Friday Nasiha

Our Needy People

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) sent an envoy to a tribe \r\n that had converted to Islam, he asked the envoy to teach them \r\n the five pillars of Islam. Speaking \r\n about zakat, he told him to explain to them that it \r\n had to be deducted from the money of the rich among them and \r\n distributed to “their needy people” (‘ala \r\n fuqara’ihim). The scholars, in all \r\n the schools of law and through the ages have, thus, always insisted \r\n on the necessity of spending the zakat locally first, \r\n for the poor and the needy people of the place, the locality \r\n or the society within which it has been collected. It \r\n is only when the local needs have been satisfied, or in exceptional \r\n situations such as natural catastrophes or wars etc, that the \r\n spending of zakat abroad can be done.

Not only does the zakat shape the social conscience \r\n of the Muslim but it also directs him/her towards his/her immediate \r\n environment in order to build this conscience by facing up to \r\n the difficulties and dysfunctions of his/her society, its poor \r\n or/and marginalised people. Zakat, unlike the voluntary \r\n alms (sadaqa) is first intended for the Muslims and \r\n our faithfulness to its teaching demands of us to observe what \r\n is going on around us, within our nearest spiritual community. \r\n This \"priority to proximity” \r\n is fundamental: it imposes a requirement to know one’s \r\n society, to care about the state of the Muslims in one’s \r\n area, town and country.

We are very far from living up to this teaching today. In the \r\n majority of the Western societies, in the United States, in \r\n Canada, in Britain, in France as in Australia, one finds women \r\n and men who give zakat to charitable organisations \r\n in the Third World or to their countries of origin. They care \r\n very little about the situation of those who live near them \r\n and they are convinced they are doing right since those from \r\n “over there” are poorer than those from “around \r\n here”. The mistake consists \r\n in forgetting that the poor from around here have rights \r\n (haqun ma’lum) over the rich from around \r\n here. Nothing prevents the latter from \r\n sending voluntary alms (sadaqat) to the deprived people \r\n of the entire world or to their countries of origin but they \r\n have an established duty, from which they cannot escape, towards \r\n the needy people of their country of residence: once again it \r\n is, before God, the rights of “their poor people”. \r\n

One can but be sad, and sometimes disgusted, when observing \r\n how the Muslims care so little about the local realities: obsessed \r\n by the international scene and the situation of the Muslims \r\n “from over there”, they no longer see the reality \r\n of the education’s deficit, unemployment, social marginalisation, \r\n drugs, violence and prisons in their own society. \r\n Though the awareness of their brothers’ misfortune elsewhere \r\n is positive, per se, it has had the very negative consequence \r\n of making them very passive, neglectful and unaware of the appalling \r\n situation of brothers at their own doorsteps. This is a tragedy, \r\n an error and, in fact, a betrayal of the fundamental teaching \r\n of zakat.

The Muslim organisations have a great deal of responsibility \r\n in this failure since they have difficulty proposing programmes \r\n and priorities for the zakat’s collection and \r\n distribution at the local level, in the towns and the regions. \r\n A correct understanding of this dimension of zakat \r\n would shape the individual’s spiritual and his/her citizen’s \r\n conscience with which one understands that one has to be involved \r\n in one’s environment. This means one \r\n has to study it and to find the best, fairest and most coherent \r\n means to spend the purifying social tax in one’s own society, \r\n in Britain, France, the United States, Canada, Australia or \r\n elsewhere.

Source:
\r\n “One \r\n day, our poor people will ask” – Tariq Ramadan