills right. So mashallah, in this particular
you know, 365 project whenever I see it, I always think about this, that this is a means also of those who don't have the ability to do the vicar. Right. But then when they see those with the ability doing the liquor, they become a means for them to donate. So that Al Hamdulillah they all can now you know, worship Allah subhana wa Tada the same way. This is one of the beautiful
religion of Islam Adel and in the same area as the prophets of
Allahu Allahu wa sallam said that the one who is who is a means of good taking place, even though they weren't the ones doing it physically, but because they were a means for it, then they get the same rewards as the one who did it without, without any ones he was being depleted, meaning the one who did it so like Allah takes half of his rewards and gives it to this person, Allah He wants this person in full and Allah He was the person who inspired him as well. Oh her in full Subhanallah This is from the blessings of Allah subhanahu Ettan. And I guess this is what it's about. It's about having good hope in Allah about having good thoughts about Allah subhanho wa Taala and about living
a legacy, food life. This is what it's about Brothers and Sisters in Islam, you know,
as Allah says about the Tsar, we with the ruler, Allah and fusi him when O'Connor became Kasasa Subhan Allah with regards to the unsought Subhan Allah, Allah subhanho wa Taala praises them because it wasn't a case of them giving what was excess to the requirement they actually gave what they needed, and were desperate for themselves like we have in
the in the story behind the revelation of this verse or the story that is attached to the revelation of this verse as Mr. Macabre he says he reports he says her death Hannah abou crepe, called her death Anna
in Alphaville and V.
and B has him in and Bihari Ravi Allah Juan. Right so this is the Imam of Tibet. He says that Abu Karim told us that April Fool's Day we told him and he got the narration from his father and his father from a boy has him and has encouraged from Abu Hurayrah hubzilla home and this narration is about Abu Talhah Subhan Allah when a person came to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and said I'm hungry. He came into Medina, he comes to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, he says I'm hungry, and I have, you know, no food to
you know, to save my hunger and no drink to quench my thirst and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam sends His servant to his wife's house and to to his wife's house to ask for food. And she sends a message back to say we don't have food. So then the message goes to the next house, the same. The next wife, the second wife sends
the next wife sends the same response, sends it to the third wife and the fourth wife until the messenger visits all the wives of the Prophet salAllahu alayhi wasallam all the homes and the same response comes back and then the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam tells the Sahaba and says is who's going to look after this guest and Bhutan, he gets up knowing that his situation is also die at home and he takes this guest home. And when he gets home, he tells his wife that this is the guest of the messenger sallallahu alayhi wasallam, who are brought home, he will be our guest and we will feed him how you know what food do we have. And she says we only have enough a little bit for
me for you and the children. So he says, Ravi Allah Juan, he says, switch off the lights, prepare the food, put the kids to sleep, and we will serve the guest and we will pretend like we eating we will do the actions that gives him the impression that we eating until he partakes of the meal Subhanallah and then a Buddha comes to the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam the next day Subhan Allah and the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam engages a pupil Hydros and that a Buddha had to say what happened, then look for a prophet of Allah to kill off your guest we know this was the situation this is what we did nothing of the sort of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam informs
him and says Allah subhanho wa Taala was amazed by what you and your wife did last night. Subhan Allah subhana wa so this is what it's about Brothers and Sisters in Islam, right? It's about being selfless. And this is where the legacy lies. It's not about me, myself, and I, it's not about me and my kids and they education. Also look down the road you want your kids to have mashallah you know, that the extra tuition for your child because of you know, these exams that they need to pass, and that's very good, but also think about the neighbor, a few houses down who can't afford it, and be a means for them. This is where the Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wasallam is the solution for humanity,
the collective carriers of his legacy salAllahu alayhi wasallam not just his legacy, but the legacy of his brother and from the MBR in basato sulla. But this is it for today, Brothers and Sisters in Islam Hamdulillah we had much we discussed much we will enter for charity, right, where they came from, where they are, where they want to go, and hamdulillah and also your questions about Zika and how they handled the current the discussion about Zika. And so the current even some crypto was was was thrown into the mix and this whole idea also about charity, ethics and the importance of endowments. And also this, you know this this mandate of collaboration between the donors, and the
charities to sort of create a shift in paradigms to help clean up the space even more. And Brothers and Sisters in Islam. I pray this was a discussion that brought value to you and your thoughts, this Ramadan of where you are going to place your union
charity, as Brother suggested was the CEO of charity, right? It's not a case whereby you have to put all your money in charity, charity, right? But do do your homework, do carry out your your diligence, at the end of the day, we must worship Allah subhanho wa Taala to the best of our abilities. And this means that we also, you know, distribute our soccer with the necessary diligence. Charity right is available to answer your questions. They also have a team 365 program, that will be a means for those who can't donate to become a means for other people to donate so that they can it can they can get the rewards of having donated and more at hamdulillah during the month
of Ramadan. So please do check that out on the website. Somebody was asking about the suggestion about a donation link. How do people go about donating? Is the link handy or should they visit the charity? Right website and they'll find the information there. If they're just looking to do that on the website and show along with your showing and
soon inshallah Kena axon will be live
and want to participate with us. Inshallah, so he is also waiting to donate for two days, but the website is there for protecting. And also during the month of March there's mashallah, there's three lecture programs taking place at three venues for charity. I will be one of the speakers at these events yonder. Just tell us about this brother sujet. Yes, we have three lectures from the one in Bradford at the university. This is on the 18th of March on the 19th were in East London.
And on the 20th were in South, Wimbledon humbler? Those details can be found on the church website. Charts, right. Org. UK forward slash Ramadan ready. Okay, Jeremy cevin. So this is a program dedicated towards preparing people for Ramadan. And this is nice, this is nice. It's about also educating people, but the charity recognizes the importance of educating people. Does that come along? Okay, and everyone, just like the Lucha brothers ajet Mila subhanho wa Taala except for us all. I love you all for the sake of Allah and shall I look forward to seeing you all soon in similar programs and again, don't keep for the subject comfortable. Visit the website, get in touch with
him. If there's any questions we missed, please do quiz him. That is why he is there. He is a servant of Allah in a big role and he knows he has to answer to Allah subhanahu Flf every second in that role. He is a quote unquote public servant so don't feel shy to contact him and seek the necessary clarifications you need also with him is a capable team and they are also ever ready to help us up now hidden until next time, salaam alaikum.