An advised from leading scholars of Islam in the city to Muslims to exercise caution in giving away zakat or mandatory charity as there has been a growth of ‘ unauthentic’ institutions collecting alms for personal gains.
According to Syed Khaja Moizuddin Ashrafi, main sermoniser at Kishanbagh mosque, “Make thorough inquiries about the institution before you dole out zakat. Several instances have come to our notice where people posing as madrasa (religious school) representatives have been collecting money. Although you have good intentions, your deed is going waste as it is not reaching the deserving institutions.”
Zakat is being use wrongly by the collectors in several cases, said other scholars.
Zakat, according to Islam, is mandatory charity deduced at the rate of 2.5 per cent from the annual savings of a Muslim and distributed either to the poor or on education, mainly during the month of Ramzan.
According to noted philanthropist Giasuddin Babukhan, if properly organized and motivated, the Muslims in Telangana could raise zakat to the tune Rs 1,000 crore. On the contrary the actual collection and distribution of zakat is in the range of no more than Rs 100 crore.
“Collection of zakat and its distribution has not been organized. Every person who takes out zakat gives it away to whoever he or she feels deserves,” he said.
Rs 10 crore is raise from Babukhan’s Hyderabad Zakat Charitable Trust from a single resource of zakat every year.
“The potential is huge provided Muslim community decides to take up zakat as a compulsory system to help eliminate poverty and provide education,” he said.
Asharafi is active on social media mobilising people to give zakat to the “genuinely poor and needy institutions.”
But unfortunately, those who give zakat neither have the time to verify the authenticity of people who knock at neither their doors nor the institutions they symbolize.
Therefore, in many cases, zakat ends up in the casket of treacherous madrasas and other faux welfare organizations.
Maulana Imtiyaz Ahmed, a senior academic with Jamia Nizamia, said zakat can be distributed among eight categories the poor, those burdened with debt, destitute, pilgrims without support system and religious schools among others.
According to Ahmed, because of the intrusion of suspect characters in the zakat collection, the amount of charity to recognized madrasas has dropped to a large extent over the years.