Zakat eligible: support our brothers and sisters in hardship

on 2026-07-23

Most people who take shahadah at our centre never come back after the second month. Some are not on speaking terms with their families, some have moved out with a bag, and almost none of them know anyone. We are raising 25,000 GBP for a two-year support fund: a mentor for the first year, weekly classes, a shared meal...

Information requested, after I put it to our advisor. Whether this category still operates at all is genuinely disputed between contemporary bodies, and one of them moved on it as recently as this year, so our policy does not let a badge rest on that question by itself. The question I put to the advisor was about our own policy rather than about the underlying difference, and the answer was to look for an independent basis in the campaign. So I have asked the organizer what share of the fund is emergency grants going to individuals, and whether those recipients are in material need at the point they receive it, since that would put part of this campaign somewhere I can assess on evidence. None of this is a finding against the organizer or against the category, and I said so in the message, because a request that reads as a soft refusal will not get me the facts I need.

on 2026-04-08

Cedar Rise Welfare Trust has sponsored children who lost a parent in two rural districts since 2019, and this appeal covers the coming school year for forty of them. Sponsorship pays school fees, a uniform, books and a monthly food allowance paid to the guardian. Our field team visits every household twice a year and...

Information requested. The programme itself is not the problem; the household evidence is good and the field reports are public. The copy says a portion of each donation supports operations and does not say what the portion is, and our policy requires the deduction to be stated on the campaign page before a badge is issued. I asked for the figure and for confirmation of whether the trust that raises the money is also the trust that distributes it. Published positions on how much overhead may be charged range from nothing at all to a fifth among bodies that all consider themselves within the rules, which is exactly why we publish the number and let the donor weigh it instead of assessing it here.

on 2026-02-19

I am raising 2,400 GBP for my sister Halima, who has been raising three children on her own since her husband died in February. She works part time in a school kitchen and the hours were cut in September. Her income does not cover the rent and the heating in the same month, and she is now four months behind with a...

Approved for zakat. The organizer supplied three months of bank statements for every account and the tenancy agreement, and our team read them: on the figures given, net assets sit well below the threshold our policy uses and the arrears are documented rather than asserted. Funds are paid to the beneficiary rather than to the landlord's agent, which is what our policy requires. I left al-gharimin as unresolved rather than counting the arrears twice; nothing turns on it here because the household qualifies on need alone. No scholarly question arose and no consultation was needed.

on 2025-10-09

The Anwar family left their village in the last week of August when the water reached the roof of their house. They are now in a school hall two provinces away with what they carried. Their land and their stored rice are under water and they cannot reach either, and the bus fare back plus three months of rented rooms...

Approved. This is the shape our policy describes under the wayfarer heading: people away from home and cut off from assets they own but cannot reach, which is a different thing from owning nothing at all, and the copy is explicit about it. Registration papers were supplied and checked. I noted for the file that applying this category to displaced people is a reading our policy already takes and that our advisor signed off on this pattern of campaign last year, so I recorded the decision against that standing position rather than opening it again. Their land is not evidence against need here; it is precisely what they cannot reach. Worth saying plainly for the next reviewer: some platforms decline to verify traveller cases at all, on the practical ground that a genuinely stranded person is unlikely to be running a campaign. That is a workable position and it is not ours. We verify them where the displacement is documented, which is our board's choice about operating risk rather than anything scholars are divided on, and a reviewer who finds the documentation thin should say so rather than lean on the category being permitted.