One million dirhams in zakat bribes

The only time zakat can be given to non-Muslims is for the purposes of paying them to convert to Islam.  Understandably, slick Muslim spokesmen in the West don’t like to advertise that because it highlights the discrimination and bribery inherent in zakat.  But occasionally you find examples such as an item in August from UAE’s The National:

ABU DHABI // One hundred new converts to Islam will each receive an equal share of Dh1 million donated by the Zakat Fund. Zakat, the third pillar of Islam, is a mandatory tax for every Muslim who is financially able to contribute. It is calculated at 2.5 per cent of financial assets, but has different rates for a variety of other sources of wealth, such as livestock and minerals.

New converts are one of eight broad categories defined as deserving recipients of zakat in Islam. “It is our duty as Muslims to encourage and support those who embrace Islam to help show them the right way of life and to encourage them [to] learn more about their religion and how to behave like real Muslims,” said Abdullah al Muhairi, the fund’s secretary general, in a statement yesterday. “Supporting those who have recently converted to Islam strengthens the feeling of brotherhood, justice and equality among Muslims,” he added.

The Zakat Fund was established in 2003 by Sheikh Zayed, the late founder of the UAE. The fund recently set a record target of Dh72million for zakat revenues in the month of Ramadan, after announcing that its revenues in the first half of 2010 had doubled compared to the same period in 2009. The fund maintains that the increase in revenues is a result of greater transparency in the handling of zakat finances.

In its own press release, the Zakat Fund said, “The newly Islam converts are one of eight categories specified by the Holy Quran and the Islamic Shari’ah to deserve being given Zakat money.”

In this manner, the Zakat Fund validates the “eight categories” of zakat recipients.  Some Islamic charities don’t like mentioning the eight categories because we know that the mujahideen count as one of those categories, but the Zakat Fund doesn’t seem concerned by that implication.

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