The Eight Recipients

There are eight recipients of zakāt, and they are named in the Qurʾān:

First, poor people. By definition there are two types of poor people: one is called miskīn and the other is called faqīr in the Qurʾān. The miskīn is the one who does not even have a day's worth of his livelihood; the poor one, the faqīr, is somebody who does not have a year's supply — they do not have enough money to get through a year, and they are accepted as a recipient. A good point that arises is what to do if the person is known to use things — if they are alcoholic, or known to do such things. Then one should not support people where one knows the money is going to go to that, and there are more worthy people for it; it is encouraged to look for them, the more worthy people.

Then there are the people who collect it. A portion of it is taken out to employ the zakāt collectors. Then there are indebted people, people who are in debt — and that is a type of debt which, as long as it was not accrued through wrong actions like gambling, is a debt in which they are in serious trouble: the debt has reached a level where socially they are really being jeopardised. And then there are the indentured servants, the bonds-people, because in the Islamic tradition — although this does not exist any more in the Muslim world — traditionally there were people who were bonds-people, under the yoke of somebody, and those people, in the Sharīʿah, if they desire to be freed from that yoke, have a right to zakāt to pay off whatever their worth is. So that is a group; and that makes five.

Then there is ibn al-sabīl, who is somebody who is travelling — and this is also pre-cash-machine — because he can be a wealthy person as well. It is somebody who is travelling, and they were robbed, and they are far away from their home and do not have access to their wealth. And it still happens, because the cash machine is not everywhere: eighty per cent of the world still does not have telephones, which is forgotten here. So it is for somebody who was travelling and lost his wealth; those people are asked — they are permitted to receive the zakāt. Then there are the people who are called al-muʾallafah qulūbuhum, who are either near Islam or have just come into Islam, and one can give them zakāt as a way of binding their hearts to the community. And then the last group is fī sabīlillāh, which are people who are defending the homelands. So anybody who is defending — like jihad, like the Bosnians when they were fighting: many people sent their zakāt to Bosnia, or to Afghanistan, for instance. And there are many people who support the Palestinians, viewing that as a valid struggle, things like that. So those are basically the recipients, according to the Qurʾān.