Question 42:  Assalamualaikum

Alhamdulillah thank you for the Q&A groups.

I have two questions about zakat

  1. Is it allowed to pay the zakaat to brother who has debt so he can pay?
  2. Is it allowed to pay zakaat to dawaa organisation and used to pay the operational cost?

Jazakallahu khair

 

Answer: Walaikumussalam Brother,

May Allah accept this effort on this platform and give barakah and guidance, ameen!

 

  1. Not everone who has a debt deserves Zakat. If someone has a present concept of a home loan “debt”, that does not deserve receiving other people’s Zakat as the person has a house as a mortgage/assurance for what they owe.

 

Also if a person has some or lot of debt they owe to someome else but they have the financial ability to repay that debt, then they cannot receive zakat of others given to them!

But zakat can be given to a person if a person has an unbearably high amount of debt that is a “back breaking” debt that they realistically cannot repay it in a long time given their latest financial circumstances, then such a person can receive zakat payments but only receive that much which will remove the backbreaking degree of the debt.

So to sum up part one of the question, zakat cannot be given to just any person in debt, rather only to those whose financial lives are crippled due to debt then Zakat to relieve it is permissible.

  1. Ordinarily Zakat cannot be given to a dawah organisation for its usuage. Rather zakat can only be given to the eight categories of people mentioned in Surah 9 verse 60.

However, an exception to this was mentioned by some leading scholars that zakat can be given to dawaa organizations in Kafir nations as Zakat if and only if that organisation is one that directly helps people in need of Islamic life worship/guidance promoting and facilitating Taqwa because that is the purposebof category seven among eight categories of zakat in Quran 9:60.