Month: May 2023

 

Which Places of Worship Are we Allowed and Not Allowed to Visit?

In which places of worship are we allowed and not allowed to go to worship God? This is a very important question, because according to the Quran, people who stop themselves from the permissible places of worship are evil (2:114), but at the same time, people who visit the prohibited places of worship are transgressors and liars (9:107-109). So having a very detailed and clear answer to this question is of vital importance.

So, let’s find out from the Quran exactly which places of worship are permissible and which of them are prohibited. To understand this, first we need to understand how the places of worship are established. Places of worship are established through spending, by giving or dedicating the property to God. However, God only accepts the spending from those who:

1. Believe in God (9:54),
2. Believe in God’s messenger (9:54,107,108),
3. Do not observe Contact Prayers lazily (9:54),
4. Do not do the spending stingily (9:54),

Obviously, point 3 and 4 are automatically fulfilled when the spending is done for places of worship, because the very fact that a certain spending is done for a place of worship shows that those people were not stingy and not lazy. So, we may ignore these two points for the purposes of this study.

So, for a place of worship to be accepted by God, it must be established by people who

1. Believe in God (9:54),
2. Believe in God’s messenger (9:54,107,108),

Additionally, when establishing a place of worship, it should:

3. Not harm the believers (9:107-108),
4. Not divide the believers (9:107-108),
5. Not cause disbelief (9:107-108),
6. Not in an unsafe plot of land (9:109),
7. Be dedicated to God alone (72:18).

So, a place of worship was not accepted by God unless all of these seven criteria above were fulfilled when it was initially established (9:108, 2:127, 72:18). We are emphasizing, “when it was established”, because it does not matter whether the people who maintain it now are believers or not. They can not change the fact that it was accepted by God. Once a piece of land or property is dedicated to God, and God accepts it, it can not be rededicated to the idols, no matter how hard the idol worshipers may try. It’s like when a sheep is sacrificed to God. No one can bring the sheep back, and rededicate it to the idols. It’s impossible. And also once a sheep or a piece of property is dedicated to idols, it can never be rededicated to God. So, an initially prohibited place of worship can never become a permissible place of worship, and an initially permissible place of worship can never become a prohibited place of worship. So, the circumstance in which it was initially established is what matters (9:108), and at that moment they must have fulfilled all these seven criteria.

So, according to these seven criteria, all the religious buildings which are established by the Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, other Dharmic religions, Taoists, Confucianists, and other Eastern Religions, all the religious buildings established by them are prohibited for us to visit, because they do not fulfill criterion 2 at least. They do not believe in God’s messengers mentioned in the Quran. Also, the religious buildings established by the “Nation of Islam” in America, and the Bahai go against criterion 1, because they believe in human beings as God or as a Manifestation of God. Also, together with the Ahmadiyya, they go against criterion 2 and 4, by believing in false messengers. Also any religious building established on top of a grave does not fulfill criterion 7, because that piece of land was intended for the dead person, and you can not dedicate the same piece of land twice, by dedicating it to God also. God does not accept double dedications (6:136). So, all these religious buildings are prohibited.

Now, let’s look at the potentially permissible places of worship.

Let’s start with synagogues first. The ancestors of Jews who established the synagogues fulfilled all these seven criteria before Jesus came. After Jesus came, they reject him (4:156-157), and as a result they cause division in religion. So, they do not fulfill criterion 2 and 4 after Jesus. So, from year 0, none of the new synagogues which they established were accepted by God.

Now, let’s look at the churches. The ancestors of Christians who established the churches fulfilled all these criteria until the time when they rejected Prophet Muhammad (2:120), and as a result they caused religious division. So, they did not fulfill criterion 2 and 4 after Muhammad. So, from the year 610 when God chose Muhammad to be His messenger, none of their new churches were accepted by God.

Now, let’s look at the masjids (mosques). The ancestors of Muslims who established the masjids fulfilled all these criteria until 1980 when God sent the Messenger of the Covenant. From 1980, those who rejected him did not fulfill criterion 2 and 4, and their newly established buildings were not accepted by God. So, after 1980, God only accepted the new masjids established by people who believed in God’s Messenger of the Covenant. This condition continued until 2008 when God sent the Clarifying Messenger. After that, God only accepts new masjids established by people who believe in the Clarifying Messenger. Otherwise, they will not fulfill criterion 2 and 4. Although God will send two more messengers after the Clarifying Messenger, belief in them is not a deciding factor for masjids, because anyone who believes in the Clarifying Messenger will also believe in the Strengthening Messenger. There will be groups of people who believe in the Clarifying Messenger, but not in the Guide Messenger (the Mahdi), shame on them, but even that will not be a deciding factor for masjids, because people should stop establishing new masjids anyway after the year 2260, way before the Guide Messenger, because after 2260 there is no point in building masjids, since they will not fulfill criterion 6, because soon all the masjids will be destroyed. What’s the point of establishing buildings which will be destroyed soon (9:109-111)? Instead, the believers should set aside that same money to eventually support the Guide Messenger (the Mahdi) in the cause of God (8:1, 8:41, 9:111), when he comes. So, the Clarifying Messenger is the last messenger who is a deciding factor on weather God accepts new places of worship or not, which is why one of his main duties is to clearly establish once and for all how to establish new places of worship owned by God alone; not places of worship owned by our communities, not places of worship owned by leaders, not places of worship owned by God’s messengers, but places of worship owned by God alone (72:18).

So, here is the conclusion. We, the true believers are allowed to visit these graveless places of worship only:

1. Synagogues established before the year 0, (which includes only 1 out of about 20,000 existing synagogues (17:1)),
2. Church buildings established before the year 610, (which includes about 100 out of about 3 million existing church buildings),
3. Masjids established before 1980, (which includes about 1 million out of about 3 million existing masjids),
4. Masjids established between 1980 and 2008, only if they were established by people who also believed in God’s Messenger of the Covenant,
5. Masjids established between 2008 and 2260, only if they are established by people who also believed in the Clarifying Messenger.

This is why only synagogues, churches, and masjids are mentioned in the Quran (22:40).

However, the permissibility to visit those places of worship does not automatically apply to the Friday Congregational Prayers. The Friday Congregational Prayer can be done only behind a preacher or leader who believes in all of God’s messengers (14:21, 62:9, 21:92, 4:144, 58:22, 5:56). We are not allowed to do it behind a preacher or leader who does not believe in all of God’s messengers, even if he does it in the permissible places of worship (58:22, 4:144).

But outside of the Friday Congregational Prayer, you may visit the permissible places of worship, even if they are maintained by disbelievers. Their present domination does not change the fact that those places still belong to God. If you own a house, for example, and mobs take it over, that does not change the ownership of the house. You are still the owner of the house. So, God is still the owner of those places (72:18). People are just visitors there. And we can see examples in the Quran of believers worshiping God in places of worship which were managed or dominated by disbelievers, as long as that place of worship was initially established by the believers. For example, Zachariah, Mary, Jesus worshiped God in the synagogue established by Solomon in Jerusalem (3:37, 3:39, 19:11), despite the fact that it was being managed by the evil Jews at that time (4:156). Also Muhammad worshiped God there (17:1-2), despite the fact that during his time it was being used partly as a synagogue, partly as a ruined church, and partly as a temple for idols (17:7). Also, before migrating to Medina, Muhammad worshiped God at the Sacred Masjid (8:33), at a time when it was being used and managed by idol-worshipers (8:34-35). He was kicked out of there eventually, but he never boycotted it (2:114). Also, God asks us to perform Hajj at the Sacred Masjid (3:97), and use it as a prayer house (2:125), without taking into account the belief or disbelief of those who dominate it now (3:97), because it is a masjid which was established by Abraham (2:127), and God accepted it from him (2:127, 14:39). It would not make sense to find the obligations to visit the Sacred Masjid in the Quran, and on the other hand make it impermissible for believers. God fully knew who was going to maintain it (22:25). We do not go there to visit the people. We go there because God says so (3:97, 22:27, 22:29), and because it is the right thing to do (22:32). In the same way, God orders us not to boycott the permissible places of worship (2:114), and we should feel free to visit them (2:150, 9:18). Alban Fejza shows you in practice in the video how we can visit them.

 

Requirements to Fulfill to Visiting a Permissible Place of Worship

Before we enter a permissible masjid, we should fulfill seven requirements:

1. Believe in God (9:18)
2. Believe in the Last Day (9:18)
3. Not fear anyone except God (9:18, 2:150)
4. Having given the Obligatory Charity (9:18)
5. We should not enter and leave without having performed the Contact Prayer (9:18, 7:29), whichever of the five Contact Prayers applies at this time. If we have already done the Contact Prayer outside of the masjid, or we go in the masjid in the forenoon when no prayer time is applicable, we should still do two Rakats of Contact Prayer (9:18, 7:29).
6. We should not enter the masjid without having ablution (5:6).
7. We should be clean and in modest clothes (7:31).

Children under the age of 12 only need to fulfill the seventh requirement (7:31, 5:6, 24:58). (When God says, “O you who believe” (5:6), it does not include children necessarily (49:14), but when God says “O children of Adam” (7:31), it includes children.)

The prayer rows should be filled from front to back (61:4, 9:93). Women should fill them from back to front. If we enter the masjid at noon time for example, we should do the Noon Contact Prayer (2:238, 17:78).

To learn how to observe the Contact Prayer, watch the video titled “Principles of Muslim Prayer” by Rashad Khalifa. But that video does not explain the different voice levels during the Contact Prayer. They are especially important in masjid circumstances, so let’s explain them here.

The Quran mentions five human voice levels:

• • • Silent (7:193, 6:53, 20:7),
    • Murmuring (20:108),
    • Low (31:19, 49:3),
    • Normal (20:7, 44),
    • Loud (49:2).

During the Contact Prayer, your voice level can not be silent or loud, but it may be any of the levels in-between (17:110). However, this applies to portions of the Contact Prayer when you magnify God (akbar) or praise God (hamd) (17:111). So, when you say the Elhamdulillah (Sura 1), “Allahu Akbar”, and “Semi’a Allahu Leman Hamidah”, you can do it in a murmuring, low, or normal voice (17:110-111), which are the levels in-between. But, during bowing and prostration positions, we glorify God (Subh), and the glorification voice level may be silent, murmuring, or low (7:205, 3:41), and these commandments are given in the Arabic Quran. The Shahada may be spoken in a silent, murmuring, low, or normal voice (20:7-8, 7:205, 3:41). The Salaam is said in a low or a normal voice (6:54, 31:19).

 

Rules Inside a Masjid (Place of Worship)

In the masjid, you may only:

• • • Do the Contact Prayer (9:18)
    • Prostrate (7:29, 15:98)
    • Bow down (2:125)
    • Commemorate God (72:18, 22:40)
    • Glorify God (20:130, 24:36, 33:42)
    • Praise God (25:58, 32:15, 50:39)
    • Read the Quran (2:185, 17:78)
    • Pray (Silent Dua) (7:29)
    • Implore God for forgiveness (40:55)
    • Retreat (2:187)
    • Eat and drink in moderation (7:31)
    • Stand (7:29, 3:39)
    • Sit (2:125)
    • Greet people (6:54)
    • Clean/maintain the masjid (9:18)
    • Bring adornments (flowers, fragrances, provisions) (7:31, 3:37)

In the masjid:

• • • We should enter peacefully and leave peacefully (2:191).
    • We should not do anything which invalidates ablution (2:187, 5:6). You may fall asleep there (2:187), but when you wake up, you should go outside and perform ablution again, if you wish to stay further at the masjid.
    • We should not preach (72:18), except for the Friday Sermon organized by the person in charge (62:9-11).
    • We should not try to convert people (72:18), or have debates or discussions, or arguments, or engage in private discussions or in vain speech.
    • We should not use entertainment like movies, reading, news, etc. (62:11).
    • We should not buy and sell (62:11).
    • We should not use that time to befriend people (6:70). You may acknowledge their presence with a simple greeting, “Salaam alaykum (Peace be upon you!)” (6:54).
    • We should not call other names besides God (72:18).
    • We should not answer any phone call (72:18).
    • We should not pray to anyone besides God (72:18).
    • We should not use our smartphones for other than reading or listening to the Quran in earphones (62:11, 5:48). The Quran may be read aloud when it does not interfere with others, but during Ramadan, others should not interfere with the reading of the Quran.
    • During Ramadan the whole Quran is read aloud (2:185,187), and it must be in a language which people understand (14:4).
    • We should not prevent others from entering because they might have different opinions and beliefs, except if they openly declare that they do not believe in God or the Last Day (9:17,18).
    • We are not allowed to reserve spaces for later by leaving things there (72:18, 2:114).
    • If we are told to make room for others to sit, we make room for others to sit. God will then make room for us (58:11).
    • If those in charge ask us to get up and leave, we get up and leave. God will raise us to a higher rank (58:11).
    • If those in charge impose additional unfair mosque rules, you may choose not to enter, or you may choose to enter with those rules, but not if those rules require you to change the way you worship God.

In the video clarification, Alban Fejza also shows an example of him going to the masjid and finding others already there getting ready for the group prayer.

When you go in, you check if they are doing the movements together simultaneously. If they are not, you simply sit and do not join them in prayer. That prayer is not from the Quran (2:43, 3:43). The Quran describes the obligatory Contact Prayer as one where all the believers bow and prostrate at the same time. Also, if only one person is appearing to do the Contact Prayer, you do not join him, but if two or more people are appearing to do the contact prayer together simultaneously, and you have not done the contact prayer, you must join them. You can not choose to do it separately in that case (2:43, 3:43). If you have to just wait, you may simply sit, commemorate God silently, or even use your smartphone to read the Quran in whatever language you understand. And when all the people stand together to do the Contact Prayer, you must join them (7:29-30, 4:88, 4:142, 5:2, 3:113), because the Quran orders you to stand when they stand, bow when they bow, prostrate when they prostrate, and sit when they sit (2:43, 3:43). During the Contact Prayer, we should follow the same Qiblah (prayer direction) as the prayer leader (4:59), even if his direction is not perfectly towards the Sacred Masjid (2:177), because there is no such thing as the wrong direction to worship God. There are only good and better directions (2:144). To God belongs the east and the west (2:115, 2:142). Although the prayer leader is not supposed to recite additional Suras of the Quran beside Sura 1 during the Contact Prayer, if he does that, you are not allowed to object to it, because when the Quran is recited, you should listen (7:204). You are not responsible for the words of others (6:52). You are responsible for your movements during the group prayer (2:43, 3:43). When the end of the Contact Prayer comes, and they say Salaam, you should return their greeting, at least in equal measure (4:86). After the Salam, you may leave immediately, even if the others stay further (3:149). You are not obliged to participate in any other ritual with them (28:55). Only the five obligatory Contact Prayers may be a group ritual in the masjid.

So, these were the rules of masjids. However, you may still choose not to go there for practical reasons. For example, some mosques are not maintained properly, some of them might smell bad, some of them are closed, some of them are too far, and in some cases it might simply not be practical.

A place of worship becomes obligatory for you only if it is within 10km (2:203) travel distance, it is Friday noon (62:9) and those in charge of it are believers who believe in all of God’s messengers (62:9, 4:144, 5:56).

Also, of course, visiting the Sacred Masjid is obligatory once in your lifetime, if you are not prevented (2:196). In all the other cases, it is optional to visit the permissible places of worship.

 

Now, everything we said so far, we only talked about real places of worship, places which only have God as an owner. Improvised places like places inside airports, as part of a university, inside companies, rented properties etc., none of these places are places of worship, because they have other owners besides God (72:18). You may use them for prayer if they suit you, but you should know that they are not places of worship, and the rules of their owners apply, not necessarily the rules of this video. They do not really represent any religion, regardless of what the sign at the door might say. So, for example, if you see a door sign inside the airport saying “Masjid”, you should know that you are still in the airport. You are not in a masjid. A masjid can not belong to human beings and to God at the same time. For the Friday Prayer, if you don’t have nearby a real place of worship which is maintained by believers, you may use an improvised place of worship, but not if the person who is leading the Friday Prayer does not believe in all of God’s messengers. Anyway, establishing new real places of worship is the best solution, and the only way to have a permanent community of submitters. In the other video clarification titled “Penalty Zakat”, you can learn which is the only proper way to collect and use the finances to establishing new places of worship which belong to God alone.

 

By: Alban Fejza, the Clarifying Messenger

 

The word Zakat in the Quran literally means purification (20:76, 2:43, 2:129, 9:103). The Quran does not specify what type of purification because it includes any type of purification, any deed which purifies your soul (20:76). However, most of the purifying deeds in the Quran also have additional names. For example, body purification is called fasting, or travel purification is called Hajj, and so on. But here, when I say Zakat, I am limiting my explanation only to financial purification – obligatory financial purification. So, when I say Zakat, here, I mean financial purification. And I read the whole Quran, just for this – to list all the financial purifications – and in the whole Quran, I found 19 different financial purification subcomponents. Of course, there is only one Zakat, but it has 19 subcomponents. Here they are:

1. If you harvest crops, fruits, or vegetables, give the due alms from it (6:141, 17:26).

I call this Private Obligatory Charity.

2. If you own more than 40 units of anything, you should give 1 of them, which is 2.5% for charity.

I call this Public Obligatory Charity. I explain the details of both these first two subcomponents in the other video clarification titled “The Obligatory Charity (Zakat)”. However, I have to mention that the amount of 2.5% is never mentioned directly in the Quran, and that is because it’s not always 2.5%. It’s 2.5% only under the assumption that you did not do anything wrong. But, if you did something wrong, or gained wealth through some way which is partially wrong, then there are additional subcomponents of Zakat, or additional financial purification subcomponents (9:102-103) – the following 17 subcomponents, which I explain in this video:

I call the following 17 subcomponents, Penalty Zakat, because they are financial penalties for something wrong which you did (9:102-103). The Christians and the Jews translate them in the English Bibles as purification offerings, or sin offerings (Leviticus 4:27-35) – a financial contribution to purify yourself from a sin. So, let me present them:

3. If you break an important promise or oath, feed ten poor people (5:89).
4. If you don’t fast when you should, then feed a poor person for each day of not fasting (2:184).
5. If you break your engagement or marriage, compensate the woman (2:236-237).
6. If you estrange your wife, and can’t fast, feed sixty poor people (2:233).
7. If you divorce your wife with a baby, provide food and clothing for two years (58:3-4).
8. If you accidentally cause a death, compensate the family, plus two months of fasting (4:92).
9. If you kill a person, and their family forgives you, compensate the family (2:178).
10. If you take a loan, pay it back (4:58).
11. If you take an unwritten loan, leave an equivalent item as a guarantee (2:283).
12. If people entrust something with you, return it (4:58).
13. If you set for Hajj and return due to your own health, send an animal offering to Mecca, plus atone through fasting, charity, or worship (2:196).
14. If you set for Hajj and others prevent you, send an animal offering to Mecca (2:196).
15. If you break the state of sanctity (Ihram) during Hajj, offer an animal sacrifice (2:196).
16. If you kill (hunt) an animal during Hajj, offer an equivalent domesticated animal (5:95).
17. If you publicly mention or admit a bad deed which you did after joining the submitters, you should contribute an equitable charity (9:102-103).
18. If you wish to confer with the messenger, contribute a charity (58:12).
19. If you get unowned wealth (ghanimtum) of any type, then 20% of it is for God and for the messenger, and for the relatives, the orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien (8:41, 8:1).

Ok, so now you have all the 19 subcomponents of Zakat (the financial purification). The first two are obligatory for every submitter. The next 17 ones are obligatory only for submitters who did something wrong – Penalty Zakat. Now, among the Penalty Zakat, the blue ones are either personal, or they are facilitated by Democratic States, which means that there is no need for us as community to facilitate them. The purple ones are facilitated by the Custodians of the Sacred Masjid (9:19, 8:34), so we don’t need to facilitate them either, but the Mahdi will eventually end up facilitating them (48:27). The red ones should be facilitated by the messenger or the Congregation Directors whom he puts in charge (4:59). I call these, Public Penalty Zakat, because they are penalties for damages against the whole community of submitters, which is why they have to be facilitated by the messenger as the center of the community (22:78, 59:7), which is why now I am going to explain them further.

Let’s start with the first one:

If you publicly mention or admit a bad deed which you did after joining the submitters, you should contribute an equitable charity (9:102-103). This might include compensation for damages. For example, let’s say that you broke the window of the mosque, then you should pay for it. It can be any other bad deed, even if it is not visibly directed against the community. This is because once you mention it among submitters, it degrades the community (24:19), but once you pay, then your sin is erased. Of course, if you tell a sin which you did before you joined submitters, then we should not request that you pay (64:9), because at that time, you were not part of the community (2:256). That’s between you and God, and God will make you pay (6:120), or maybe you already paid through suffering (42:30), or additional worship, or other means (3:16-17). Also, a sin which you tell to your family, or your husband, or wife does not count as a public confession, because that is a private discussion, and they should never leak that information to the others. They should try to convince you to fix it, but not tell the others. But, if you admit it publicly, then you should pay for it publicly, so that the others know that justice was restored.

Now, the next point:

If you wish to confer with the messenger, you should contribute a charity (58:12). This is because when you take the time of the messenger, you are actually slowing the whole community down (49:5), but if you are ready to atone for it through charity, then it’s ok.

Now, the 19^th subcomponent: I left this point last, because it has a lot of weight in the success of submitters. All the other previous points are simply a way of maintaining the community at the same level, but this last point actually grows the community. Of course, it is possible for a community to grow, even without this, but that can only happen at the expense of righteousness (2:79). Without this last point, you can either have a fair community or a growing community (17:83), but you can not have both. Only with this last point, the community can both grow and still remain righteous (9:88). So, let me explain this last point. Here is what the verse says:

If you (ghanimtum) get unowned wealth of any type, then 20% of it is for God and for the messenger, and for the relatives, the orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien (8:41).

But what is this unowned wealth (ghanimtum)? Because it has so many meanings, the English translators of the Quran were forced to translate only one meaning, or another one, or another one, but not all of them at the same time. However, the most comprehensive way to translate it is “unowned wealth”. But what is this unowned wealth? Of course, in the end God owns everything (19:40, 15:23), but for the purposes of testing the humans and Satan in this world (21:111, 67:2), He has retracted His ownership from Earth temporarily (2:30, 19:40), to let us humans see how we will do when we are given responsibility and ownership (33:72). Nevertheless, there is still wealth on earth which is not owned by any human, either because they haven’t owned it yet, or because they lost its ownership. For example, the fish in the sea are unowned by any human. So, fishing is ghanimtum. But, we as submitters almost always get our fish from the supermarkets these days, and not directly from the sea, so let’s cross this out. It’s insignificant for us. Corporations do it, but they are not people to become members of our congregation. Now, the wild animals in the wild are also unowned. So, hunting is ghanimtum, but for the same reasons as with fishing, let’s cross this out. It’s insignificant for us as individual modern submitters. Also, the precious minerals and oil deposits inside the earth are unowned. So, mining is ghanimtum. This is also insignificant for us as individual submitters, so let’s also cross this out. Also, in the past, discovering unexplored land was ghanimtum, but we have reached all the corners of the earth now, and there is no more unexplored land. So, let’s also cross this out. Also, the spoils of war in the past were unowned wealth, because when you killed the enemy and captured his children (33:26), his children lost the status of free people, and became slaves, and slaves don’t get inheritance, and so the wealth which was left behind by the dead enemy, then did not belong to anyone – it became unowned wealth. It was up for grabs for those who participated in the organized struggle. So, getting spoils of war is ghanimtum. But, because democracies are peace agreements between believers and disbelievers, which I explain in another video, this does not apply to us in democratic countries. So, let’s cross this out also – not applicable in democracies. But, there is a sixth meaning of ghanimtum which applies within democratic countries– It is getting “inheritance” from non-submitters. Because this is a very important case for our democratic circumstances, let me explain it in more detail. There are two main points which I will explain about this. First, why “inheritance” from non-submitters is ultimately not an inheritance, but a reception of unowned wealth, and second, why we should give away 20% from it. And by the way, traditionally, the Muslim scholars have believed both of these (al-Bukhari 6764, 8:41), but they could never explain them (75:19).

But, God blessed me with this knowledge (6:105), so let me explain both of them with one go, from the Quran (75:19). Here is how it works: When a person dies, before his inheritance is distributed, the will of the dead person should be fulfilled (4:12). But if he was a disbeliever, regardless of what his will was before he died, at the moment of death, he changes it. God tells us in verse 23:99, that his true will at the moment of death is to get his property back again. At the moment of death, he says, “My Lord, send me back, so I can do good in the inheritance which I left” (23:99-100). So, he wants his property back first, which automatically means that he doesn’t want anyone else to inherit his property. He hopes to get it back again, and then he thinks that he can give 2.5% of it as charity, and in this way, in the second try, he will be saved. But that’s not how it works. It was 2.5% only for those who accepted all messengers and who believed the Quran (57:28, 28:52-54). But, for all the other people, it is actually 10% (6:160). So, because this disbeliever rejected his corresponding messenger and the Quran, he now will actually have to give 10% to be saved. God would not send the messenger back again (25:76), just so that this disbeliever can get a second chance to accept the messenger (40:50), because it would be unfair to take the messenger out of Heaven. The messenger finished his own test (2:285). And, also God would not reveal the Quran directly to this disbeliever, because he is not qualified for it (74:52). So, if this disbeliever is sent back, he would have to be saved in a world without the Quran and without his corresponding messenger, and in that world, he has to give 10%, instead of 2.5%, which is actually what the Jews and the Christians gave (Genesis 28:20-22, Leviticus 27:32), before the Quran and Muhammad, 10%. So, with 10% Zakat, this disbeliever would be saved (6:160). However, this would be his second time that he is enjoying his property. The first time, he gave nothing (11:16). So, now he would have to give 10% for the first time, and 10% for the second time, which is 20%. So, the true will of this disbeliever when he dies is that he would want to be sent back to earth, get his property back, so he could give 20%, just so he can be saved. So, this is where the 20% comes from. So, to fulfill the true will of the disbeliever, you have to give 20% from his property. However, you can not fulfill his will, unless you get the property first. But he does not want you to have the property, because he wants a second chance. At the same time, God is not going to give it back to him, because he already got enough chances (39:59). So, according to the disbeliever’s will, you shouldn’t get the property, and according to God’s will, the disbeliever shouldn’t get the property either. And so now the property remains without an owner. It has become ghanimtum, unowned property. And because it’s unowned property, whomever can get it, gets it. It just happens today, that according to the rules of democratic countries, they give it to you anyway. So now you got it. It was an inheritance according to your state, but according to the Quran and you, it was ghanimtum, unowned property, which you luckily got, because you live in a state with such rules, where you get it anyway, but you truly received it as unowned property (ghanimtum), not as inheritance. And now that you ended up have it, you can fulfill the will of the dead disbeliever and give 20%, which is why verse 8:41 tells us to give 20% whenever we get unowned property.

And this is the explanation of verse 8:41. The verses says, if you get “inheritance” from non-submitters, you should give 20% of it to God, the messenger, the relatives, the orphans, the needy, and the traveling alien.

Now, if a submitter does not declare this type of “inheritance”, because he does not want the community to know, so that he can keep that 20% for himself, in that case, I can assure you that God will curse him, and Hell is awaiting him. Let me show you here a true story from the Bible to show you what I am talking about:

“The Book of Acts, chapter 5 

1. Now a (submitter) man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. (so they can contribute their due Zakat).
2. With his wife’s full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest of it and put it at the messengers’ feet.
3. Then Peter (the messenger) said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received from selling the land?
4. Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
5. When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died.”

So, no hiding the money (93:11, 40:16), and you can see that in the past the process of Zakat involved sending the money through the messenger to the final destination. The Quran gives us more flexibility about the middle process, but the final destinations of where that money should go is clearly defined, and it can not be changed (10:15). And the final destination, of that money, of that 20%, according to verse 8:41 in the Arabic Quran, word for word, it says that it should go to:

• God
• The messenger
• Relatives
• Orphans
• The poor
• And the traveling alien

Let me explain them one by one: First, what does it mean to give your money to God? Well, first of all, it means, buying and sacrificing animals for God (22:36). However, this is supposed to be done in Mecca (48:25), and we still don’t have authority over Mecca. So, let’s postpone this for the very end of times when the Mahdi frees Mecca (48:27).

Second, it means buying weapons to be used for fighting in the cause of God only (80:60). However, this does not apply for our democratic circumstances, because democracies are peace agreements (4:90, 4:94). So, let’s also postpone this for the very end of times when democracy ends (9:31-33, 48:28).

And now, the third type of giving to God, and the only one applicable in our circumstances are masjids (places of worship), which belong to God alone (72:18). When we spend the money to establish and maintain masjids, that money is given directly to God, because the masjid does not belong to the community, it doesn’t belong to the messenger, and it does not belong to the Congregation Director. It belongs directly to God (72:18). So, in our circumstances, giving the money to God means only two things: establishing masjids, and maintaining masjids.

Now, let’s explain the second point. What does it mean to give the money to the messenger? Well, verse 5:99 says that the ONLY duty of the messenger is to deliver the message. So, the messenger is a messenger only when he is delivering the message, publishing the message. So, giving the money to the messenger does not include giving it to him personally for houses, or cars, or for any personal purpose. It only includes things which have to do with disseminating the message from the messenger to the final listener or reader. This includes, for example, printing Qurans, paying for webpages, online adds, or things like that – any means or tools which help disseminate the message from the messenger to the final recipient. I will personally never accept any payment from any submitter for religious purposes (42:23). God gave me the message for free, and I will preach it for free (3:187). However, when I preach it, it’s still here in front of the camera. It doesn’t travel by itself. It’s to our benefit and other people’s benefit to spend money to help spread the message from here to the final intended recipients, to as many people as possible (7:164).

Now, the remaining money should go to the relatives, orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien (8:41). To enable myself not to coordinate this portion, let me decide on a fixed percentage, so you can do it yourself. Let me set it at 2.5%. Verse 59:7 gives me the authority to divide it in any portions I decide from the permitted categories, but to keep it simple, and enable you to do it yourself, I am deciding on 2.5%. So, from the 20% which you owe, you can give 2.5% directly to the relatives, orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien, and I will not include it in the declaration and reporting. You do it yourself. But, the remaining 17.5%, you have to declare it and spend it only with preapproval or upon the request of your Congregation Director (59:7, 4:59), to ensure that the money is not wasted in projects which don’t work.

So, to conclude, the main point of this video is that from whatever you receive as net-inheritance from a non-submitter, you should give 17.5% for:

1. establishing masjids
2. maintaining masjids
3. for means which help to disseminate the message

And I call these, contributions. And of course, whatever you receive as net-inheritance from a submitter according to the Quranic inheritance rules, all of it belongs to you, because the deceased submitter has already purified that property by declaring and giving away the regular 2.5% Zakat every year.

Now, some haters still might want to argue that I am asking you to give money (63:7), but in fact God is asking you in the Quran to give money in the cause of God (8:41, 9:41, 9:44, 47:38, 9:102-103, 63:10). I personally will never accept any money for delivering the message. God provides for me (42:19), either through trade, or previous investments, or my professional skills which I might serve as a non-messenger (25:20), like in a daily job (18:77), or even through what my own family might choose to help me with (42:23), and all of these are my human right (41:6), just like they are your human right (2:198, 62:10).

 

By: Alban Fejza, the Clarifying Messenger

Summary

In this video, I answer the following questions:

• Should religion be organized?
• If yes, why, and how much?
• What is the only authorized form of organized religion in this world?
• What sort of structure should such an organization have?
• What are the proper channels of communication between those people?
• How do the finances flow in that organization?
• Who, what, where, when, and how to do it?
• And, how to join a correctly organized religion?

But first, let me give you a brief history of organized religion.

 

Background

God sent religion through Abraham, but He sent organized religion through Moses. So, the first time in history that organized religion was established correctly was at the time of Moses, and this lasted until after Aaron and the 70 Judges, when the Children of Israel lost the Ark of the Covenant. The second time that organized religion was established correctly was at the time of David, and this lasted until after Solomon when the Kingdom of Israel split in two kingdoms. The third time that organized religion was established correctly was at the time of the Apostles of Jesus, and this lasted until after their death when people started to call themselves ‘Christian’. The fourth time that organized religion was established correctly was when Muhammed migrated to Medina, and this lasted several decades until the Battle of Karbala when the Muslims split in two factions. By the way, God sent many other messengers in the past but they did not organize the religion. They did not organize it because their job was to expose false religions first, and before they got a sufficient number of believers to organize the true religion, they got rejected. So, in the whole history of the world, there were only four cases with the right circumstances to establish organized religion correctly with God’s authorization. And now the time has come for the fifth case, and this time it will last until the End of the World. However, let me clarify that I am not talking about organizing all aspects of religion. Religion will still be mostly an individual pursuit, a personal lifestyle. I am only talking about organizing the public aspects of religion, only what is necessarily shared, and what brings benefits for all. So, how do we set up a correctly organized religion? What type of political system should organized religion have?

 

Political System

The political system of a properly organized religion is not a democracy, not communism, not an autocracy, not a republic, not a business, not a corporation, not a partnership, and not an NGO. These systems function even when people are disbelievers. The correct political system should automatically fail when people are disbelievers, and it should only work when people are believers. The only political system which succeeds only when people are believers is a peaceful religious army. This religious army will be without weapons, because we pay taxes, so let the police do their job. I will never use or authorize weapons for religious purposes. I know that God allows weapons in general, but they are useless for religious purposes in democratic circumstances. So, the political system of a correctly organized religion today resembles an army without weapons, and as such, it has a top-down hierarchy.

 

Hierarchical Structure

Now, let me show you the hierarchical structure of a properly organized religion. I looked at all the hierarchical positions mentioned in the Quran, and here they are:

• King (Malik).
• Prophet (Nabi).
• Messenger (Rasul).
• Successor (Khalifa).
• Director/someone in charge (Emir).
• Custodian/Protector (Wali).
• Scholar (Alim).
• Teacher (Mulla).
• Leader (Imam).
• Submitter (Muslim).
• Dependent Submitter (Abd).

So, these are all the positions mentioned in the Quran, but do they all apply in today’s circumstances?

Let’s see:

• Prophet? – There are no more prophet’s today – Muhammad was the last prophet – so let’s remove that position. This is not an active position anymore.
• Khalifa? – Khalifa is a political position. It has been replaced by Presidents and Prime-Ministers, and Parliament Members. Let’s remove that.
• Custodian? This is only applicable if you rule over Mecca, which we are not today. So, let’s remove that.
• Scholar (Alim)? – replaced by scientists. Let’s remove that.
• Teacher (Mulla)? – Replaced by professors and school teachers. Let’s remove that.
• Leader? – Actually this is not really a formal position. Anyone can lead unofficially. The Quran says that we are leaders of our children. Imam simply means ‘the first’. Anytime you happen to lead the contact prayer you are a leader, but once it is finished, you are not anymore. You can be a leader even when there are no organizational structures in place. It is a description of a temporary action. So, let’s remove that.

Now, we are left with only these five positions:

• King
• Messenger
• Director
• Submitter
• and Dependent Submitter

So, let’s describe these positions:

• The King is God.
• The Messenger is the Quran, or a human being authorized by God to promote the Quran.
• Directors, or more specifically, Congregation Directors, are submitters who are put in charge of a local congregation within a city and their authority is limited only on collective religious aspects, but they do not have authority over the individual lives, beliefs, and opinions of submitters. They are appointed through a God-given system recommended in the Quran, which takes into account qualities like Quranic knowledge, charitable life experience, and success in promoting the message.
• Submitters are people who Observe the Contact Prayer and give the Obligatory Charity.
• Dependent Submitters are submitters who are incapable of joining the organization directly for reasons like language difficulties, internet difficulties, people under the age of 18, people with serious health difficulties or mental difficulties, or any similar difficulty. They communicate with the religious organization through another submitter, but not directly.

So, here is how the hierarchical structure looks like:

 

So, as you can see, this hierarchical structure looks like bricks in one wall, and that is exactly what God calls it in the Quran – bricks in one wall.

 

Meetings

The first criterion which makes an organized religion the correct religion is its meetings – the time of meetings, the purpose of meetings, and the place of meetings. The only authorized meeting decreed for submitters is the Friday Congregational Prayer. Unity of submitters happens through the Friday Congregational Prayer. Don’t let people fool you by promising you unity through other means. God did not specify for us any other meetings. If people invite you to other gatherings, or other meetings, other conferences, those are simply distractions. On the Day of Judgment, there will be a list of questions which you will be asked about, and one of them will be, “Did you attend the Friday Prayer?” There is nothing there in that list which will ask you, “Did you go to that Saturday Quranic Study, or did you go to that annual conference, or did you go to that monthly religious meeting?” They will not be items in your record. They are simply irrelevant distractions. The Quran says that there is nothing good about other religious conferences except for those with the purpose of gathering charity, or righteous works, or making peace among the people. Some other people think that you can be a submitter by hanging out with other submitters during Saturdays (usually when they don’t have to go to work). Saturdays are not a substitute for the Friday Obligatory Prayers. In fact, God’s prediction in verse 16:124 is that those who meet on Saturdays, as a religious meeting, they will always end up disputing with one another.  The only authorized meeting we attend is the Friday Congregational Prayer, and this is how we organize. Organizing in the cause of God is attending the Friday Congregational Prayer. So, when the call to prayer is made, the Quran tells us to hasten to the commemoration of God, and the commemoration of God happens in God’s mosques. I am only talking about those mosques, those masjids where God alone is commemorated, without commemorating anyone else in them. If there is no such mosque near your location, I provide the Friday sermons for you online, temporarily. I give you the detailed religious justification for the permission to do it online in another video, but the main point which I am making here is that if you are a believer, you will never find yourself in a situation where you can not attend the Friday Prayer. So, now that the religion is properly organized, the Friday Prayers will always be available for you, at least online, if not in location. Therefore, attending the Friday Sermons is obligatory and possible for every submitter, anywhere in the world. And, it does not matter how busy you think you are, or whatever opportunity you might think you are losing, or whether your boss might not like it, or whatever unreasonable fears you might have. What God provides for you is far better than any business or entertainment you might be pursuing.

 

Obligatory Charity

The second criterion which makes an organized religion correct is the correct financial flow – charity. Who gives it? Who receives it? Who collects and distributes it? When? How much? If this is done right, then we have the correct organized religion – we belong to the correct community.  Charity is community, and community is charity. Whoever thinks that he can organize a community without organized charity has fooled himself. A moral organization does not exist without charity.

Many examples in the Quran which support the idea of COLLECTIVE charity. For example, the Quran mentions how some people in the community used to criticize Muhammad’s distribution of charity if they were not given from it, but if they were given from it, they would be satisfied. In another instance, it mentions how some of them would actually issue a promissory note to the collectors of charity to pay it later, because they might not have had the grains and animal stocks for the moment with them. In yet another instance, God informs us how the people in charge would enforce Zakat in the community, when someone became negligent, and how the submitters would be able to identify their allies based on who gave the collective charity, because it was a public organized thing.

The main reason for organizing a religion is that the purity of the community must be endangered from the inside. Moses did not organize it as long as his enemy was an outside enemy – Pharaoh. But after the Children of Israel were freed, when they moved to the desert, their enemy was within, and Moses organized the religion with the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle and the Sabbath, to ensure the purity of the community. Similarly, during Muhammad’s time, only after they moved to Medina, they organized the community, because many tribes who were pursuing their own interests joined and endangered the purity of the community. Similarly, during our time, the purity of the community is being endangered from the inside by ignorant people. And they are exactly the ones who organized incorrectly and prematurely. They tried many organizational structures. They tried social media groups, half-secret societies, social movements, pretend masjids, friendship rings, heritage conferences, Quranic philosophy groups, NGOs, liberal movements, hate groups, blogger groups, and many other approaches of organizing themselves. All of them had more problems then they had people. All of them had something in common. None of them collected and distributed Obligatory Charity, and that is bad organizing. If a style of organizing ourselves is not based on how the Quran tells us to organize, then of course, it will cause problems, or not progress at all. God says that the community of submitters is one community, and this can only be achieved through a united charity process. United charity means united community.

So, even though it was not my plan to organize the religion, now I organized it because it has already been badly organized. In this way, I am not really putting any burden on you. God is actually relieving the bad burden from you. This is why I am organizing it and Rashad Khalifa did not. The difference between Rashad and me is like the difference between Abraham and Moses. Abraham brought the religion, but Moses organized it. Abraham taught the people how to give the obligatory charity, but Moses taught the people how to collect and distribute the charity. Abraham taught the people how to pray, but Moses taught the people how to pray together. An individual is purified through the rituals of Abraham, but a community is purified through the rituals of Moses. Of course, we all follow the same religion, and the religion did not change, but the circumstances changed, and the new circumstances don’t just require religion, they require organized religion. The difference in circumstances is that Abraham did not have to deal with ignorant organizers of the true religion, while Moses had to deal with ignorant organizers of the true religion. So, organized religion did not make sense for Abraham, but it made sense for Moses. It did not make sense for Rashad, but it makes sense for me.

Someone might say, “But wouldn’t it be better if we just gave the Obligatory Charity individually to our families and relatives, because we know better who really needs it?” Well, not in this case, because poverty is mostly a condition of the whole family or whole relatives. If we just gave directly to our families and relatives, then the rich people would usually give to their rich families and the poor people would usually give to the poor families, and there would still be whole families who are poor, and God says in verse 59:7 that this is not the best way to distribute charities. It is not enough for the money to just move around within a social class. It also has to move from one social class to another. Also, Obligatory Charity is not only about alleviating poverty. It is also about creating that bond, that community trust, by giving and taking. I mean unity can only be achieved through love, and one of the signs of love is exchange of material things, and that is what we should do.

 

Who are we?

The name of our religion is Submission, and we are submitters. The Quran says that the only religion approved by God is Submission. If you want to know who belongs with us, and who does not belong with us, first you have to know what defines our group. We do not define ourselves based on common scripture, like the protestant churches and the Quranist organizations, or based on common leadership, like the Catholic Church and the Shia organizations, or based on common tradition, like the Sunnis and the Orthodox Churches, or based on common ethnicity, like the Jewish organizations. We do not define ourselves based on common nationality like the Russian Orthodox Church, or Anglican Communion, or Turkish Diyanet, or Egyptian Ministry of Endowment, or Uzbekistani Muslim Spiritual Directorate, or Evangelical Church of Germany, or Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs. We also do not define ourselves based on political views, like the Progressive Muslims or the Liberal Christians, or the Christian Right, or the Islamists. We also do not define ourselves based on common doctrine, like the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church, or the Seventh Day Adventists Church. We do not even define ourselves based on common belief. We do not call ourselves ‘believers’. The Quran tells us not to do that.

Now, let me tell you based on what we define ourselves. We define ourselves based on common worship. This is the only criterion which makes sense to define a religious organization, because God says in the Quran, “I did not create the humans except to worship Me,” to worship God. And if you have a common way of worshiping God, like us, then you have absolutely no reason to divide, and you are with us.

So, if you want to know whether someone belongs in our group, you have to ask him three questions:

1. Who do you worship?
2. When do you worship?
3. How do you worship?

If all the answers are the same as ours, then we belong in the same group. If he says, “I worship God. I worship Him at Dawn, Noon, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. I worship him exactly like Abraham worshiped Him.” Then, he belongs in our group. We worship together. Forget the division, even if his religious doctrine is different, even if he has strange beliefs, even if you have different political views, even if he understands the Quran differently. See, if he has the wrong beliefs, he is wrong. But, we don’t define our group based on belief. We define our group based on worship. Submission is a form of worship, not a form of belief. Belief is between him and God, and it is not part of Organized Religion. This also should serve as an explanation to the Christians who criticize the Muslims for having specific prayers. They say, “Why can’t we pray anyway we want, with our heart?” Well, if you are going to ski, ski anyway you want. But if you are going to play football, you have to coordinate with the team. Football is a team sport, and the Contact Prayers are a team worship – worshiping God together. You can still have your personal worship of God, how you feel, but that’s not part of Organized Religion. And this is what the Christians don’t understand. They think that Jesus updated or changed or maybe nullified the rules of Moses. But the reality is that Moses brought Organized Religion, while Jesus preached individual salvation. I mean, why would Jesus preach organized religion, when God had decided to take organized religion away from the Jews, and why would Moses preach individual salvation, when God had decided to save the Children of Israel all together as a group? So, of course what Moses preached and what Jesus preached seem different, because they dealt with two different aspects of religion. One of them dealt with the collective public aspect, the other dealt with the individual aspects. In this video, I focus on the collective aspects – organized religion.

So, the Contact Prayer, a specific form of organized worship of God, is half of the collective worship. The other half of collective worship is the Collective Obligatory Charity – Zakat. If someone does the Contact Prayer, but does not agree to give COLLECTIVE Obligatory Charity, from now on, he is half a submitter, a dividing submitter, a weak submitter, an ignorant submitter, a coward submitter, a cheap submitter, a selfish submitter, and an unsupportive submitter.

 

Membership

To be a member of this religious organization, you do not need to change your name, nor get baptized, nor get circumcised, nor get uncircumcised, nor declare your belief in any messenger, nor declare your disbelief in any messenger, nor declare any kind of belief. Your belief is between you and God. You do not need to join any app, nor join any social media group, nor declare your loyalty to anyone. To be a member of this organization, according to the Quran, you only need to fulfill two requirements:

1. Observe the Contact Prayer, and
2. Give the Collective Obligatory Charity.

Now, because these are collective religious rituals, you are responsible to do them, and prove to the others that you do them. You prove to the others that you do the Contact Prayer by attending the Friday Congregational Prayer once a week, and you prove to the others that you give the Obligatory Charity so that other submitters can see that you belong with them. So, if you do these two, you are in. If you do not do these two, you are out. Moses and Muhammad excluded anyone who did not give the Collective Obligatory Charity and did not do the Contact Prayer. On the other hand, Moses and Muhmmad did not exclude from the community anyone for having the wrong opinions, but God will exclude them on the Last Day. Of course, if you are in, and you do evil deeds, we will pressure you to pay a compensation equitably. However, if you do not do these two, you get kicked out, regardless of how good you are. Simple. These are the two religious rituals which determine who is part of the community and who is not part of the community. No people should have the right to decide who gets in and who gets expelled. It is determined only based on these two religious rituals. And this is very clear in the Quran.

Chapter 9, verse 11 says – and this is the main verse of this video – It says:

“If they repent and (1) observe the Salat (Contact Prayers) and (2) give the Zakat (Collective Obligatory Charity), then they are your brethren in religion. This is how we explain the revelations for people who know.”

So, organized religion is two things:

1. Attending Jumu`ah COLLECTIVELY and
2. Giving Zakat COLLECTIVELY.

Don’t let anyone fool you with any other organized thing, no matter how promising it appears. Again, remember, if you wish to join the properly organized religion, here is what it means, here is what you agree to do together: Jumu`ah, Zakat; Jumu`ah, Zakat; Jumu`ah, Zakat; Jumu`ah, Zakat. That’s it. Nothing else. The rest of the religious aspects, like fasting and Hajj are personal. They are obligatory, but personal. They are part of religion, but not part of Organized Religion, which why we find them mentioned separately in the Quran, while Salat and Zakat are almost always mentioned together.

 

Why should you organize with us?

You should organize with us because God orders you to organize. Here is what God says in the Quran:

“O you who believed, when you are told, “Organize in the cause of GOD,” why do you become heavily attached to the material things? Have you chosen this worldly life in place of the Hereafter? The materials of this world, compared to the Hereafter, are nil.”  (9:38)

 “Unless you organize, He will commit you to painful retribution and substitute other people in your place…” (9:39)   

 “You shall readily organize, light or heavy, and strive with your money (collective charity) and your lives (collective prayer) in the cause of GOD. This is better for you, if you only knew.” (9:41)

 

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This video clarification shows us:

• why Zakat (Obligatory Charity) should be a publicly verifiable process
• why it should be given from loanable wealth, and which portions of wealth are loanable
• why it is 2.5%

And all of these will be found and presented to us from the Quran, the whole Quran, and nothing but the Quran. But first, let’s see where Zakat fits as a subcomponent of charity.

 

Types of Possible Charities

According to the Quran, we can divide the charities into Obligatory (4:77, 98:5, 9:5) or Voluntary (9:79), and Private (2:274, 13:22) or Public (2:274, 13:22). And by combining them we get four types of charities. So, we can have:

• Private Obligatory Charity,
• Public Obligatory Charity,
• Private Voluntary Charity,
• Public Voluntary Charity.

Public Voluntary Charity is any voluntary charity you might give through a human-made organization, which is allowed according to the Quran, but most of the money you give goes to waste, usually for strengthening those organizations, instead of the final goal.

Private Voluntary Charity is any charity you give yourself directly to those who need it.

Private Obligatory Charity is charity which you owe to certain people simply for the fact that you have been connected to them by God (9:8, 9:10, 4:36), like your parents, your spouse, your children. The amount which you owe to this group of people is as much as they need (4:34, 4:5, 6:151, 17:23, 31:14), if they don’t have it. And it is called obligatory, or a duty, “haqahu” (17:26) because it does not depend on how much you want to give, but on how much they need, and what everyone needs is at least food, clothes, and shelter, a basic living. By the way whenever the orders for “haqahu”, Private Obligatory Charity, are given in the Quran, they are given in singular “Thee shall give haqahu…” (17:26, 6:141), indicating that it is private matter, but when Zakat in general is mentioned, the order is always given in plural “You (plural) shall give Zakat…” (2:43, 2:110,…).

So, again, regarding the Private Obligatory Charity, if you have basic living conditions for yourself, and either your parents or your spouse or your children do not have food and shelter, you are just not a good human being. Let’s not even go any further. And in many cases in the civilized world, that job is done by the states through pensions, retirement homes, childcare centers or whatever means they have for older people or younger people, and that is fine in many cases (2:233), but it is your responsibility to know that they got what they needed, and if they did not, then you should do it (29:8). Then your siblings, and the children of your siblings, the blind, the crippled, you must share your food with them, if they ever need it (24:61). It’s an obligation, not voluntary (24:61). As you can see, the amount of the Private Obligatory Charity depends on how much the people around you need, not on a specific percentage which you want to give. If they don’t have food, and they need to eat every single day at your house, then that is how it is going to be. It’s an obligation. The Quran tells us that they have a full right to eat in your house (24:61). Of course, they must come to your house with your permission (24:61), and do the Contact Prayer when you do it, or they should leave, if the house is fully yours (22:41), but when they are in it, you are obliged to share your food with them if they are hungry, and you have food (24:61). Perhaps a better translation of Private Obligatory Charity “haqahu” would be to translate it as “Obligatory Sharing”, because it mostly has to do with everyday perishable items, like fruits, cooking, and so on, and one of its purposes is to avoid wasting perishable things (6:141), which is why we share them with them on same day when we ourselves get them. This is why this part of charity comes from our income, because we don’t wait to see how much of it is left before we share it with whom we have a duty to share it with. When we have it, they should have it, and this is different from Public Obligatory Charity, because in Public Obligatory Charity, first you wait to see whether enough was left from your income (2:219), and then you calculate a certain amount annually.

By the way, Private Obligatory Charity and Public Obligatory Charity are both subcomponents of Zakat. So Zakat (Obligatory Charity) consists of Private Obligatory Charity and Public Obligatory Charity. Zakat is whatever is obligatory. Traditionally, only the public part of Zakat was labeled as Zakat, because religious authorities were only interested in that, because they collected it, and they did the labeling. However, in reality there is one Zakat, and it has two subcomponents, the public and the private, just like the Contact Prayers which consists of the Public Friday Contact Prayer (62:9-11), and the other daily contact prayers.

So now, let’s talk about the Public Obligatory Charity. Public Obligatory Charity should be done in coordination with other submitters, and through the authorized public structures, just like the Public Friday Sermon should be done as a congregation with other submitters.  When I say authorized public structures, I am talking about structures authorized by God (4:59). And in case there is no authorized public structure in place, you give that portion to the same categories to whom you owed your Private Obligatory Charity. So, depending on which option is available, you give the Zakat in that option, but if both options are available, you have to fulfill both (3:200, 4:59). So, if you don’t have a family, for example, or relatives and friends, of course, you can not give Private Zakat. Similarly, if you don’t live with a community of submitters, you can not give the Public Zakat, and instead you give that portion as Private Zakat. And this where Public Zakat was not available was the case for all submitters who lived in democratic countries throughout the last century. Democratic states do not institute the Public Zakat, and therefore it should be given as Private Zakat, unless internet exists. Internet has changes the situation once again. Since the internet, we can live in a society of non-submitters, while at the same time being able to unite through the internet with other submitters. And because now we can do that, the Quran tells us that we should do that (9:41, 3:200), and since we should, we did. So, internet enabled Public Zakat because it once again enables the public verifiability of Zakat, which is a mandatory aspect of Public Zakat.

 

Verifiability

God tells us in verse 9:18 that the people who do not do the Contact Prayer and give Zakat should not be allowed to frequent God’s masjids. Now, let’s say you are in charge for a masjid’s maintenance. How would you know whether someone who comes in there observes the Contact Prayer and Zakat. Of course, you will be able to know whether the person does the Contact Prayer, because you would see him doing it at the masjid, but you can not see his Zakat, unless there is a way to verify it. This means that it is impossible to apply verse 9:18 unless Zakat is done through a verifiable process, and this means that Zakat must be verifiable, as it always was. So, one submitter should be able to know whether the other submitter gave his Public Obligatory Charity.

And this is how submitter are able to identify each other. Let’s say that someone in social media said that he is a submitter. Is this how you would know him? No. Verse 5:53 says that simply claiming or swearing that someone belongs with us is not sufficient to consider him part of our community. Verse 17:36 says that we should not accept any information, unless we verify it for ourselves. So, we do not accept anyone’s statement that he is a submitter until we verify it. And the Quran tells us exactly how to verify it. In verse 9:11. it says, if they repent and observe the Contact Prayers and give the Obligatory Charity (Zakat), THEN THEY ARE YOUR BRETHREN IN RELIGION. So, it is not possible to know whether someone belongs to the community of submitters, unless we can verify that they did the Contact Prayers and Zakat. The process of verification for contact prayers already exists through the weekly Friday Prayer, but there must be a second verification process, which is to verify whether they gave Zakat or not. So, Zakat is like a passport which is used to allow someone to join the community of submitters. We can not enter without that passport. You can claim that you are a submitter all you want, but if you don’t have that ‘passport’, you have not entered the community of submitters yet. And this is confirmed in other verses, like verse 5:55, and verse 9:5.

Now, how this Zakat verification process is administered is not that important. For example, in the past, it was simply done through two Zakat collectors, with a log book, who witnessed it. In the Internet age, it can be slightly different, and if electronic money becomes the main form of transactions around the world, that might still be slightly different, but the important thing is that it should always be verifiable, and this verification process is ensured by someone who is put in charge for that, in your local or online congregation (4:59, 42:38, 22:41). So, according to the Quran, Public Obligatory Charity should be verifiable (9:11) and in coordination with someone in charge for it (42:38, 4:59). And by the way, this is how Zakat maintained the “Obligatory” label. Many other things are obligatory like greetings for example (4:86), but they have not received this reputation as “Obligatory”, because when the ancient submitters said “Obligatory” in relation to Zakat, they mostly meant “Enforced” (19:55, 22:41), like taxes. It is an enforced ritual in the community of submitters. This does not mean that our religion goes by force (2:256), because if anyone does not want, he is absolutely free to leave the religion at any time, but he can not be part of the same religion and not give Zakat. This is why the word Zakat in Arabic means “purification”, because it is a precondition for the people to purify their wealth to be allowed to join and belong with submitters.

So, if anyone is in charge for administering a group of people, regardless of the type of group, if he does not enforce the Public Zakat, he is administrating the group unjustly, and the group will eventually fail, when the hype is gone, or it will constantly have hate and problems, and with this understanding in mind, we can see how verse 22:78 makes more sense now: It says:

“You shall strive for the cause of GOD as you should strive for His cause. He has chosen you and has placed no hardship on you in practicing your religion – the religion of your father Abraham. He is the one who named you “Submitters” originally, that the messenger shall serve as a witness among you, and you shall serve as witnesses among the people. (Witnesses about what?) Therefore, you shall observe the Contact Prayers (Salat) and give the obligatory charity (ZAKAT), and hold fast to GOD; He is your Lord, the best Lord and the best Supporter.”.

 

Sources of Zakat

In order to know the sources from which Zakat is given, all we need to do is to see from what sources charity is given, and that also applies to Zakat, because we already established that Zakat is the obligatory subcomponent of charity, and whichever Quranic rule applies to charity, it also applies to Zakat. According to ten different verses in the Quran, charity, which includes Zakat, should be given from moveable wealth (2:177, 2:261, 2:262, 2:264, 2:265, 2:274, 4:38, 9:103, 51:19, 70:24), and the word used in these verses is “malahu” which in Arabic includes all types of wealth except for land and homes. The land and homes are distinguished from “malahu”, from the movable wealth, in verses 33:27, 59:8, 2:267. And by the way, we know that the word “malahu” means all types of movable wealth, and not just income, because this word is used in other verses where it can not mean anything else except wealth. For example, in chapter 4, verse 6, and in chapter 4 verse 10, it refers to the wealth which orphans inherited from their parents. This cannot possibly be income. Orphans do not work to get income. They inherit wealth from their parents. Also, verse 155, in chapter 2 makes a distinction between wealth and harvest/crops (income). It says that you might be tested with loss of wealth, lives, and crops (harvest/income). Here again, we see that there is a difference between wealth and income. Verse 33, in Chapter 33 tells the wives of prophet Muhammad to stay in their homes and give Zakat. Well, if they stayed in their homes, they did not have income, but they still had to give Zakat. That’s because they had wealth. Their movable wealth was either inherited from their parents, or given as a dowry, or from their earlier incomes, or as a gift.

So, now we established that charity, which includes Zakat, should be given from movable wealth. So, now let me present to you two verses which specifically mention zakat. Verse 92:18 says that we should give from our movable wealth (from malahu) for our purification (for zakat).

And here comes the verse which stamps and specifies this issue even more, by directly mentioning the word “Zakat”. Verse 30:39 says that what you give for usury to increase your movable wealth, it will not increase with God, but if you give Zakat (from that same wealth), seeking God’s pleasure, you will receive your reward manifold.

So, according to this verse, Zakat should come from loanable wealth, because whatever you can give as a loan for usury, you can also give it as Zakat (2:280). And loanable wealth is a big part of movable wealth. Loanable wealth is the uninvested and the unnecessary wealth, because you can only loan what is not absolutely necessary for you, and what you did not already invest. So, this means that business investments, like shares in a corporation, and your last income should be also excluded from Zakat, because they are not loanable, and your last income should be excluded because you still don’t know how much of it you will need for your Private Obligatory Charity, for provisions for yourself, your children, your spouse, and your parents, and potentially your relatives and friends. Only after you receive the next income, you can be sure how much of your previous income is left. And this exclusion of the last income is given in verse 2:219 which says, “They ask you what to give to charity: say, “The excess.” “The excess” means “what is left”, and only your previous incomes can qualify as “what is left”, but not your last income, because you still don’t know if enough will be left from it.

There is one final exception given in the Quran. Verse 2:262 tells us not to do harm when giving charity. For example, if you have a phone, you can not divide one fortieth (2.5%) of it and give it as charity. It would do harm to the phone. Or if you have 20 sheep, you can not give one fortieth of them, unless you cut one of them in half, which would destroy the other half as well. So, unless you have 40 sheep or more, or 40 phones or more, you do not owe Zakat for them. This is to avoid harm, which is a Quranic requirement (2:262). You must have 40 or more units from any of the things, in order for them to qualify for Zakat.

So, if we take all the verses of Quran into consideration we can conclude this:

Public Zakat is 1 from any 40 units of any type of wealth, excluding

• land,
• homes,
• business investments,
• corporate stock,
• and your last income.

Everything else is included, like gold, silver, other precious metals, money in any form (including savings, money in your wallet, in the bank, cryptocurrencies, loans given to others (since loans prove that they were loanable wealth)), valuable products (3:92), anything from which you have 40 or more units of that – for example 40 or more dollars, 40 or more sheep, and so on.

 

The Amount

So, we already said that the amount of Public Obligatory Charity is one fortieth, or 2.5% of the specified types of your wealth, but how do we know that 2.5% is the correct amount? We can extract this exact percentage from the Quran. Here is how: Verse 6:120 says that those who commit sins will definitely have to pay for them. So, there is no way to Paradise without being completely purified from our sins. And to be purified completely, it means that you have to give up everything, 100% of your wealth, because ultimately we do not deserve anything, because everything good comes from God (4:79). However, in verse 6:160, God says that whoever does a good deed receives the reward for ten, which means that we can reach the same necessary purification with ten times less giving, with 10%. So according to this verse, if we give 10%, God will consider it as 100%, and this 10% has been the amount from the time of Abraham until Muhammad, and even the Jews until this day consider it to be 10%. So, for people before Muhammad to be saved, they had to deserve at least 10% of what God gave them (34:45). However, knowing that the generations after Muhammad were not as strong in belief as generations before Muhammad (56:13-14), God, the Merciful (1:1), made it easier for us (8:66), and revealed in sura 28, verses 52-54 that He will double the rewards for anyone who believes in the Quran. This means that we can now completely purify our wealth by giving half as much, 5%. But there is one last reduction which came to us through the Quran. In verse 57:28, God informs us that He will double the rewards for anyone who believes in His messenger, and here He is talking about any living messenger so far. It’s easy to believe in messengers who have gone to people in the past; even the Jews believe in them. The challenge and the double reward is to believe in the messengers which were sent to us (2:285). So, if we believe in the messengers which are truly sent by God to us, then we can completely purify our wealth by giving half as much as 5% which is 2.5%. And this is where the 2.5% comes from. So, when we give 2.5%, it is doubled if we believe in God’s messenger (57:28), and then doubled again if we believe in the Quran (28:52-54), and then multiplied tenfold because God rewards every good deed tenfold (6:160), and our 2.5% now has become 100%, which is the precondition to make it to Heaven. So 2.5% x 2 x 2 x 10 = 100%.

Someone might wonder why did we say earlier that we need to purify only some types of our wealth, when we can clearly see here that we need to purify all our wealth to make it to Heaven. Well, the types of wealth which are not loanable are automatically purified. For example, if we have a piece of land, the birds of the sky will eat from it, and the insects and wild animals will use it, and it will beautify the view of passersby, and so on, and that is charity. So, we don’t give Zakat from land because it was already given. Also, regarding homes, for example – we share them with our family members (24:61), and that is charity (2:215,), and it promotes modesty (33:33), enabling us not to roam around the streets (7:74), and all these are charity (59:9, 33:33), which is why we do not need to pay Zakat from our homes. So, the Zakat for your home is hospitability (59:9) within what is legal (2:235). There is also Zakat for our bodies. Even our bodies are wealth (2:247, 12:20, 4:92, 58:4). The souls are the true us (39:42), but our bodies are part of our wealth, and the Zakat for our bodies is fasting during the month of Ramadan (2:184) which is refraining from 2.5% of annual bodily pleasures (2:187), and this purification of our body is done once a year (9:36, 2:185), and as you can see, even though we have purified our bodies during the last year, we need to purify the same bodies again during this year, and this brings me to the cycle of Zakat. The Zakat cycle is every year, because it takes a year for the wealth to become impure again, and this is indicated in verse 9:28 which mentions how the commandment to prevent idol worshipers from approaching the Sacred Masjid came as a commandment to be implemented “after this year” which is how long it would take them to have their wealth impure again. So, the Public Obligatory Charity is given every lunar year, and it starts from whenever you decide to join the submitters, and then it repeats every lunar year. Of course, the Zakat for the perishable things like fruits, vegetables, and milk, should be given on the day of harvest (6:141), so they don’t go to waste (6:141), but the Zakat for the things which last longer than one year like our bodies, gold, silver, money, cattle, etc., that subcomponent of Zakat should be given once a year (9:28, 9:36, 2:135, 22:78).

 

The Abrahamic Religious Practices as Double Confirmation

Some people who have not examined the Quran with a complete approach might choose to understand a few of the verses presented in this video differently. However, there is another way to prove that Zakat, as presented in this video, is correct. Here is how:

The Quran informs us that Zakat is a religious practice which God instituted through prophet Abraham (21:72-73, 2:127-128), and then God guaranteed that He will keep it as a preserved tradition in practice among the descendants of Abraham (43:28, 16:123, 22:78, 42:13). This means that whatever we find in the Quran about Zakat must already exist at least somewhere in the world as a practical tradition. I am not talking about words and books (31:6, 68:37); I am talking about the actual practice in the field. I am talking about the religious practices of Abraham guaranteed by God to be preserved. And these Abrahamic religious practices are Salat (21:73), Zakat (21:73), Fasting (2:183), and Hajj (3:97). So, if anyone thinks that we should understand the Quranic verses about Zakat in a different way, he should also be able to show us from real life where such a type of Zakat existed among the descendants of Abraham throughout history and now. And the Zakat, as presented in this video, has been and is still in continuous practice in many places among the descendants of Abraham. Everything I presented here, you can find it as a tradition at least somewhere in the world. So any principles about Zakat can only be correct, if they are old and continuous. Of course, this rule only applies to the Abrahamic religious practices (Salat, Zakat, Fasting, and Hajj), but not for the other things in religion. And in agreement with this rule, this video does not present any new religious principles about Zakat. It simply shows us where to find them in the Quran.

Of course, everything in this video is concluded directly from the Quran alone, but it happens that the Abrahamic tradition and the Quran agree in this issue, as God promised Abraham. And this preservation becomes even more amazing, realizing that the Zakat details were kept intact throughout history, regardless of the fact that the people who carried those practices were more often disbelievers than believers, and they could never explain from the Quran why the details of Zakat are the way they are. For example, they could never explain why Zakat is 2.5%, and so on, and unfortunately they were convinced that you can not find these in the Quran, but this video shows us that you can find even the smallest details about Zakat in the Quran, because the Quran is complete and fully detailed in religious matters (6:113-114), and it actually also guides us on how to extend the Abrahamic practices in new circumstances which Abraham did not experience, like our circumstance which is a circumstance with internet and democracy, and cars, and bicycles, and stock markets, and paper money and so on (57:4).

 

The Process of Zakat and the Receivers

In the Quran, Zakat is called Zakat only in the moment when your wealth leaves your hand (purification from it), but in the moment when it gets into the hands of the poor, it is called Sadaqah (a good deed) (9:60, 9:58), and there may be steps in between, but the final recipients of Sadaqah which came from Zakat should always be

• the poor,
• the needy,
• the workers who collect it,
• those who are close to conversion,
• to emancipate the dependents,
• to those in sudden debt,
• in the cause of God,
• and to the traveler or immigrant (9:60).

This has always been common knowledge among the Muslim scholars.

And the distribution steps are not given in the Quran because they change. The internet has given us even more options regarding the distribution steps from Zakat to Sadaqah. For example, one option which we are implementing right now enables you to be both the giver and the distributor of Zakat. So you can give Zakat as Sadaqah directly to those who need it, as long as there is a way for other believers in the community to verify it, and internet has enabled it. And even this will be constantly updated depending on which distribution steps are deemed the best for the circumstances, and there might be several options available simultaneously to allow you to choose the most suitable one for you, and these are simply administrative issues, but the unchangeable religious aspects are in the Quran, and two of important aspects are that Zakat has to finally reach the needy categories mentioned in verse 9:60, and it has to be verifiable.

 

The Side Benefits of Public Obligatory Charity

Someone might say, “Why should zakat be a Public Obligatory Charity when private charity removes more sins than public charity (2:271)?”  Well, during Zakat, you do not make your charity public. The person who is responsible for the Zakat system makes it public. The purpose is to inform the others that you belong with them, and it is not bragging, because you did not do something exemplary like in the cases of voluntary charity. You only fulfilled the obligation like everyone else in the same community. And of course, we should make sure not to humiliate the poor people who received it, and that part can be kept private, but the fact that you gave the Zakat is better to be kept public, because the purpose of Zakat is not only charity; it has so many other purposes. One of the biggest purposes is the unity of submitters which can only be achieved with Public Zakat (5:12, 2:40). We can not leave our unity at the mercy of social media (4:139). We are not sheep. Verse, 2:104, says “O you who believe, do not say “Raa`ena” “Shepherd us”, but say, “Unzurna” “Watch over us”, and you can sense how even submitters act like sheep when using social media. First they flock in one group, then they flock to another group, and so on (4:83).

The other purpose of Zakat is to help submitters connect with each other. They can know about each other, promoting proper marriages, and so on. The only case of a marriage described in the Quran is the marriage of Moses, and he found his wife during a charitable deed, and that is the best occasion to find someone to marry, because this is the best deed you can do, while communicating with other people. We don’t need to seek partners in bars and social media and all that. Let’s just unite for charitable purposes, and the side social benefits will come on their own. The Zakat system is our official social media, together with the Friday Prayer. Creating groups through other social media is allowed in principle, but if they don’t have Zakat as an entry barrier, they attract people with secondary intentions, and then the groups become venues for arguments, hate, Quranic quotes out of context, dividing the Quran, disorientation, people with false identities, people who preach to the converted, and then, of course, the result is that instead of bringing people closer to the religion, it drives the religiously inexperienced people away from religion, since they fail to realize that religion can not be contained, codified and defined by social media groups, and internet webpages.

And finally, let me remind you that Zakat (Obligatory Charity) is the best deed a human can do after the Contact Prayers. While Contact Prayers are a sign that someone believes in God, Obligatory Charity is a sign that someone believes in the Hereafter (2:3, 24:37, 27:3, 41:7, 31:4), and both believing in God and the Hereafter are requirements to make it to Heaven (2:62). There is a large number of people who believe in God alone, but they do not truly believe in the Hereafter, in the next life, in the bodily resurrection after death. And some of them are convinced that they believe in the Hereafter, but they will be surprised in the next life when they realize that they really did not, and God will prove it to them by pointing out how they disregarded the obligatory charity. Because, if you are really convinced that you will have an eternal next life, wouldn’t you invest towards it? So, obligatory charity is the second most important religious ritual, because it proves our second most important belief, belief in the Hereafter.

 

By: Alban Fejza, the Clarifying Messenger

What is Islam?

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Islam actually began with the first man, the first human being, Adam; he was the first messenger of God; he brought to his children and grandchildren the message of worshiping God alone and this is Islam, submitting to God, worshipping God alone.

 

Abraham was the Original Prophet of Islam

A series of messengers after Adam brought the same message – worship God alone (21:25) – the first commandment in the bible, the message of Moses, the messenger of Jesus, the messages of all the prophets of Israel, David, Solomon and so on, is one and the same, the first commandment – worship God with all your heart, all your body, and all your soul – worship God alone. The Quran states very clearly that the religion as far as God is concerned is Islam (3:19). So, there is only one religion as far as God is concerned. If you want to be more specific, the original prophet of Islam is Abraham, because he brought all the religious practices in Islam, and we see this throughout the Quran. For example, in Surah 21, verse 73 tells us that Abraham was the original source of – of course God is the original source of everything – but Abraham delivered to us the Salat Prayer, the Contact Prayers and the Zakat Charity. And we see this also with the Fasting, the Hajj Pilgrimage, all the practices of Islam came to us through the prophet Abraham. The prophet Muhammad contributed the message, the scripture of Islam, which is the Quran.

 

Prophet Muhammad’s Role Was to Deliver God’s Final Message – the Quran

The prophet Muhammad contributed the message, the scripture of Islam, which is the Quran. God revealed the Quran to us through the prophet Muhammad. The prophet Muhammad was born in the year 570 AD, and when he was 40 years of age, he was appointed God’s final prophet. Prophet means he brought a new scripture, the final edition of God’s message to the world, and that is the Quran.

The Quran was given to the prophet Muhammad in one night as we see in the Quran in many verses – in Surah 17 verse 1, in Surah 44, verse 3, and in Surah 97. The release of the Quran from Muhammad’s soul to his mouth and his hand was done over a period of 23 years – from his age of 40 to the age of 63 – he died at the age of 63. So, over a period of 23 years, the Quran was being released after being placed in Muhammad’s heart on the Night of Power (in Arabic, Laylatul Qadr). The purpose of releasing the Quran over a 23-year period is to help the prophet and the believers at the time to memorize the Quran as it was being released and this is stated in the Quran. In the Quran it says, “to fix it in your memory” (25:32). So, the release was very slowly, very gradually, and it took 23 years.

God created the universe, and created the human race, and out of his mercy, He sent messengers and books to tell us about Him. All these messengers and all the books that God sent to us preach one and the same religion. The first messenger was Adam himself, the father of all humanity. After him came messengers, like Noah, Jesus, Moses, Muhammad. Muhammad was the last prophet, bringing the last scripture, the Quran, and in the Quran we find everything we need – all the duties, obligations, commandments, prohibitions in Islam. Quran is the final scripture. It is the completion of the message, because the previous scriptures were suited for that stage of human development, the Quran came to complete the picture, and now we have the final, the complete religion, Islam. The Quran is all you need, in fact, because God said that the Quran is complete perfect and fully detailed, if you go to any other source, you will be disobeying God, and disobeying the messenger of God, Muhammad, who brought this Quran, out of his mouth. God brought to us the Quran out of Muhammad’s mouth, and you would be disobeying God and disobeying Muhammad, if you follow any other sources besides the Quran, and specifically, I mean sources like Hadith, Sunnah and all the other books and things that the traditions and the customs invented. If you go to any source besides the Quran you will be disobeying God, because clearly God says in sura number 6 verse 114, for example, that the Quran is fully detailed – you don’t need anything else. God says in verse 19 of sura number 6 that the Quran is what was given to Muhammad to deliver to the world and it is the only source for religious guidance and religious education. The Quran tells us exactly what the essentials of Islam are, and they are very quickly – I’m going to go into details of this later on:

 

The First Pillar of Islam is: Worship God Alone

First, you should believe in God alone. You do not have any other idols. You are devoted to God alone, and this is represented by the Shahada, the first so-called pillar of Islam. Let us go along with that idea -the first pillar of Islam is the Shahada, and the Shahada is stated in the Quran in sura 3 verse 18. It says, “God bears witness that there is no God except He”, and also the angels and those who possess knowledge will make this Shahada, which is La ilaha ela Allah. This is the first pillar in Islam – sura 3, verse 18 – the Shahada, the first pillar of Islam is “La ilaha ela Allah”. If you want to make it complete, then you say, “I bear witness that there is no God except Allah, the one God. Now, don’t add anything else. Some people who imitate old inventions and old traditions will say Ashadu An La Ilaha Ila Allah and then they make another Shahada that Muhammad is a messenger of God. We know that Muhammad is a messenger of God, but if you inject this in the Shahada, this ruins everything, because now you don’t have God alone – you put an idol, Muhammad, next to God, and this, by the way, is a very strong prohibition in the Quran –  to put any other name besides the name of Allah, the name of God. We find this in sura 39, verse 45 – you must devote yourself to God alone – you do not idolize Muhammad and put him next to God. This will be going against God and against Muhammad. So, the first pillar of Islam is Shahada, La Ilaha Ila Allah.

 

The Second Pillar of Islam is the Contact Prayers (Specific Actions and Words)

The second pillar is observing five Contact Prayers every day. This is the food for your soul. This is a favor that God is doing for you. You are not doing the favor to God. And the five Contact Prayers begin before sunrise; you must get up before sunrise in order to feed your soul, give your soul breakfast – your body will be lazy and will not want to get out of bed before sunrise, but for your sake, get out of bed before sunrise and do the morning Contact Prayer, whereby you contact your Creator and feed your soul. By the way, the details of the prayers are given on another video that we call Principles of Muslim Prayer where you can see how the contact prayers are performed the correct way, not the traditional innovations that we see in the Muslim world.

The second prayer is the Noon Prayer and it begins as soon as the sun declines from the highest spot in the sky. That is the Noon Prayer. It consists of four units. (The morning prayer is 2 units; the Noon Contact Prayer is 4 units).

The Afternoon Contact is done about three or four hours after the Noon Prayer in the mid-afternoon and the fourth Contact Prayer is the Sunset Prayer, and it is done immediately after sunset. And the final Contact Prayer, the night prayer, must be done about two hours after sunset. So, these are the five Contact Prayers, and they represent the second pillar of Islam.

 

The Third Pillar of Islam is Fasting During One Month (Ramadan)

The third pillar of Islam is fasting (in Arabic, “Seyam”) (2:183). God commands us to fast during one month of the year, and it is the ninth month of the lunar calendar (2:185). Now, I’m smiling because there is a tremendous test in this system where the lunar year is shorter than the solar year and this makes the month of Ramadan move about 10 to 15 days every year. So, it comes in the winter sometimes, when the day is nice and short, and fasting is very easy, and moves to the summer where the days are very long 16 hours or more, sometimes, and the day is hot and you can’t eat or drink during this long period, and a lot of people will drop out. They will they will not fast, even though nobody dies by not eating or drinking for 24 hours. But, some people will drop out, and you can see that the system is designed to show who will fast and would obey God’s commandment no matter how long the day is. This changing of the day from short and cold to long and hot days will show us who are the dropouts, who will fast only if the day is short and nice and cold. So, this is the third pillar of Islam, fasting during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.

As you see, the fasting of Ramadan is also designed to tame the wild horse, your body. See, your body wants to eat and drink, and you the real person or the soul dictates on the body saying, “No, you’re not going to eat or drink until sunset”, because the fasting consists of not eating or drinking or engaging in sexual intercourse from dawn to sunset. Dawn means about two hours before sunrise, to sunset. No eating, no drinking, no sex, and this is control of your wild horse. You are taming the wild horse, your body, and you can see that God is training you, is teaching you to be a person of strong will, and preparing you for the eternal life of the hereafter, the real life, because in the real life that comes after this life, God wants the people who are strong, who practiced and exercised, and know how to control themselves, I mean their bodies. This also causes your soul to feed, grow, and develop.

 

The Fourth Pillar of Islam is Zakat Charity

The fourth pillar of Islam is Charity (in Arabic “Zakat”) (2:43). There is an Obligatory Charity where you sit down and you calculate exactly what you possess, what your possessions are, and you give away a portion, a fixed portion of your net worth. You do this once a year, you pick out a specific day in the year, maybe the last day of Ramadan, or the first day of Ramadan, or the first day of January, one day, one fixed day in the year, and you sit down on that day, and you calculate how much you are worth. This means that you add up the market value of your house, your car, your clothes, anything that you possess. If you sell it all today, how much would it be worth, the fair market value, not the price of the new thing – but the present market value of everything you possess, and then you give away 2.5% of that. See it’s a small percentage, and you do it once a year, and it goes to specific people. The Quran lists them in this priority:  first, your parents. If your parents are rich – and these are the recipients of your charity – if your parents are rich, the second in the list are your relatives – you give this 2.5%, you give it to your relatives. If they’re all rich, then you find some orphans, people who do not have support, parental support or other support or something, and you give this charity to them. After the orphans, you give to the alien, somebody who’s traveling, and is stranded and doesn’t have the money or the bus fare to go to his hometown. You help that person. So, the order in the Quran is: the parents, the relatives, the orphans, the traveling alien, the poor, the beggars, and so on. So, there is a specific order for giving these charities. However, there is also a general charity called “sadaka”, and this is an on the spot charity; you’re walking in the street and you see a poor person, and you want to help, then you help that person and this is called “sadaka” or charity. You’re supposed to be charitable the whole year, all the time, you must be charitable, but the Zakat is the Obligatory Charity where you give it to someone you personally know, you personally know that this fellow is poor and needs help, and you give your 2.5% to these people that you personally know. You cannot consider the taxes for example as Zakat charity, because you don’t know where the taxes will go. They can go to fix the street or something, or to the army or something, but the idea behind Zakat is that you give it to the people that you personally know are in need, and the Quran lists the parents first, the relatives, your own; you start with your own people and then you go to other strangers, in that order.

 

The Fifth Pillar of Islam is Pilgrimage – Hajj to Mecca

The fifth pillar of Islam is Hajj pilgrimage to the holy land in Mecca (2:196). And this is only, of course, for the people who can afford it. When you can afford it, you go to Mecca, and you observe Hajj, and this is commemoration of the prophet Abraham, not the man Abraham, but his exemplary submission to God. He thought, he saw a dream one time, and he thought that God was commanding him to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael, and he proceeded to carry out this command, even though, God did not order him to do it. He just thought in a dream that God was ordering him to do it, but he was willing to sacrifice his own son in submission to God, and, of course, God intervened to save Ishmael and Abraham from this tragedy and the God substituted a sheep to be sacrificed instead of Ishmael, and this is what you do when you go to Hajj. And Hajj consists of arriving in Mecca dressed only in untailored clothes – just a sheet or something – and seamless shoes or sandals – seamless clothes and seamless sandals – the women dress in a regular dress that is simple, so you cannot tell the rich from the poor.

To observe Hajj, you go to Mecca, dressed in seamless clothes, and seamless sandals – this is for the men. The women dressed modestly in regular modest dress (all white dress for example) so you cannot tell the rich from the poor. You get to Mecca, and you go around the Kaaba, in Mecca, seven times, then you go between Safa and Marwah, the knolls of Safa and Marwa, seven times, then you go to Arafat, mount Arafat, and you stand there the whole day. You spend that whole day on mount Arafat commemorating God, worshiping and praying, and then you go to Minna. It’s a little town near Mecca. You go to Minna for two or three days. Then, you go back to the Kaaba, go around it seven times, which is called “the farewell circumambulation” around the Kaaba, and this is it,

Now, my advice to you is: never to go to Medina, because people go to Medina and they ruin their Hajj. They go to the prophet Muhammad’s tomb, mausoleum, and they idolize the prophet, and this ruins everything, ruins the whole religion, not just Hajj (39:65). So, Hajj must be done only in Mecca where you go around the Kaaba seven times, between Safa and Marwa seven times, you go to Arafat for one day and to Minna for two or three days, and this is it. These are specific steps that are mentioned in the Quran.

 

All Our Work Would Be Nullified, If We Practice Idol-Worship. We Must Be Devoted to God Alone.

And, by the way, all these duties in Islam came to us through the prophet Abraham. If you look at Sura 22, the last verse, number 78, you will see that Abraham is the source, the father of Islam, and the father of Muslims, and if you look at sura 16 verse 123, you see that the prophet Muhammad followed the religion of Abraham. Islam is the religion of Abraham. He is the founder of Islam, and all the duties of Islam came from Abraham, not the prophet Muhammad. Muhammad brought the Quran; God brought the Quran through Muhammad. So, this is why some people become confused when you tell them that God says that the Quran is complete, perfect, and fully detailed. Some of the old traditionalists will say, “Ok, where is the number of raqqas for the Noon Prayer in the Quran”. See, they forget that the Contact Prayers, the Fasting of Ramadan, the Zakat charity, and the Hajj pilgrimage, all these duties came to us from Abraham, and the Quran says so. If you look at sura 21, verse 73, it tells you that Abraham started the Salat, and the Zakat. And in sura 22, entitled “Hajj”, you see that Abraham is the source of Hajj, and so on (22:26). The Quran says clearly that all duties and obligations came to us through the prophet Abraham and tells us in sura 22, verse 78, that this is the religion of Abraham. The prophet Muhammad simply contributed the Quran, and the Quran is God’s word that came through Muhammad (5:99). So watch for this point, and don’t let anyone trick you into thinking that the Quran is not complete. The most important principle in Islam is “God alone”. You must be devoted to God alone (21:25). You do not idolize the prophet Muhammad, like the Christians did with the prophet Jesus. You devote yourself completely to God alone, and you follow the word of God alone, the Quran alone, no other sources. If you follow other sources, you nullify all your work as we see in sura 39, where God says that if you fall in idol worship, all your works are nullified (39:65). You may do the Salat, the Zakat (the Charity), the Hajj, the fasting and all this, and it will be all in vain, unless you are devoted to God alone, and you declare your Shahada, “Ashadu An La Ilaha Ila Allah”. This is it. So, these are the basic essentials of Islam.

 

Prohibitions

The prohibitions are also important. There are four meats that you cannot eat, for example, and these are (6:145):

1. Animals that die of themselves without human interference.
2. Pork, the meat of pigs.
3. Running blood, running blood that you can put in a glass and cook or drink.
4. Animals dedicated to other than God, that are specifically dedicated to Muhammad or Jesus or Ali or somebody.

These are forbidden. So, if you go to the market, you go to Safeway Market, for example, and you look at the meat, if you want to know if it is Halal (permitted) or Haram (prohibited), you ask yourself these four questions: (1) Is this meat pork? The answer is “no”, then (2) did these animals die of themselves without human interference? The answer is “no”. (3) Is this running-blood? The answer is “no”. (4) Was this meat dedicated to Jesus or to anyone else or Saint Francis? The answer is “no”. Therefore, this meat is Halal, it’s ok, you can eat it. If you make it Haram, if you prohibit it, then you are following some other religion. You’re not a Muslim, when you do that. So, it is very important to follow specifically what the Quran prohibits. If you prohibit anything else – some people go to funny lengths, like prohibiting soaps and brushes and shoes and things like that, and of course, this is a religion that is not Islam. It has nothing to do with Islam.

Also prohibited are all intoxicants – alcohol, marijuana, anything that will affect your mind, all intoxicants, anything that affects your capacity to think, and to have a healthy brain (5:90). So all intoxicating drugs, weeds, and alcohol, all these are prohibited. Also gambling is prohibited. Don’t play the lottery. It will cost you more, even if you win the jackpot, you will end up a loser. God is in control and He prohibited gambling, games of chance of any kind.

Of course, the major prohibitions are listed in the Quran: Adultery is prohibited, murder, stealing, cheating, lying. God wants you to be a perfect person, a nice person. Even breaking the promise is prohibited. You must be a person of your word, you must be a man of your word or a woman of your word. When you say something, you do it, and people must know you as such. This is what a Muslim is all about.

 

Some Hajj Advice

Now, some people are fascinated by Hajj pilgrimage, and they just want to do it right away. They’re fascinated by the exotic country, you know, Saudi Arabia, and the trip, and all that, but my advice to you is to perfect your religion first. Speaking from experience, it is not a very pleasant trip. There is a million and a half or two million people making pilgrimage, and it is an exacting trial. Instead of enjoying – you’re not going as a tourist – it is a difficult process and some people may become disillusioned when they go too early before the faith is strong enough. So, be sure you perfect your religion first, and then make the Hajj pilgrimage.

Another thing to guard against with regard to Hajj is that some people go and do the Hajj pilgrimage, like I said, before their faith is strong enough, and they come back puffed up and thinking, you know, “I’m perfect now, I’m cool, and nobody’s like me. I did Hajj.” You know, it goes to their head and it brings the reverse result.  They become worse Muslims than better Muslims. So you want to go and do Hajj pilgrimage, after you perfect your religion, and this must make you humble, more humble. And I remember the proverb that says, “Don’t be humble. You’re not that great”.

 

The Usual Process of Hajj

Observing, the Hajj pilgrimage is very easy. All you do is get ready financially, and with your vacations and everything and then you travel to Saudi Arabia (Jeddah Airport). As soon as you land there, they will assign a guide to you and he and his assistants will tell you exactly what to do. But the main thing is that you memorize the statement, “Labbayka Allahumma Labbayk”, which means, “My Lord, I respond to your call.” “Labbayka La Shareeka Laka, Labbayk.” I respond to you. There is no partner with you.” And the whole statement will be taught to you by the guide. The main statement that you need to know throughout Hajj goes like this: “Labbayka Allahumma Labbayk”, which means, “My Lord, I respond to your call”. “Labbayka La Shareeka Laka, Labbayk.”, “I respond to You. You have no partner. There is no partner with you. I respond to your call”.

So, “Labbayka Allahumma Labbayk. Labbayka La Shareeka Laka, Labbayk.”. This is all you need, and you utter this statement, you memorize it and answer it all the time during Hajj – throughout Hajj, anytime you change direction, you climb a hill, down a hill, you meet friends, you say that.

The details of the Hajj will be given to you by the guide that we will be assigned to you as soon as you arrive in Saudi Arabia.

 

 

By: Rashad Khalifa, the Messenger of the Covenant