Sermon Of
Imam A. M. Khattab
Jan.11, 1932---Sept.15, 2001
Imam and Director
Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, Ohio
1982-1998

Zakat In The 21^ST Century

“Can we give our zakat to the mosque or not?” a very controversial question has been raised and debated by lots of people. There was a fatwa issued by Shaikh Binbaaz and the ulama of Saudi Arabia related to that subject and, according to that fatwa, zakat cannot be paid to mosques. When we were building this Islamic Center we visited Saudi Arabia for fund-raising. We requested the people to give us part of their zakat but they refused citing the fatwa which was issued there. They said zakat is to be given to the poor.

If you ask the ulama of Al-Azhar the same question, they will tell you that zakat can be paid to a mosque. Why? Because the Qur’an mentions eight areas deserving of zakat payments: 1) the poor. 2) Masaakeen (those that are poorer than the poor). 3) Those who collect the zakat. 4) Those who newly converted to Islam. 5) The people who are in debt and who will be enslaved if they cannot pay their debt. At that time the lender would take the debtor and sell him in a market to recover his money. That is how slavery existed. So Islam allowed zakat to be paid to such people to pay their debt off so they would not be enslaved. 6) Fī Sabīlillah (in the cause of God). 7) As-saa’leen (those who ask for it out of need). 8) The wayfarer – the one who was traveling and lost his money and he needs just to reach his area of residence.

If we analyze these eight categories of recipients of zakat none of them are applicable nowadays especially in this society except one and that is Fī Sabīlillah – in the cause of God. A mosque is built in the cause of God, the children are educated in the mosque in the cause of God, the books are distributed in the cause of God, the da‘wa of Islam is spreading in the cause of God, everything here in this mosque is in the cause of God. As a result, the ulama of Al-Azhar say yes, mosques are Fī Sabīlillah and the zakat paid to mosques is not in violation of the purposes for which it has been instituted. So these are the two schools of thought in this respect. While the ulama of Al-Azhar have not changed their minds or their verdict, the ulama in Saudi Arabia have recently modified their fatwa a little bit.

Lately, they said, yes, you could pay zakat to a mosque if that mosque has a mortgage which has to be paid off, but, zakat cannot be collected to build a mosque. That, then, is a loophole. [Imam’s voice is full of mischief] So you play a trick! Get a mortgage from the National City Bank, build your mosque and say, okay, now help us pay off the mortgage. That is why I have told you so many times before: “People the only Book which is unquestionable is this [holding up the Qur’an], every other book is questionable. You have to utilize your head”.

The last two or three issues of the Monitor [the Islamic Center magazine] have not listed the roster of zakat payments following the decision by the publication committee, and, as a result, the money stopped flowing in. Zakat is a very thorny topic and what has necessitated the discussion of the topic at this time is the precipitous drop in zakat payments following the discontinuation of publicizing such payments in the Monitor.

Zakat is a very difficult topic. If you ask any ‘alim about what I am going to say today, he will reply “nothing of this is in Islam!” And the difference is that he and others like him are using the books and I am using my brain. You will not find too many people agreeing with what I am going to say. This will also be the start of a campaign to collect $40,000 before the end of this year [1997]. When outsiders come to this mosque they ask me: ‘Imam, who is financing the operation of that very large mosque?’ My reply to them: ‘The Toledo women on welfare and on pension are the people whose contributions are running that mosque’. They do not believe it. They think that we have a whole country behind us to back up our financial operations! I don’t deny that I have ever contacted anyone whose response was not favorable. I received seven or eight checks during this week alone. So it looks to me like we have to just give it a little push only.

There is no Muslim community in America which has applied the law of zakat except this one. I have attended many fund-raising dinners where the people were real estate agents, physicians, teachers, lawyers, and all the money collected at the end would be, at most, four thousand dollars. Then I would step up to the microphone and say: ‘People, if that fund-raising dinner were in Toledo, the amount of $4000 would have been paid by a woman on welfare’. Why? Because we have a system and people come and deliver their checks. We don’t ask them. It is an obligation, it is not a donation.

When I first came to this Center the word zakat was not in the vocabulary here. People would come and give $100 to the mosque and write on it “donation” and it obligated us to thank them for donating $100. No. Zakat is an obligation and you don’t deserve any thanks for that because prayer and zakat are two of the pillars of Islam and you want to be thanked for zakat while you do not expect the same for the prayer. “Donation” means it is optional. I don’t accept that word. Instead, “obligation” should be written in the memo line of the check because it is Fard. You are not giving something voluntarily; you are giving it in spite of your will because God imposed it upon you. You pay it because this is not your portion, it is the share of God, and, thank God, we have gotten used to this. The first year it was very hard but now we have gotten accustomed to it, and the checks are coming in by mail like taxpayers sending their taxes to the IRS. I know that everyone of us is trying to cheat the IRS and to look for loopholes to reduce, as much as possible, tax to the IRS, but, with our IRS and I mean by IRS here “Islamic Revenue Service” you cannot cheat and on whom would you cheat? The Police does not sleep; the Police is watching and observing you every minute. You cannot lie, you cannot cheat on Him. You are accountable for everything you do.

The question that sometimes perplexes us, and I have had many people telling me: “But why do you have to publish the names of the people in the Monitor?” “But even if you do publish the names in the Monitor, why quote the dollar figure?” I replied: ‘Because I know the psychology of our people.’ What is the psychology of our people? They like to show off. They are building houses in Lebanon although they are living in America. Just to show off. People there will say: “Oh, Mr. Khattab went to America for four years and came back and built a high-rise apartment. Something big! He is successful there in the United States; he got all the money of George Bush!”

And they forget that George Bush took it from King Fahd! [Burst of laughter]

We print the zakat roster with the names and figures in the Monitor on the premise that it encourages others. To those who quote the hadith of the Prophet “The man who pays in the cause of God to the extent that his left hand does not know what his right hand paid, will be under the shade of God on the Day of Judgment” I say okay, but, today, I will overlook this hadith, especially concerning the Toledo community, and I will go by something bigger instead – the Qur’an – which is above the hadith. The Qur’an says: “Those who spend their wealth day and night in secret and in open have their reward from God, no fear on them and they will never grieve So which of these two directives should we go with? The hadith or the Qur’an? Or should we combine the two? Or we look at our sickness [psychology] and give it the medicine which it deserves?

At the time when the Prophet said that hadith, the people were truly believers so they did not care if their names were mentioned or not but, nowadays, if I don't publish these things and I die tomorrow someone will come along and say: “I gave Khattab $1000 one day, I don’t know where he took it. Maybe he purchased another house in Three Meadows”. So these are some of the reasons for publicizing the names: for the sake of keeping the accounting books in order, for psychological reasons, for encouraging those who don’t pay, and, besides, we are not in violation of the Qur’an. The Qur’an says: ‘Spend in secret and in open.’ It didn’t say to us spend in secret only. So I intended just to clarify these things because sometimes, we, as Muslims, argue about very trifling things, that’s how we spend our time, and that’s how we waste our efforts, and that’s how we establish antagonism among ourselves over trifles while leaving the essence of the religion. We don’t have priorities.

I would like to talk about zakat today and what it means as an obligation in the 21st century. You will not find the words I am saying today in any book. Lots of people will say “Khattab is inventing new Islam” but today I was reading the Islamic Horizon magazine, published by the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] and something struck me. You know what it was? They published the Islamic calendar for the entire year corresponding to 1998 along with the Islamic holidays in it. This means that we are 17 years ahead of them because we have been following this practice in this mosque since 1981. It is an admission to say, yes, people of Toledo, you were right and we were wrong. So we would like to maintain a lead in some other areas as well.

What is zakat in Islam? You have been given some hand outs today. These hand outs are from books some of which were written 6, 7, 8, 10 hundred years ago and while Islam is applicable in every time and every place, however, what was written 1000 years ago about zakat may not be applicable today. Today we are going to use our brain to visualize and think out the concept of zakat for this century.

The Qur’an mentions the word zakat in 82 verses and in each and every instance combined it with the word prayer: “aqeemus-salah wa aatuz-zakah” (establish prayer and give zakat). Eighty two verses. But it does not go into the details. The details about zakat came through the fuqahaa’ or the Muslim scholars and based upon some of the ahadith. And the ahadith – some were applicable at a certain time but are not applicable today.

What is zakat? The ulama of Islam have circled around it because some people saw the Prophet paying something, others heard him say something and so on and, as a result, we have some differences until now regarding the answer to that question. For example… [Imam assumes a low and serious tone] They call me Sunni although I tried to be Shia one time but I found that the Shia are required to give 20% of their wealth as zakat. So I decided – no, Sunni is better! [Roaring laughter]. In the Shia madhab Imam Ja'far Sadiq says: “And know that whatever booty you acquire in war, one-fifth thereof belongs to God and the Apostle, and the near of kin, and the orphans, and the wayfarer” [8:41]. One fifth is 20%. That’s how they interpreted this Qur’anic verse. And, as a result, the zakat in the Shi’i madhab is 20%. And I wish all of you were Shia! [Loud laughter]. Then we can pay off that loan!

The Sunni – they utilized their heads. Let me cite for you Imam Abu Haneefa’s views which I studied in school. When it comes to crops, Imam Abu Haneefa said that if you have a field of wheat you may be obligated to pay 10% or 5% or 2 ½%. When asked how these situations obtained, he said: If the fields and crops are watered by rain and you did not make any effort in irrigating the crops, you have to pay 10%. But if you utilized a tractor to divert water from a river and watered the plants then you pay five percent. If there is no water at all and you have to dig a well or buy water then you pay 2 ½%. That’s how Imam Abu Haneefa worked it out. He utilized his brain and at the end he said: “Wa Allahu a‘lam” (and God knows the right thing). It means he, the guide, did not say: “You have to do it this way”. But nowadays, we have “ulama” who are originally engineers and physicians and business people, who say ‘if your wife does not wear a hijab, divorce her’. Fatwa! ‘If your husband does not pray divorce him’. Wallahi if we abide by these fatwas we’ll have lots of business! We have a whole city divorced already in Canada. So these kinds of fatwas are coming like showers. And the Qur’an lays down a principle, which will solve all these problems. Imam quotes 31:33: ‘No father will be of benefit for his son and no son will be of benefit for his father, everyone is responsible for himself.’ Therefore, if you, woman, are praying and your husband is not praying it is not your responsibility. Your role is to advise and say to him: “Ya rajjal establish the prayer!” If the woman has no hijab then your role, man, is not to hit her on her head or threaten her with divorce. Remind her that modesty is an Islamic requirement and it would be very nice if she observed it. If she heeds the advice, it is her business. If she doesn’t do it, it is her business. You are not responsible for her. The Prophet said: ‘Religion is an advice’. So that is the simplicity of Islam. Where ever we are, we, the Muslims, don’t know how to disagree with one another. God forgive Murshid Ayan, when he was asked: “When will you be scared of the Arabs?” He said: “When they stand up in line waiting in the bus stop and everyone will take his turn then we’ll know that we are in trouble Is that going to happen in the near future? The minute we learn how to differ in opinion with each other, but we respect each other, we are going to be Muslims. But Khattab believes that if you don’t follow his way and what he is saying then you are his enemy. That is the wrong attitude. We have to learn how to argue. The Qur’an put it for us: “Argue with them in a good manner” – that is the method of da‘wa for Islam as depicted in the Qur'an.

When the fuqahaa’ [Islamic scholars] talk about zakat, they talk about it in terms of produce such as barley, wheat, dates and raisins. Wealth was measured in agricultural produce. These are the four crops which they talk about on which zakat is payable. But nowadays we have more than that: we have oranges, pomegranates, mangoes, vegetables of all kinds and people are earning their livelihoods upon trade and farming in these fields. So if we go by the sayings of the olden times it means that those people who are selling vegetables in our markets today are exempt from paying zakat.

If you ask any of the ulama of Islam about zakat, he will say that zakat is to be given on one’s savings. You have to have money in the bank and the amount remaining after one year is the amount on which zakat is payable. I don’t agree with that. True, it is written in the books, and that is what I studied in Al Azhar also but I don’t believe in it. Why? These books were written 1000 years ago. We, the Muslims, utilized our brains for 500 years after the Prophet and we were thinking. Consequently we find ulama like Imam Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanbali, and Ja'fari, and others like them, arguing with each other and debating issues in Islam, in the Qur’an, in the hadith and the result of their debates and efforts is what is known as Fiqh: the Fiqh of Imam Abu Haneefa, the Fiqh of Imam Shafi'i, the Fiqh of Imam Ahmad ibn Malik, the Fiqh of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Fiqh of Imam Ja'far as-Sadiq and the Fiqh of others less well known and everyone has his own views because those people utilized their brains. When they died the Muslim brain died with them. We stopped! We stopped using our brains! When you ask any one a question he says to you: “Imam Abu Haneefa says so and so, Imam Shafi'i said so and so”. We never say nowadays “Imam” Amjad Hussain said so-and-so! We don’t say that! Because Amjad Hussain does not use his brain! [Amjad Hussein is a surgeon in the audience and the president of the Center]. So the time has come for us to think.

Zakat-ur rikaaz. Ar rikaaz is everything which is mined from the earth like copper, gold, steel, oil and so forth. And don’t forget this, put two lines under it: The zakat on these is 20%. Everything which comes from the bottom of the earth its zakat is 20% in every madhab and in every school of thought.

Zakat on liquid money, gold and silver is 2.5 percent – that is the minimum. Therefore, 2 ½ % of the annual net income of the Muslims is to be paid for God as zakat. Zakat is not on savings as the ulama say. According to our situation in America nowadays, if I follow the guidelines in the old books of tafseers which state that zakat is payable on savings after a lapse of one year, then this means that zakat as a pillar of Islam is cancelled in the 20th-century. No more zakat! And when students in the school ask me what are the pillars of Islam I will say to them there are only four not five: saying Ashhadu Allah ilaha Illalah Wa Ashhadu anna Muhammad arRasoolallah, pray five times a day, fast Ramadan and go to Hajj. And zakat is forgiven! It is not a requirement! Why?

In the science of accounting nowadays there is something known as the balance sheet. Balance sheet means that you cite your assets, you cite your liabilities and you subtract one from the other and you will show either a gain or a loss. How does an employee such as a schoolteacher or an engineer figure into the context of this balance sheet? The guy is getting a check every month (liquid money). He or she spends it and when he finds a few dollars left in the bank at the end of the year, he will go and buy a Cadillac car and put himself in debt. Moreover, his balance sheet is in the red already because when he came to this country he purchased a house and he is paying mortgage every month. So when he adds his liabilities and his assets, he will be in the red. He has no money technically so he has no zakat to pay! Does this mean, then, that we stop paying zakat because it does not work in this century? It worked before when the Arabs were living in tents but it does not work now?

Today I buy my house for $200,000 and I pay a handsome mortgage every month and when my salary is increased, I sell the cheap house and I buy a house for half a million dollars. Technically from my birth to my death I am in debt. That means there is no zakat. Zakat on what? I have nothing! Even the house in which I am living is owned by the bank. My wife, when I married her, I borrowed the mahar from the bank so even my wife is not mine! [Loud laughter] I don’t own anything! On what do I pay zakat? Cancelled! But that will be tyranny – what we call in Arabic and in Urdu zulm. Why zulm? Because my father who is a farmer harvests the wheat or the corn and while it is still in the field he gives the poor people al-‘ushr (1/10 of the crops). Whether the harvested corn or wheat will be enough for our food for the rest of the year on not, we have to pay zakat from it in the field. And because I am getting a check every two weeks I do not have to pay zakat because my balance sheet is in the red; I am in debt, I have no savings! But my father is not only paying the zakat but three months before the end of the year he is buying wheat and buying corn to feed us. This, then, is a zulm in Islam.

Zakat is payable on gold, silver, crops, animals, liquid money and, I don’t know… we should add to that the available balance on a credit card account. Wouldn’t it be nice? You have a credit card and the available balance is $10,000. You should pay zakat on that amount! [Loud laughter] That is something new. Not everything that we know of today existed at the time of the Prophet so there is no fatwa on the credit card. Were there banks at the time of the Prophet? There were no banks either but nowadays we give fatwas and say if you deal with the bank it is haraam. Who told you this? There were no banks at all at that time. It means that we have to utilize the brains to deal with the new things.

What is the origin of zakat and what is it? Everything in our life has zakat. You know, fasting Ramadan is zakat because the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: ‘Everything has its zakat; the zakat on your body is to fast’. If you are sick you don’t pay that zakat i.e. you don’t fast because if you are sick the zakat of fasting is not imposed upon you, but when you are healthy again you pay that zakat. And there is another principle: Imam quotes 57:7: “Believe in God and His Messenger, and spend on others (anfiqu) out of that (mimma) of which He has made you trustees (ja'lakum mustakhlafeena fee …”). At the moment of the creation of man God said to the angels: “I am going to create a vicegerent on earth (to take care of it) The earth, as you know, is the source of all our provisions: we get from it every type of food, we get steel, we get manganese, copper, salt, platinum, gold, silver, we get from it everything we utilize in our life. And Man who was created to live on earth is supposed to be the vicegerent or the khalifa for all the riches to manage it. So we are managers of that wealth. That is our role. It is not ours. Because He says: “and spend on others out of that of which He has made you trustees” He did not say “of what you own”, because you don’t own anything. It means that the wealth which was given to us is not ours; we are just khalifas (vicegerents). God appointed us khalifas to see how we are going to spend that wealth – in the right way or in the wrong way – and we are accountable for that. So if you own gold, silver or liquid money up to $850 any surplus above that you have to pay its zakat. There is no one to observe you, there is no police to watch you, and you need no IRS to follow you. It should come out of your heart. This is not your money.

There are some people nowadays who claim that insurance is haraam. Imagine you kill someone by mistake with your car. There are some people who will simply say “O, it was the will of God”. But you killed a human being! You have to compensate the family of the dead person. How you will do that if the insurance is haraam? And what made it haraam? By the same token your medical insurance should be haraam too; you should just die because, according to that reasoning, it is the will of God that you are sick, you are fighting God by having insurance to pay for medical services necessary to restore your health. According to the reasoning of such people, when God wills that you be sick then even going to the doctor is wrong for the doctor is not the one who cures, God is the one who cures. But you have people with these mentalities until now. So in the same manner when it comes to zakat there are varieties of zakat and we have to utilize our brains in the context of our present time.

So when you ask someone for zakat nowadays and he says to you: “Oh, I am in trouble. Oh, I pay mortgage, and I pay for the utilities and I pay for the car…” Stop at the car. Why don’t you ride a donkey or a camel like the Prophet? The sunnah is to drive a camel. Don’t you follow the sunnah? [Imam laughs] Our brothers will say: let your beard grow – it’s the sunnah. But they don’t drive a camel; they are making payments on cars and cannot afford to pay zakat. What is the sunnah? The word sunnah, if you look into it in the dictionary means at-tariqa – the way (Imam states with emphasis). [At this point a very young child in the audience repeats after the Imam “the way”. A moment of surprised silence followed by joyous laughter in the audience. Imam talks rapidly in Arabic and says “like the parrot”. Burst of laughter in the audience].

Sunnah – things which the Prophet had done. So, in this respect, with regard to zakat, what should we do if we follow the sunnah? We have Tablighi Jama‘at people with long beards coming to the mosque from time to time but have you ever heard one of them talk about zakat. Never! They are concentrating on salah, salah, salah. No one talks about zakat. Always the concentration on salah. And many Muslims especially emphasize that performing the hajj will result in forgiveness of sins. Hajj is one pillar among the pillars of Islam equal to prayer, equal to fasting, equal to zakat giving. It is a duty of every Muslim who can afford it. If he will do it he performed a pillar, if he doesn’t do it he lost one of the pillars of Islam though he is able to do it. It is as simple as that but I have never heard anyone talking about paying zakat will forgive their sins. The most ignored pillar of the pillars of Islam is the alms-giving or the zakat – completely forgotten. No Muslim talks about it. Even those who talk about it sometimes, talk about it as if they are living in the seventh century after Christ not in the 20th-century while we have new institutions and new establishments which have to be considered when we are talking about that pillar. Gradually, from time to time, we hear people in our community asking if any group is going for hajj. So we started to talk about hajj a little bit. Before that we used to say, “Can we have a group to go to Hawaii? Or Florida?” But nowadays pilgrimage is being promoted a little bit so we say: let us go for hajj. Let us go for ‘umrah. I think the time has come for us to learn about zakat and how to calculate it.

I have a zakat check in the amount of $1376.75 cents. I say that person calculated. It happened. There are some people who calculate to the penny and there are some people who earn $50,000 a year and send $100 and say “Oh that is my zakat”. Now we have to learn differently. You know, in every community they talk about fund raising dinners. They make a banquet, invite speakers and they raise funds. And all the cheating you can imagine happens in these fund-raising dinners. Ask me about it because I have attended lots of them including some in Toledo. You know, in some places when they have fund raising dinners you find the women taking off their bracelets and earrings and necklaces and donating them to the mosque. And the people say: “Oh God, at least half a million was collected tonight”. And when you examine those things you find every piece is marked $2.00 from J.C. Penny. It is purchased for that specific day. Why? To fire up the enthusiasm of the people and encourage them to pay, or, for the women to shame the men. Another tactic… you know, some speakers are very intelligent: they say our goal tonight is quarter of a million dollars, who is going to pay the first $100,000.00? No one will raise his finger. Who is crazy to pay $100,000.00? There is no crazy person. So they say: O.K. it looks like the $100,000.00 is too much who is going to pay the first 50,000.00? So a man or a woman will raise his finger. Then the speaker will say “O God help him, O God take him to the seventh heaven” and so on. Then where is that $50,000.00? You’ll never see the money! It is what they call a pledge and the pledge is something on paper. Does anyone here remember that guy who went to our microphone when we dedicated this mosque and he pledged a hundred thousand dollars? We pursued him and at last we got just $5000. A pledge means nothing. So fund raising dinners and all that business are useless.

We follow the system of zakat here in this mosque. A lot of communities where I mentioned this are amazed at how we are able to do it. In this mosque we get, every year, between 350 and 400 thousand dollars in zakat. Have you ever seen us having fund raising dinners and saying “O God help him, O God take him to the seventh heaven?” We don’t do all that. The checks are coming by mail every day like showers. And the people are generous. That is something I have to admit in the community of Toledo. It does not happen anywhere else and I am proud of it.

We pay $36,000 a year in utilities. Thirty six thousand dollars! That is enough to spend on one mosque by itself. The reason you see this place is clean is because we pay two thousand dollars per month for the people who clean it. As a result, we challenge any one in North America who can say there is a cleaner mosque than this one. Every mosque you enter smells. I am sorry to say that but that is a fact although we always say “Cleanliness is a part of believing”. We say one thing and we do something else. That is what we call nifaaq – hypocrisy. So, now, if your savings balance is over $850 per year – not per month – I want 2 ½% of the amount over $850. If you paid part of it, pay the remainder! If you paid it in full, thank you. If you did not pay until now, pay it! If you don’t do any one of those three, I'll kill you! [Very loud laughter from the audience]. Thank you very much [Imam is laughing too].

In two weeks from now I am going to Halifax, N.S. where I have been invited for a fund-raising dinner. I am going to advise them to follow our pattern.

posted 2/26/2005