Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.
About a month ago, I received a message from someone with this question:
“Peace Bro Alban.Can you show us where it is mentioned in the Quran which month is Ramadan please?”
First of all, in his message, there must be a space after the punctuation mark, the period. Second, he calls me a Bro, but I refuse to know what it means, because I don’t believe in shortening words. When we shorten words, we are disrespectful to our parents and our ancestors who taught us those words, and the Quran tells us to obey our parents. And if you are going to use English, you have to respect it for what it is, and respect them for who they are. This might seem an unnecessary critique of the person who asked the question, but the fact that he does not have enough respect for the language and the people who carry that language is exactly why he fails to understand which months is Ramadan. His question is not a religious question. It is a linguistic question. The Quran was revealed in Arabic, and the Arabs are called the central community in verse 7 of chapter 42, and then in verse 143 of chapter 2, it says that the central community (arabs) serve as witnesses for the people. What does it mean to serve as witnesses for the people? It means that the Arabs bear witness what the word Ramadan means, and we accept it. So, when you want to ask someone to tell you what the word Ramadan means, the Arabs serve as a witness for that. They can tell you. If some crazy Quranists are going to put into doubt Ramadan, they must put into doubt many other things in the Quran? Can they show me which day is Friday from the Quran? Can they show me where is Mecca from the Quran? Can they show me which one is the sheep and which one is the goat from the Quran, if a claim that the skinny one is the sheep and the fat one is the goat. They can not prove from the Quran that I am wrong. This is because it is a linguistic issue, not a religious issue. We have to ask the Quran for religious issues, and ask the Arabs for linguistic issues, and ask the English for English issues.
If you want to use the Quran as the only source of religious guidance, I agree. But you don’t get to redefine the Arabic words. The Arabic words are defined by the Arabs. If they say that Ramadan is the 9th lunar month of the Hijri calendar, then so it is. They bear witness to that, and God tells us that they are the ones who bear witness to that. Now, just because the word Ramadan is somehow correlated with the word “heat” in Arabic, that does not mean that Ramadan only happens in summer as some ignorant Quranists think. According to their logic, Sunday should be when it is sunny, Monday should be when there is a moon, Saturday should be when we see Saturn, and the month of March should only be when we see Mars. Now, imagine an Arab saying, “the English word March stems from Mars, and therefore the month of March is always when we see Mars.” That’s not how it works. You go to the English dictionary, and it will tell you that March is the third month of the Gregorian Calendar, and you get the answer. Similarly, you go to the Arabic dictionary and it will tell you that Ramadan is the ninth month of the Hijri calendar, and you get the answer.
And because the ignorant Quranists have failed to realize that the Arabs are the ones who decide about the definitions of Arabic words, they have come up with many other similar ignorant ideas. For example, some of them claim that Mecca is somewhere else, not in Mecca. Internet is full of crazy theories. If you want to know where Mecca is. It’s wrong to do a “deep” Quranic analysis, because it is not a religious question. It’s a linguistic question. So, you go to the Airport in Saudi Arabia, get a taxi, and tell the taxi driver, “Take me to Mecca please”, and he will send you to Mecca, and you will see road signs which say Mecca. That’s where Mecca is. An Arab taxi driver knows better than a crazy Quranist regarding these issues. The Quranists are abusing the knowledge of earlier revolutionaries who realized that the Quran should be the only source of religious guidance, but that’s it. I agree that the Quran should be the only book of religious guidance. But, if we follow the Quran, we should accept that it says that it has been revealed in Arabic, and therefore you have to trust the Arabs that they know what Arabic words mean. They speak Arabic every day.
So, why does it happen that people who decide to use the Quran as a source of guidance become so illogical, so out of place, so wrong. This is why. They skip steps. The Quran tells them do the contact prayer and the Zakat in the earliest verses of the Quran. They skip it, they don’t apply it, and then they try to understand deeper things in the Quran. It’s not possible to understand the Quran correctly, if you decide to ignore the basics. So, if you don’t give Zakat, you can not understand the Quran correctly. Your mind will go into so many crazy directions. Give zakat, purify your wealth, purify your heart, and then you might be qualified to read the Quran honestly. You can not build the roof of the house without building the foundation.
Another reason why they come up with crazy ideas is because they are lazy. They stay all day on the internet. They usually don’t work, and they do not struggle in the real world. They become absorbed in their thoughts, so they start to question everything. Just get out there, work hard, earn money so you can give it to charity, and then you have understood the Quran properly. Just do it. Are you going to spend your life thinking? Where in the Quran does it say that you will be rewarded for your thinking? No. We get rewarded for our deeds. How many religious philosophers does the world need? It probably needs about 10, but we have millions these days. Millions too many. They are useless, repetitive, recycle bins of old ideas, and they are not even aware that those things have been explored before.
These ideas come from idiot losers who were not doing good in school, so now they have a deep desire to find a way to prove to the others how smart they are, and since there are no grades in religious discussions, they keep thinking that this is the place to prove themselves. No. If you want to prove that you are smart, go to Harvard, be a top student, and then maybe I can learn something from you. So, if you have not been a top student, you are definitely not qualified for internet preaching. The best you can do is take the links of my videos and post them. The whole world does not need to know what you have to say. Internet is a worldwide thing, and if you are not qualified for worldwide discussions, just stay out of it. You don’t have anything new to say. It’s been said before. We don’t need new ideas like, three prayers in the Quran, Mecca in Israel, Ramadan in summer, Jesus did not exist, Muhamamad got his ideas from Persia, Jesus traveled to India and was taught by budhist monks. Really, God is going to send the Messia, the chosen one to learn from budhist monks? If you are lazy, you will have time to read these crazy ideas on the internet, and they will put doubts in your heart, and you can see how your doubts start from being lazy and having too much time for internet, not because these things are unclear. Lazy Quranists, full of doubts, full of personal wishes, with minimal understanding of the Quran, they think that they can come up with revolutionary ideas. They can not redefine the Arabic words. Regardless of how much they try, the road sign in Mecca is going to read “Mecca”, and the road sign in Jerusalem is going to read Jerusalem.
Praise be to God! There is no other god except God.
Many haters of God’s revelations, after they hear that Muhammad was allowed to have more than four wives, while the other people were not, will immediately probably say something like, “See! Muhammad was serving his own interests. He was inventing these things in whatever way it suited him.” Well, let’s see how much it suited him. Let’s start from the beginning. He received his first revelation in the year 610, and about three years later, he made it public, and here is what he had to go through as a consequence: He was famously ridiculed by Abu Lahab, by his own uncle, at that public event. By this time, three of Muhammad’s daughters were already married to the people who opposed him. The tribal leaders pressured Muhammad’s sons in law to divorce his daughters by promising them many other younger women. Two of them did divorce Muhammad’s daughter, so now Muhammad had to provide for his two divorced daughters, which during those times had no perspective in life. They were mostly seen as a burden during those times, because they did not work to provide for themselves. The situation of the other daughter remained just as worse. She stayed with the tribe of disbelievers, because her husband did not divorce her. So, Muhammad was in conflict with the family who were holding his daughter, and this continued even after Muhammad migrated to Medina, and after the battles and so on. This whole time, one of his daughter stayed with the group of disbelievers. Imagine how terrible that must have felt. Having to fight with the people who are holding your daughter. If Muhammad cared about what suited him and his family, he would certainly stop fighting them. By the way, all of these three daughters died before Muhammad. So, what a great family life Muhammad had after he declared to be God’s messenger. Three humiliated and dead daughters. Also, two of his sons died. One was 4 years old, and the other was 2 years old. Anyway, back to the early days, when Muhammad went public with the Quran. They tried to intimidate him, threaten him, marginalize him, isolate him, to pressure him to stop preaching. He gave permission to a very small group of early supporters to escape to Ethiopia, even though this did not suit him, since he was left even more isolated like this. He gave permission to the others, but he himself did not go to Ethiopia. In 616, a public boycott was declared to anyone who had anything to do with Muhammad. No trade was allowed with them, and this happened in a desert community where trading was pretty much the main way to survive. Then, tribal protection was removed from him, which meant that if anyone killed him, they would not be held accountable. He went to Taif, which is about 50 miles to the east of Mecca, to hopefully find refuge there, and preach to those people, but they threw stones at him, and he returned with many wounds. When he returned, the situation got worse. The Meccans planned to kill him, so God authorized him to escape. When he escaped, he lost everything. His wife had already died, his daughters were not with him, he had to leave his house behind, his camels were already eaten to survive during the three years when trade had been prohibited for him. So, at this point Muhammad had nothing. Abu Bakr came to his rescue with his own two camels. They escaped together riding Abu-Bakr’s camels. They were almost caught when they hid in a cave, on their way to Medina, and they traveled through the hard road by the sea, not the easy established road. Then in Medina, he did not live an easy life either. To restore justice, he was responsible for organizing about 90 battles, and he actively participated in about half of them, especially in the earlier ones, the more dangerous ones, when they were few and outnumbered. Each battle would typically take about one week of gathering funds, one week of preparation and buying weapons, one week of standoff without starting the fighting to see whether the enemy might decide to give up, and during this time they had to stay outside in hot summers, sleep outside in cold nights, to hopefully avoid bloodshed, and then the battle would start which would typically last the whole day, and then about one week of cleaning up. Imagine having to do this about 40 times in your life, while you have pressure and spies, and poverty back home. It’s like spending four years of your life sleeping outside in the rough, without bathrooms, and under constant anxiety that the enemy might surprise you. So, no one can tell me that it suited Muhammad to preach the Quran. No one can tell me that he was serving his own interests. Almost all his life was preoccupied with hardship as a consequence of that, and he knew from the beginning that he would encounter resistance. He was not naïve, but he did what he had to do, because it was the right thing. Even the earlier prophets had to go through similar things. It did not suite any other prophet to declare that they were prophets, except for Solomon, because he was already a king, but even in his case, it was David who declared to the people that Solomon is a prophet. So, even Solomon did not have a motive to lie about that. So all the prophets expected resistance, and none of them gave up. Abraham, Moses, went through much harder times than Muhammad. David was forced to fight against the guy whom he was not allowed to kill. Saul was the king, and he had lost his way, and David refused to kill him because Saul had been chosen a king by God, and David lived pretty much all his life hiding in the mountains where he would neither lose, neither was he allowed to win. He was wanted by Saul’s solders. He was forced to invent the iron body armor, so that they could not kill him easily. How about Joseph in prison? Zecheriah was beheaded. John beheaded. Jesus, the perfect example of a sacrificial life, and then Muhammad had to go through a little bit of everything. So, none of the prophets had any motive to lie that they were prophets. They gained nothing from it. A few of them did enjoy life in the last year of their life maybe, and that was only because they had fought in battles earlier, and only as an example to show us that ultimately the believers win. And that is what the disbelievers mention. On average, the prophets had a hard striving life for about 99 years, and enjoyed it only in the last year, and that is the only thing that the disbelievers like to mention. The last year of their life, when they were old anyway. So, if anyone of us is going through some difficulty because we insist to strive in the cause of God, just remember that it has been done before, at a greater extent. In our case, what could our difficulties be? Maybe some career difficulties because we do not wish to use all the devilish and illegal tricks which our colleagues might use. You know, taking credit for work which they did not do, frequently renegotiating salaries, and things like that. Maybe we might get married later, because the competition is unfair these days, with all the sinful competition which is going on around? They don’t care how many people they hurt along the way, and how many false promises they give, and how much they pretend, and how much they lie, as long as they finally get what they were looking for. Maybe we might have children 20 years later or maybe 30 years later, but compare that to Abraham and Zachariah who had children about 80 years later. Maybe we might miss some family joys, and so on, because the disbelievers might either want you to behave badly or not be part of those joys? Maybe we might have to lose a job, because sometimes the job market is just too sinful to continue, but compare that with prophet Job who lost his whole family, and his whole wealth, all at once. Maybe we might have to pay rent, because our parents did not plan correctly. They were concerned about themselves, to get married as early as possible, have children as early as possible, but they did not think about whether their children would have sufficient material support. So maybe, instead of owning our houses, we might have to pay rent for small apartments, but compare that to David who was homeless for the first part of his life. He was forced to stay homeless. He went straight from Homeless to king. He slept rough in the mountains and the caves of the mountains, and his only entertainment during that time was listening to bird songs, herding sheep, and looking at the mountains, so much so that God decided to let the mountains and the birds join David in worshiping God. Imagine that. Living among the birds so much, that God feels sorry for you, and lets the birds talk to you, and lets you understand them. It sounds interesting when I say it, but if we experienced it, we would all quit. Most people quit after 2 or 3 days in a camping trip, and let alone several years alone in the mountains. No bed, no bathroom, no shower, no clean clothes, no snacks, no chocolate, no drinks in bottles, no internet, none of that stuff. Just watching the sun rise and set, and the birds flying around for several years. The morning and evening views were probably nice, but the rest of the day was too hot and uneventful, and the rest of the night was too cold and boring. So, it did not suit David to be on God’s side, and it did not suit Muhammad to be on God’s side. Muhammad was not serving his own interests when he declared that he was a prophet. He was serving God’s interests. This is why God frequently calls Muhammad, and the rest of the prophets, “His servants”, “God’s servants”, because they were not serving themselves. They were serving God.
Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.
He has made charity obligatory for us, which is called Zakat in Arabic. Zakat givers generally agree that Zakat is 2.5%. But 2.5% of what? 2.5% of Wealth? Or 2.5% of Income? Or 2.5% of Gold? or 2.5% of Crops? or 2.5% of Livestock? Or maybe all of them? or maybe some of them? There are so many opinions about this. If you ask the partial followers of Rashad Khalifa, for example, they will tell you that Zakat comes only from income. If you ask the ignorant followers of Hadith, they will tell you that Zakat must be given basically from gold and silver, and a few other things, but not from money, or cars, or anything modern. The majority of Muslims agree that Zakat comes from wealth, but they do not know how to base this on anything, on any acceptable source. Isn’t it strange that the followers of the Quran did not manage to get the correct answer about this, and also the literal followers of Hadith did not manage to get the correct answer about this, and people who just did not think about it too much, they got it mostly right. How is this possible?
Well, it’s possible, because Zakat is an Abrahamic tradition. It was given correctly before the Quran existed, it was given correctly before the Hadith existed, and it was given correctly before the Bible exited. It’s a tradition which God guaranteed to preserve. It’s not kept in books. It’s kept intact in the actions of the people. It’s controlled by God, even if people don’t understand it, even if people don’t know how to support it with their scripture, even if they lose their way in other things, God makes sure that there is always a small group of people who will do it correctly and carry the tradition forward, whether they understand it or not, whether they do it intentionally or not. It’s very hard for some people to wrap their minds around this fact, and it probably gives them an uneasy feeling, because as part of this enlightened generation, we do not wish to do things which we do not understand. So, let me explain it from the Quran and hopefully this will help to calm down your heart about this. The correct method to find the answer for this is to find it in the Quran, of course. But, I have not seen anyone until today who could lead us to the correct solution by using the Quran. This is because they only used part of the Quran. They tried to find it in this verse or that verse, but that’s not how it works. You have to use the whole Quran. You have to take all verses (about 6000 of them), you have to select and gather the ones which a related to this topic (about 500 of them), list them, order them, classify them, double check them, find the connections, avoid shortcuts, be precise, go step by step without skipping any step, be systematic, check the contexts of those verses, by looking at the verses around them, check how those words are used in other verses, and this takes months to do properly, and you might not have time to do that, so I did it for you, and I found the correct answer from the Quran, which turns out not to be very different from what people already knew, but now we have additional assurance because we are finally able to find it in the Quran, in God’s word, and let me tell you the key points.
Verse 39, in chapter 30, says that what you give for usury to increase your 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, here we see that Zakat should be given from your wealth which can be theoretically be loaned to others. I am going to call it, “loanable wealth” or “excess wealth”. And loanable wealth or excess wealth is the uninvested wealth and the unnecessary wealth, because you can only loan what is not absolutely necessary for you, and what you did not already invest. If you have your wealth stuck in an investment, or if it is absolutely necessary for your survival, you would not be able to loan it, and therefore you are also not required to pay Zakat from it. So Zakat is 2.5% of the loanable wealth, which 2.5% of the uninvested and unnecessary wealth, or 2.5% of the excess wealth. It’s the same thing, whether you call it loanable wealth, or excess wealth, or uninvested and uncecessary wealth, we are talking about the same part of wealth.
By the way, we can know that this verse talks about wealth, and not just income, because the word used in this verse is “amwali”. And this word in other verses means “wealth”. For example, in chapter 4, verse 6, and in chapter 4 verse 10, we see the same word being used to refer 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 could not have income, but they still had to give Zakat. That’s because they had wealth. Their wealth was either inherited from their parents, or given as a dowry, or from their earlier incomes, or as a gift.
So, clearly Zakat comes from wealth, not just from income, and this is supported by many other verses. Verse 2:177 mentions charity from wealth, Verse 2:261, charity from wealth, verse 2:262, charity from wealth, verse 2:264, charity from wealth, verse 2:265, charity from wealth, verse 2:274, charity from wealth, verse 4:38, charity from wealth. Let me give you some more indirect verses: Verse 4:95, striving in the cause of God with our wealth, not just our income, verse 9:20, striving with our wealth, not just income, verse 9:41, striving with our wealth, not just income. Verse 9:44, striving with our wealth, not just income, verse 9:81, striving with our wealth, not just income, verse 9:88, striving with our wealth, not just income, verse 9:103, charity from wealth, not just income, verse 49:15, striving with our wealth, not just income, verse 51:19, set aside a portion of your wealth for the poor, not just a portion of income, verse 61:11, striving with our wealth, not just income, verse 70:24 says that WEALTH should be set aside for charity, not just income. So we can clearly see from all these verses, that charity comes from wealth, and Zakat is charity and therefore Zakat must also come from wealth, not just from income. Verse 92:18 uses the phrase “He who gives from his WEALTH, to purify himself”. Both the word “malahu” (wealth) and “zakat” are used in this verse. This verse basically tells us to give wealth for purification, for attaining Zakat.
And the Quran actually even gives us the details from which portion of wealth Zakat should be given. Verse 219, in chapter 2, says “They ask you what to give to charity: say, “The excess.” GOD thus clarifies the revelations for you, that you may reflect.” So God is giving a clear answer about this issue. He already told us in many other verses that charity comes from wealth, and here He tells us that it is only from “the excess” part, and therefore charity must be given from “Excess Wealth”, the excess part of the wealth. And here God is talking about any type of charity, which includes Zakat. Therefore, Zakat, just like other charities, must be given from the “Excess Wealth”. God gives us even more details about which portions of wealth are for Zakat. In chapter 2, verse 267, we can see that land should be excluded from Zakat. The verse says, “O you who believe, you shall give to charity from the good things you earn, and from what we have produced for you FROM THE LAND.” This means that the land does not count, only the things which come from the land. All material things of value come from the land. By the way, in this verse we can see again that Zakat should be given from all types of wealth, whether it came from income (from what you earned) or whether you produced it yourself, or whether you inherited it. In any form you get your wealth, if you have it now, and it is not land, and it is not necessary for your survival, then Zakat should be given from it.
So, if you take all the verses of the Quran into consideration, not just one verse, but all the verses, you can conclude that Zakat should be given from all your wealth, except from land, the necessary wealth, and the wealth invested in a business. And I give you the details and the reasons why these three parts of wealth are excluded, but here I first wanted to establish that Zakat comes from wealth, not just from income.
Now, let’s think about it logically. Imagine two people. One of them worked all his life to earn 1 million dollars, while the other one was born with 1 million dollars. Let’s say that his father died and left 1 million dollars for him. Now, does it make sense that the one who earned it as income should pay Zakat, while the other one who did not get it as income should not pay Zakat at all. He can live all his life without paying Zakat, and he is rich. Does this make sense? Does it make sense to make life harder for the worker, and make it easier for the one who did not work? And they both have the same wealth? If anything, it should be the opposite. We should encourage work, not punish work. So, if two people have 1 million dollars in the bank, they should pay Zakat equally. And actually, I can prove this whole thing with one question. What is the opposite of poverty? It’s wealth, not income. The opposite of loss is income, but the opposite of poverty is wealth. God does not tell us to give to those who lost, but to those in poverty. Those who lost money, they can still be rich, but God tells us to give to the poor. The poor are poor, not because someone has a large income and is hardworking, but because someone is wealthy, and he is staying. If someone is hardworking and gets an income, the poor are being helped by getting cheaper products. On the other hand, if someone has lots of wealth, and does not invest it, that creates poverty, by denying the other people the right to work for it. He is taking something from the world, and keeping it outside of the economy, and thus the economy of the world becomes smaller because of that, and that causes poverty. But someone who has a large income by working for it, he actually makes the economy of the world bigger. So, the poor are poor not because of people with large incomes, but because of people with large wealth, who did not invest it.
Let’s do another thought experiment. If you take all the incomes of the people of the world and give it to the poor, would it solve poverty? No, because these people who worked for income, now would be poor, and people who did not work will be ok, and the rich will still have the same amount of wealth. And actually, the next year, the whole economy of the world would collapse, since people, knowing that all their income will be taken, will not work anymore, and production will stop, and the poor will become poor again, and those who used be average will also become poor without income, while the rich will hold on to their wealth, and now it will have no value, since it will be out of production, and no one will have money to buy it. So, if you take all the incomes of the world, and give it to the poor, the next year, everyone will be poor. Now, let’s imagine the other case. If we take all the uninvested wealth of the world and give it to the poor, now would it solve poverty? Yes. The rich will still have enough wealth, because you took away only the part of wealth about which they had no idea what to do with it, the poor will have enough money to spend, and the working people will keep on working to earn income, and now there will be more money in the economy, because both the poor and the working class are now capable of buying things, and the money will go back to the wealthy who will sell those things, except that now the whole world has become wealthier. The poor, the middle class, and the rich, they have all become wealthier. So, Zakat makes everyone wealthier, not just the poor. Everyone has more, and the rich did not lose anything. The is only possible in God’s system. In other economic systems proposed by the greatest economists of the world, you have to lose something, to gain something, but in God’s economic system, you gain something, without losing anything.
So, the Collective Obligatory Charity (Zakat) should be calculated and given from your uninvested excess wealth, and God willing, I will give you the details of what is included in that and what is excluded from that, in another sermon, but first we need to make sure that we have the principles correct, and that we have the values in the correct order. The correct values are: If you chill and have, you pay. If you work and invest, then you are excused not to pay. This are the correct values. And by the way, many historians have attributed the rise of Islam just to this small detail. They say that Islam dominated Christianity in the early days after Muhammad, because muslims collected the charity as a tax from wealth, and made deductions for those who work and trade, while the Christians collected their taxes from trade and income (from those who work) which encouraged their people to work less, to avoid the taxes, and this caused the Islamic world to outperform the Christian world. Of course, the muslim dominance has vanished today, because most Muslims do not give Zakat, and even when they do, they come up with unreasonable deductions for themselves, and it’s not monitored by anyone, so effectively they are not really giving it, but that’s for another video. But, the correct system is known now. It is the one which fights poverty by promoting work and investment, and not the one which fights poverty by promoting laziness and saving. And by the way, the world has more wealth than income, which means that more people are helped when Zakat is given from wealth, rather than from income.
Now, after more than 30 verses which I provided you, and many logical arguments, the people who believe that Zakat should be given only from income have only one verse on which they rely on, and even that verse does not mention the word Zakat. They bring up verse 141, in Sura 6, which says “Eat from the fruits of gardens and give the due alms on the day of harvest”. They interpret this as Zakat, when in fact this is only talking about the smallest part of Zakat – the Zakat of the Harvest. Even Rashad Khalifa defined this as Zakat of the Harvest, a very small subcomponent of Zakat. Listen to him. As you can see, he defines the word “Haqahu” as the “Zakat of the harvest”. This small subcomponent of Zakat is specifically defined in the Quran, because it has to do with fruits which do not stay fresh for a long time, and therefore a special instruction is given to give away the harvested fruits on the same day when you harvest them, so that they do not get spoiled. And this small part of Zakat should be given directly to the relatives and the poor people near you, because you until the Zakat collectors come to contact us. The fruits would be spoiled by then. But this is only the Zakat of the harvested fruits. The general Zakat, the Zakat of the other parts of wealth, the unperishable wealth, that is the main part of Zakat. So, Haqahu is a small part of Zakat, but Zakat is more than just haqahu.
Someone might ask “Are you saying that Rashad Khalifa was wrong?”, their favorite question, their only argument, if that counts as an argument. Well, this is what I am saying. Rashad Khalifa did believe for a short while that Zakat should be given from income, and he made what he thought to be a correction in a friday sermon which he intended only for the local congregation and only for the people of his time, but in his video which he intended for the whole world and for all times titled “Essentials of Islam” he says that Zakat should be given from wealth, and he never corrected this video. He kept it published just like that. So, God knew what should be kept published for the whole world, even though Rashad Khalifa did not have the correct understanding. Anyway, he did not fully understand this issue, but for the right reason; and the reason is this. The first generation of people who believed him should not have had a bigger wealth than income, anyway, in any case, because in principle, the submitters do not inherit wealth from non-submitters, and all the parents of the first generation of submitters are by definition non-submitters. So, the wealth of submitters during their early days could not be bigger than their income (if they did not steal, of course), and therefore giving money from income in the early days was not worse than giving money from wealth. If they were truly perfect people, all their wealth should have been their income. This is always the case with the early believers, if they are perfect believers. But, once a second generation of submitters comes into existence, they inherit wealth from the previous submitters, and now they can have more wealth than income, and this means that now we have to fix this understanding. Otherwise, we are not paying enough. So, they did not understand this issue, but it did not hurt the poor people anyway, but now, if we insist on not understanding it, poor people will get hurt. So, don’t blame the poor for not understanding Zakat. It’s the responsibility of the rich to understand Zakat. So, regarding this issue, the example of Rashad is like a man who aimed the gun in the wrong place, but the gun had no bullets, and no one got hurt. But now the devil has loaded the gun, and I am telling you, “please aim toward the right place”, towards wealth, not towards income. We can not afford carelessness with a loaded gun anymore. Our wealth is bigger than our income now, and we can not be careless with Zakat anymore. God is displeased with a careless person who owns a gun, and God is displeased with a wealthy person who does not understand Zakat. We are talking about people’s lives here. Poverty kills people. Poverty pushes people to kill other people. Let’s save lives by helping poor people.
By the way, “What’s wrong with being smarter than Rashad Khalifa?” Among every knowledgeable one, there is someone who is more knowledgeable. I am not saying this to exalt myself, but because this is the only explanation why two believers might reach slightly different conclusions. This happens when one of them is smarter. Like the case of Solomon and David. They both were right for their own time, but Solomon was smarter. But still, God loved David more. David had more heart. I certainly appreciate Rashad’s guidance and I am quite sure that he would appreciate my wisdom. We are not jealous of each other’s strengths. Some people hate it when they hear me saying that I am smarter than Rashad, but they fail to realize that I am saying this to save Rashad’s reputation, while at the same time improving our understanding of religion. See, people will eventually see anyway that I have a deeper and more precise understanding of issues, and if I don’t say that I am extremely smart, what will it mean for him? That he is average? No. The truth is that he was extremely smart, and I can only improve on his ideas because I am slightly smarter, and not because he was wrong. When Jesus claimed that he is smarter than Solomon, who was known to be the smartest, Jesus was not saying this to elevate himself. He was trying to save Solomon’s reputation. Otherwise, his new deeper revolutionary ideas would belittle Solomon’s wisdom. God is the giver of wisdom, anyway. Our smartness is not our own merit. I have nothing to brag about. God will reward us according to our heart, not according to our mind. So, let’s purify our hearts, and let’s purify our wealth. Let’s give Zakat (the purification) the correct way. Let’s not let our conflicts with some groups of people, lead us into making the wrong decision.
Verse 8, in chapter 5, says, “O you who believe, you shall be absolutely equitable, and observe GOD, when you serve as witnesses. Do not be provoked by your conflicts with some people into committing injustice. You shall be absolutely equitable, for it is more righteous. You shall observe GOD. GOD is fully Cognizant of everything you do.” So, this verse is reminding us that just because some extremist so-called Muslims think that Zakat should be given from wealth, our conflicts with them should not push us to disagree with them about this issue. What is right is right. After all, charity is charity. We do not need to attach dogmatic undertones to it. For God’s sake, it’s charity. It’s not the fault of poor people that the Muslims have disagreements. Poor people don’t have time to wait until we resolve our disagreements. Let’s feed the poor people first, and then we can discuss the disagreements. I am willing to cooperate in matters of charity with anyone, even in extreme cases when we have deep disagreements about other issues, because verse 2 of chapter 5 tells us to cooperate in matters of righteousness and piety, and verse 114 of chapter 4 tells us that charity is still a good thing to cooperate on, even if the other cooperation aspects might be a bad thing in a given group of people. If we reject the correct way of charity, just because we have disagreements with some people, maybe we just don’t have a good heart. The rich might need your preaching, but the poor need your bread.
Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.
This is actually the first global online Friday Sermon. Why online? Is this a religious innovation (bidah)? The bad word, “the bidah!” Well, it’s definitely a new way of doing it, but is it a religious innovation? Just because something is new, it does not automatically mean that it is a religious innovation. For example, in the past Muslims prayed in dry land, in warm climates, and we can know this from chapter 48, verse 29, which tells us that Muhammad and his companions were left with marks in their faces due to prostration. Latter, when Islam spread north, the land was often cold, or wet from rain, or snowy, and the Muslims got into contact with the Orthodox Christians who had invented the prayer rugs for themselves. Yes, the Orthodox Christians do kneel and prostrate, and the Muslims liked the idea of the prayer rug, a carped used for prayer, and adopted it. And now, they are used all over the Muslim world. And of course, prayer rugs are not a religious innovation. Praying in a carpet is not prohibited in the Quran. It would be a religious innovation if the Muslims considered it obligatory, but that is not the case. So, just because a prayer carpet is a new thing, it does not mean that it is a religious innovation. It’s a technological innovation. A technological innovation is not always a religious innovation. Religious innovations are prohibited; technological innovations are allowed, and they are done to make life easier, not as a form of worship. For it to be considered a religious innovation, it has to be a new way of practicing religion in the same old circumstances. So, if you want to know whether Online Friday Sermons are allowed, you have to consider whether they are being given in the same old circumstances or in new circumstances.
The old normal circumstances used to be that the Friday Sermons were delivered inside a Mosque. But, what if there is a pandemic? What if an earthquake topples the Mosque? What if you live in Christian community where there are no Mosques? What if you live in a community where there are Mosques, but they are being used for idol-worship? What if you live in a university campus, far away from towns and cities? What if you are too far from any mosque? See, these are different circumstances, not the same as the old normal ones. To deal with this, we have organized Friday Sermons at home for many years.
But now that the internet has advanced so much, we need to rethink this position, and after careful consideration, God guided Alban Fejza to the correct solution. Alban Fejza realized that the second best option is actually the Online Friday Sermons while the third best option would be organizing them in private houses.
So, we have three basic options: 1. Mosques, 2. Online sermons, 3. Private houses. The table below rates each option in 10 different areas with a score from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest score, and 10 being the highest score:
So, as you can see, the online option is much better than one might have thought (with a score of 77), compared to 99 for a mosque, and 55 for organizing local home Friday sermons outside of proper mosques. And what the online option even better is that you can combine it with any of the other two options. Yes, that’s possible. For example, you might decide to invite people to do the Friday prayer together in your house, if there is no proper mosque nearby, and do everything the same, except that when you come to the sermons, you use the online sermon, and you might even decide to add or say something after it, if the time allows, but as you can see, hearing the sermons online does not necessarily prevent you from doing the Friday prayer together with other submitters in your house. Even if you have a small mosque, the online sermons can be useful. When you have a small mosque, usually it is hard to find people who can give good quality speeches, good sermons, and you don’t want a boring mosque. In that case, you might rotate. During some Fridays, you give a speech, during other Fridays, you project the online video Friday Sermons on a projector in the mosque, and this gives the Congregation Director of the mosque to think of a good topic for the next Friday. What makes the online sermons even better is that they actually speed up the process of building new mosques where there are no proper mosques available. It helps the people to get together during Fridays, even if they don’t know how to give good speeches. In this way, the group can increase, and eventually be sufficient to build a mosque in that location. So, the intention with online Friday sermons is not to keep the people outside of the mosques, but to speed up the process of building new mosques, wherever there are no mosques, or no righteous mosques.
However, the crucial question is, “Does the Quran prohibit Online Friday Sermons?” The short answer “No.” There is nothing in the Quran which prohibits the Friday sermons online. Yes, doing Friday PRAYERS online is wrong and actually impossible, because it involves physical movements, and rituals, and getting together, and you would be changing the religion of Abraham, if you did not perform them live, but here we are talking about Friday Sermons, not Friday Prayers. There is a difference between Friday Sermons and Friday Prayers. The prayers are part of the religion of Abraham, but the sermons are not. They are practical solutions which Muhammad used with God’s direction in the Quran. In other words, we can find the Contact Prayers even before the Quran was revealed, all the way from Abraham, but the Friday sermons came only after the Quran was revealed. Before that, people did not do the Friday Sermons. They had a day without work, during Saturdays, but during Fridays, nothing special happened. With the revelation of the Quran, this changed. Saturday breaks were canceled, and instead of that, Friday sermons became obligatory, and this change came through the revelation of the Quran, not through Abraham, which means that any orders or prohibitions about it must also be all in the Quran, and the Quran does not prohibit online sermons, and therefore they are allowed. And you can see the difference between Friday Sermons and Friday Prayers even in the language which is used. All the other rituals of the Friday Prayer are done in Arabic, because they a tradition from Abraham. You are not even allowed to change the language; it’s a tradition; it has to stay the same. But this is not the case with the sermons. The sermons can be done in any language. In English, for example. This means that the sermons are not from Abraham, they are a Quranic requirement, but not an unchangeable tradition. In other words, you may change the means of how you communicate the sermons, but you may not change the means of how you communicate the other parts of the Friday Prayer. To put it shortly, if you can do it in English, you can do it online. It’s just another means of communication. So, the rule is simple. Whatever you can do in English, you can do online. Whatever you have to do in Arabic, you must do it live, with no additions or removals. And herein are the steps to show you how it can work perfectly:
As you probably know, the Friday prayer consists of 10 steps:
Step1, the Adhan (call to gather) (in Arabic). Step 2, The statement: “AL-HAMDU LILLAH. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH” (in Arabic). Step 3, First sermon (in English). Step 4, the statement: “TOOBOO ELA ALLAH” (in Arabic), Step 5, the Repentance (Silent), Step 6, the statement: “AL-HAMDU LILLAH. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH” (in Arabic), Step 7, the second sermon (in English), Step 8, the statement: “AQEM AL-SALAH” (in Arabic), Step 9, the Adhan (call to prayer) (in Arabic), Step 10, the two units of Contact Prayer (in Arabic)
So, the Friday Prayer consists of these 10 steps, and only two of them are the Friday Sermons, and only those two can be done in English, and therefore only those two steps can be done online. These sermons are the responsibility of someone who is called a Khatib (preacher), not the Imam. They can be the same person, but they can also be two different people. The imam has the responsibility of leading the whole Friday Prayer, while the Khatib (preacher) is only responsible for the preaching part. So, the online sermons do not replace the Imam, but they are a replacement for the Khatib, and only in cases where a live sermon is not feasible or not available.
So, this is how you can apply this in practice. Let’s suppose that you live in Christian country, and you do not have a mosque which belongs to God alone near you. Even in this case, the Friday Prayer is still obligatory. No excuses. So, you find a place where people will not interrupt you. You might even have to go back home from your work, if you think that this is necessary, and then you observe the Friday Prayer like this.
Make the call to prayer, “Adhan” “ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH”.
You say, “AL-HAMDU LILLAH. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH”
You start the video of the sermon which you received earlier from the Online Congregation Director
You pause the sermon somewhere where it’s suitable and you say, “TOOBOO ELA ALLAH”
You repent
You say “AL-HAMDU LILLAH. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH”
You resume/continue the video sermon
Then, you say “AQEM AL-SALAH”
You make the call to prayer “Adhan” – “ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR, ALLAHU AKBAR. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH.”
You observe the Contact Prayer,
And the same thing applies if you do it together with friends in your house for example. You take the responsibility to say these steps, and the others just listen. As you can see, the online sermons do not change anything from the way it has been done traditionally throughout history. They are only a provision of a solution for the sermons. And similar solutions have already happened. For example, in some mosques in the Muslim world, they will use a microphone so people who did not fit inside the mosque can hear it outside. And actually, they are doing a small religious innovation in this case, without careful analysis, because they use the microphone even for the Arabic parts, for the prayers and so on, not just for the sermon. Abraham never did his Contact Prayer through a microphone.We are only doing the two sermons (which are a non-Abrahamic tradition) through the microphone. The rest of the steps are done live, just like Abraham did them without a microphone. So the person who plays the sermon is still the Imam when he plays the video. If he thinks that he wants to pause the sermon, and mention something important which relates to the local situation, he can do that. This proves that you are in charge as an imam, and that the Friday Prayer is done by you. The Online Sermons are only helping. They are only a provision of a solution, to help people hear new things
Now, the question is, “Why do we find ourselves in such a situation where we have to observe the Friday Sermons online?” Well, this is because of our past sins, our and our parent’s sins. If we grew up as non-submitters, were educated by our parents as non-submitters, lived as non-submitters, of course, when we finally decide to believe, we will not find mosques ready for us. Mosques don’t’ build themselves. So, there is a temporary transitional period during which the Friday Prayer is obligatory but the mosque might not be there. It’s a test, to see whether you will give up, just because it’s not comfortable and easy, or keep holding on to the rope of God. A lot of people quit, but the true believers keep going. They know that the Friday prayer is obligatory, regardless of whether we have a mosque nearby or not. Ultimately, it’s our fault if we don’t have a mosque. We should have become submitters earlier, and build it. If we haven’t contributed financially, of course we will not have a mosque. People of the past built their mosques with sweat and blood. Our case is easier than that.
Some people, after all these arguments, might still think that online Friday sermons are a religious innovation. Our message to them is this: You can watch movies online, you can watch memes online, you can watch dangerous behavior online, sharing it, and thus promoting it, you can watch lousy people online, social media online, indecent women online, fake news online, fake faces online, fake names online, bad ideas online, but when it comes listening to good words online, that’s a religious innovation?! Or maybe Satan is fooling you? He wants to keep you away from doing the right thing online. You are online anyway. Most probably, you cannot escape it in modern world, even if you want to. So, since you are online anyway, you might as well use the internet for the right thing. Also, listening to a sermon online does not stop you from gathering. In fact, if you have a proper mosque near you (where there is no idol worship), it’s an obligation to get together. It’s such a pleasant thing to meet your brothers and sisters who are striving in the cause of God. But listening to a correct online sermon can make the gathering even better.
