Assalamu alaykum, is it permissible for an American non-profit masjid Zakat & Sadaqa coordinator to be paid a salary from half zakat and half sadaqa funds?
It was said that this job would be important in having zakat processed and without this one position, applications would not be processed and zakat wouldn’t be distributed since they’re the primary point.
If not allowed, how should one go about requesting this change without causing fitnah or difficulty if the masjid follows a different opinion?
Bismillahi Ta’ala
Walaikum Assalam Warahmatullah
At the outset, Shariah establishes explicit avenues for dispensing of the zakat monies. We have discussed this multiple times in our discussion. Organizer and other people carrying out their duties in such an organization may only accept Zakat monies if they are factually zakat recipient eligible.
Some masajid continue to categorize these employees as aamileen in zakat collection, which they clearly are not. Those workers (Amileen) in Islamic History would be appointed by the Ameer to collect zakat would get paid from the Zakat monies. Their duties would be to travel to different farmlands, location or stand by the roads to collect zakat monies from people while managing their records. Neither are the Zakat Collection coordinators appointed by islamic government, nor do their work entail such mechanism of traversing the land to manually count animals and audit people to collect their zakats.
I personally do not see a rational of this job being so important that zakat monies have to be dispensed for its salary. The job is a regular employee job which can be compensated from non-Zakat funds. When we have donations collected for masajid in 100s of thousand or even more, then taking care of salaries of the staff from those non-Zakat collections is not so challenging.
Awareness is needed in the community who dispense their zakats, as well as the Masajid board and these Zakat collection organizations that Zakat is an Ibadah. We would not take chances with our Salah and Jama’at. We would not endanger the validity of congregation by appointing a non-rightful individual as an Imam, or intermixing women for the congregational salah since it would void the congregation itself.
So Zakat ought not be any different. We cannot endanger the worship of so many of our Muslims from the community simply because we want to streamline paying salary through Zakat monies.
Once the community understands that this practice is not correct, they should NOT chose those avenues to dispense their zakats. Similarly, they should inform the Masajid of the reason why they have opted not to use them as Zakat dispenser. With help from Allah, these organizations will see the light and rectify their processes to accommodate the communities they wish to serve.
One last point is in regards to the “difference of opinion”, so understand that it is a musallam feeh (unanimously accepted) principle that wherever in community (level ibadaat) there is differed upon matters, the cautious approach is adopted, so the worship is accepted without doubt across the border. This is called “khurooj anil ikhtilaf” (i.e. adopting a position to come out of difference of opinion).
So, even if there is a difference of opinion on this matter from “some” scholar, then too a community organization must choose cautious opinion over easier position.
Wallahu A’lam
And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best
Mufti Faisal al-Mahmudi