Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. There are three main apparent contradictions between Alban and Rashad which the disbelievers use as excuses to discredit Alban. Alban addresses each of them in three separate Friday Sermons, and this is one of them: In this video we deal with the issue of Zakat – what Rashad said and what Alban says. People claim that Alban contradicts Rashad about Zakat. Well, let’s see if it’s true. Let’s first present to you what Rashad himself actually said about this issue, and by the end of this video, you will see that there is no contradiction between Alban and Rashad the messenger, but actually there is only an apparent contradiction between Rashad the messenger and Rashad the Tucson imam, which is resolved in this sermon.
But, first let’s show to you what Rashad himself said. He spoke about it in two videos:
- Video 1: Essentials of Islam
- Video 2: A Friday Sermon on 17.03.89
He says something else about Zakat in Video 1 and something else in Video 2.
In Video 1 he says: “The fourth pillar of Islam is Charity; in Arabic, Zakat. 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, and then you give away 2.5% of that. See, it’s a small percentage, and you do it once a year.”
In Video 2 he says: “2.5% of your net income must go to the poor immediately which means a continuous flow of money from people to the relatives, their parents, and their cousins, and their sisters and brothers, and so on. That’s the correct way of doing Zakat.”
So, in Video 1, Rashad preached Obligatory Charity based on wealth which is done once a year, but in Video 2 he preached Obligatory Charity based on income done every time you receive income.
So, in reality, there is no contradiction between Alban and Rashad, as we will show in this sermon, but if anything, there is a contradiction between Rashad and himself – between Rashad in Vidwo 1 and Rashad in video 2.
Now, the question is, in which video was Rashad right? Well, let’s actually evaluate the authority of these two videos according to Rashad himself.
First, as you can see he did not put a date on Video 1, which means that he meant it for all times, but he showed the date in Video 2. You can see the date as 17.03.1989, which means that what he said in Video 2, he intended it for that specific time.
Second, in Video 1, he is facing the camera speaking to the whole world, and in Video 2, he is facing the local congregation in Tucson, speaking to the Tucson congregation.
Third: In Video 1, Rashad introduces the video as a presentation from the Quran by saying, “The Quran tells us exactly what the Essentials of Islam are – and they are very quickly – I’m going to go into details of these later on…” So, Video 1 is based on the Quran. But, in Video 2, Rashad introduces the sermon as a presentation of a pamphlet which he wrote as an Editor of a Bulletin by saying, “I have no idea what I am going to talk about – but I put down – this will help me a lot. This is something that I distributed last week, and I will just go through it with you. It is the May issue of the Muslim Perspective:” So, Video 2 is based on a pamphlet meant for May 1989.
Now the fourth point: Rashad starts Video 1 with the statement, “In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful”, which means that he is speaking on behalf of God in that video, which means that he was speaking as God’s messenger, but in Video 2, he introduces the preaching with an admittance that he is doing it as a substitute for someone else, and he also admits that he has no idea what he will talk about, by saying, “I was hoping today that the sermon today will be given by General Spooler, but he didn’t make it yet. He’ll be here tonight. Meanwhile, I’m stuck. So, “I’m stuck to give this khutba, and I have no idea what I’m going to talk about,” So, since Rashad had no idea what he was going to talk about, he was not doing this preaching as God’s messenger. A messenger knows what he talks about. So, actually, Rashad was just freestyling as the leader of the congregation in Video 2. So, Video 2 is not preached by Rashad the messenger, but it is preached by Rashad the Tucson imam.
So, now we have the four credentials of each of these two videos, according to Rashad himself, which help us decide which video to go with, because these two videos contradict one another today when it comes to the issue of Zakat.
And here is the list of those four credentials side by side for each video so you can compare them:
And especially the last credential shows that Rashad spoke as God’s messenger in Video 1 and simply as a local imam in Tucson in Video 2.
So, Alban is simply going with the messenger fully, with whatever Rashad says in Video 1. So, there is no contradiction between what Alban says and what Rashad, the messenger said. If anything, there is a contradiction between what Rashad, the messenger said, and what Rashad, the Tucson imam said. So, the problem here is the imam, and not the messenger.
And people think that because Video 2 was made later than Video 1, then it is a correction of Video 1. Well, this argument would be valid if the person in Video 2 had the authority to correct the person on Video 1, but he doesn’t. An imam does not have the authority to correct a messenger. An imam can not correct a messenger. He thought that he did, but it doesn’t ultimately matter what the imam thought. It matters what the messenger thought, and what the messenger thought is in Video 1, and not in Video 2. And Alban completely agree with Video 1, and Alban was forced to declare parts of Video 2 as outdated, for our circumstances, a mistake. So, we go with the messenger in Video 1, regardless of what the imam in Video 2 might have thought about Video 1. And by the way, Rashad, the messenger, never corrected Video 1. He kept it published just like that, until he died. He did not change any bit of it. He had the time and the authority to change it, and edit it, but he didn’t, because God knew that Video 1 is correct, and it is actually some parts in Video 2 which are the mistakes.
However, let’s actually try to save the face of Rashad in Video 2 by trying to justify his mistake. When you look at it, the mistake of Rashad the imam was actually harmless in his situation. It’s harmful for our situation today if we insist on that mistake, but it was harmless for his situation, because when Rashad talked about Zakat in Video 2, he said it in a very specific situation, and in that same video, about one minute before he starts talking about Zakat, he does in passing mention that situation, by saying that “There is not a single mosque in the Muslim world that follows this commandment, that the mosque belongs to God; you shall mention only God’s name.”
Now, this is a key issue. What does this mean? This means that because traditionally the Muslims have organized around mosques, given that during the time of Rashad there was no single mosque where the call for prayer was done correctly, that means that there were no organized aspects of religion in the world which were authorized by God. And Zakat, as it should be performed, as it is said in Video 1 is an organized religious duty. So, when Rashad made that mistake in Video 2, the mistake was harmless, because it was actually better to do less of the Zakat than to do the correct Zakat under the wrong organized religious structures. Let’s take an example, and show you how an unintentional mistake can actually be beneficial instead of harmful.
Let’s say that you ask someone when the month of Ramadan starts, and he makes a mistake and tells you that it will start one week earlier than it truly starts. Now, that’s harmful. However, let’s say that on that mistaken day when that person said that Ramadan will start, the whole food of the world is actually poisoned, and by fasting on the wrong day, that person actually unintentionally saved your life, because during that day, you did not eat the food, and then by the time you had to eat it, the others who got poisoned informed you that the food is poisoned. So, in the same way, if all the organized Zakat around the world was poisoned, which it was when Rashad made that statement, then he actually unintentionally saved you from idol worship, by making a mistake about Zakat. And we know whether organized Zakat, the correct way of Zakat is poisoned or not by checking if the people who organize it are doing their call to prayer dedicated to God alone or not. So, during Rashad’s time, all the mosques made the call to prayer in the wrong way, but today, there are mosques, including our mosque, including our online mosque where we do not use the wrong way of the call to prayer. So, there are organized people today, who actually do organize the Zakat in the correct way, which means that doing the Zakat as preached in Video 1 will not be harmful at all anymore, and because it is the correct way, that is what we should do.
So, to put it shortly. Video 1 is the correct way, and Video 2 is a mistake. However, during Rashad’s time, Video 1 was harmful, while Video 2 was harmless. However, today, in our situation, Video 1 is both harmless and correct, and the change of situation is reflected by the fact that now we do have mosques where the call to prayer (which represents the organized religion) is done correctly.
So, this is how we justify Rashad’s mistake, even though it was a mistake, but it was harmless in his times, but it is harmful for our times, and now that we have mosques where the correct call to prayer is made, we should not insist on that old mistake. We have the means to do better now, especially because of the internet which enables us to organize without idol-worship, if that is what we choose.
So, to conclude, Alban does not contradict Rashad. In today’s situation, Rashad, the imam, has ended up contradicting Rashad, the messenger, and Alban simply told us how to resolve that situation, by simply telling us to follow Rashad the global messenger, instead of Rashad the local imam.
Now, even if we ignore these two videos completely, and don’t even think about how these two videos contradict each other today, if we focus on what the Quran actually says about Zakat, we can still get the correct answer from there. And according to the Quran, we should give Zakat from 2.5% of our loanable wealth each year. And we can find this answer, if we choose to take into account all the verses of the Quran, everything that the Quran has to say about Obligatory Charity, and if we take all those verses, which are hundreds, and analyze them carefully, without ignoring any verses, then we will reach the same conclusion. And to save our time, Alban did that for us, and it is presented Alban’s video clarification titled “Obligatory Charity (Zakat)”. So, in that video, Alban restarted from scratch, completely ignoring what anyone thinks about Zakat, and after years of analysis, after finding, listing, arranging all the verses of the Quran about this issues, a clear picture emerged with God’s permission, that Zakat is basically given from 2.5% of the loanable wealth every year, which is what Rashad the messenger preaches in Video 1, and what Alban preaches in his video clarification titled “Obligatory Charity (Zakat)”, which means that there is absolutely full agreement between Rashad the messenger and Alban, between Alban and Video 1. It is actually those who are not doing Zakat like us who are contradicting Rashad the messenger, by going with Rashad the local imam, outside of his intended time, outside of his intended place, outside of his intended permission, and outside of his intended authority, an abuse of the imam’s local mistake of his time to contradict the global Messenger of the Covenant for our time.