And of course the answer is, Neverrrr!!!!!!
Our great old friend Raymond Ibrahim, who graced this site with his incisive and illuminating posts last year, responds to a clueless critic in "When Will Westerners Stop Westernizing Islamic Concepts?" at Middle East Quarterly, August 25:
Recently, Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today wrote an article about Muslim zakat, wherein I was referenced as a "critic of Islam." She then followed up with another article titled "Critic questions the aims and ends of Islamic charity," dedicated to examining my views on zakat.
While I appreciate Ms. Grossman's initiative, what especially interests me is that her response exemplifies the problems originally highlighted in my article, "The Dark Side of Zakat: Islamic Charity in Context," which Ms. Grossman takes to task.
I had written: "From what American schoolchildren are being taught by their teachers to what Americans are being told by their presidents, concepts unique to Islam are nowadays almost always 'Westernized.'… [T]his phenomenon has resulted in epistemic (and thus endemic) failures, crippling Americans from objectively understanding some of Islam's more troublesome doctrines."
It is, therefore, a bit ironic that Ms. Grossman's entire article is a testimony to this phenomenon. For starters, even though I indicated Muslims are actually forbidden from bestowing zakat onto non-Muslims, her opening sentence stubbornly describes zakat as a "mandate to be charitable." Surely "charity" that discriminates according to religion cannot be deemed all that "charitable," a word that, in a Western context, is connotative of universal beneficence.
Ms. Grossman is also decided that Muslims engaged in that timeless Islamic phrase fi sabil Allah—most literally, "the path of Allah"—include "anyone from seminary students to imams to missionaries"; conversely, I supposedly read it "as a straight pipeline to violent jihadists."
Fair enough. Unfortunately, however, when it comes to the significance of Islamic terminology, neither her opinion nor mine matters much; how Islam's authoritative schools of jurisprudence (specifically, the four madhahib) have interpreted fi sabil Allah is all that matters. And Islam's juridical rulings are such that fi sabil Allah is synonymous with the concept of violent jihad.
For example, in its section on zakat, the Arabic-English edition of the standard legal text, 'Umdat as-Salik, translates fi sabil Allah as "those fighting for Allah." Next to the index entry for fi sabil Allah, it simply says "see jihad."
The following zakat-related anecdote from Islamic history is further illuminating: After Muhammad's death in 632, several Arab tribes, while still identifying themselves as Muslims, refused to pay zakat, much of which was being used to fund ongoing military operations. Abu Bakr, the first "righteous" caliph, responded by launching the Apostasy Wars, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Arabs. In this context, neither the uses of zakat, nor Abu Bakr's murderous response, seem very "charitable." (Whoever heard of killing people for not being "charitable" enough?)
As a result, the same canon of Islamic law (the Sharia) that unequivocally forbids Muslims from giving zakat (financial assistance) to non-Muslims, advocates giving it to what we call "jihadists." This is a simple fact, played over and over again—not my opinion, nor something that is "open to interpretation."
Ms. Grossman's concluding questions are further indicative of the widespread tendency to recast Muslim concepts into Western terms. She asks the reader: "Do you think believers may support those 'in the path of Allah' in a religious sense, just as Christians might support missionaries evangelizing for Christ? Or do you read that as code for nefarious purposes?"
Aside from the fact that—alas, and once again—what any of us "think" is totally irrelevant, these questions demonstrate the all too common inability to transcend one's own culturally-ingrained notions of right and wrong, ascribing to them a universal pedigree. For just as Ms. Grossman's Western sensibilities inform her that zakat, which has to do with giving money, must always be "charitable," so too do they inform her that funding violence, jihadi or otherwise, must always be "nefarious."
Yet she may be surprised to discover that men such as Osama bin Laden actually see their jihad—yes, with all the death and destruction entailed—as an act of altruism, as an ugly means to a beneficent end (see Koran 2:216), that is, the establishment of Islamic law across the world (which is, incidentally, another Muslim duty). One of the most renowned Muslim clerics and hero of modern day jihadists, Ibn Taymiyya, has written at great length describing jihad as the ultimate expression of "love." And, at any rate, it seems a safe bet that most Muslims will be inclined to adhere to his opinions, i.e., his fatwas, as opposed to Ms. Grossman's casual thoughts on the matter....
It's excellent. Read it all.
The "ultimate expression of love" of a belief system with over a billion adherents is violent death and subjugation of the rest of the world.
I perceive that we are indeed in a struggle for the survival of all that is good and decent about humankind.
By the way, there is an Islamic "Community Center" a few miles from my home called Dar-al Noor. Translation, someone? House of----?
No doubt Cathy Lynn Grossman enjoys each evening a perfumed bath of self-satisfaction, luxuriating in her nuance, multi-culturalism, and sensitivity to diversity.
In truth, she is, apparently, utterly incapable of seeing an issue from the point of view of another belief system, utterly incapable of even imagining that common words and phrases might mean different things to different cultures, utterly incapable of conceiving that other aggressive and supremacist peoples might be deliberately using verbal ambiguity as a primary weapon of inter-cultural attack.
Probably, like the pious Muslims of Islam, she is also totally incapable of self-critique. She will never figure things out--she sees no need to even try.
dadcito: called Dar-al Noor. Translation, someone? House of----?
'Light'. I'm sure there are many other interpretations.
When will muslims stop appropriating others' contributions/discoveries? For example, they have conveniently appropriated to themselves the decimal number system, when it was in fact proposed by Hindu mathematicians. They learnt it from Hindus and passed it on to Europe as arabic number system. Deceipt, thy name is islam!
I think both Grossman and I are missing some crucial background. Can anyone tell me:
1)Did Obama or anyone in his administration give any explanation for why the USA was perceived to be hindering the practice of zakat?
2)Does the USA tax law prohibit tax deduction as a charitable contribution if contribution specifies or restricts the benefits to only recipients of a particular religion?
Stendec:
In Ms. Grossman you see the classic ethnocentric Westerner. She projects her own belief system, without reflection, on to an entirely alien one. The immediate result is incomprehension followed by a clumsy effort to make sense of it all in terms comprehensible to Ms. Grossman. Sorry, Islam never went through the Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment. Islam is a pre-modern ideology that is anti-rational and supremacist. It will endeavor to dominate others when it has the chance to do so, and will not accept the basic humanity of another, unless they are a believer. Conversion, radical, subordination, or war are the alteratives offered to a non-belever by Islam.
A couple of years ago I posted a quote from Fosco Maraini's "Where Four Worlds Meet Hindu Kush" (Harcourt , Brace and World 1964 -- translated from Italian) which seems appropriate to Raymond Ibrahim's point:
(page 40): "The efforts of European scholars to frame a terminology capable of translating the fundamental concepts of shariah into Occidental values are doomed to failure in advance. Trying to introduce our basic juridical assumptions concerning public, private, constitutional or canon law into the fortified redoubt of the Islamic endocosm is rather like trying to grow fruit in a bookcase, or force steel cubes up one's nostrils. The converse process is, of course, equally difficult....for the simple reason that we are dealing with entities that never match exactly, but leave incompatible loose ends on both sides..."
Yet another item to add to my bulging electronic file (housed inside a folder entitled 'the spin doctors') which I have called 'Islamic dictionary for Infidels'.
I think that the next item after Mr Spencer's 'Infidel's Guide to the Koran' should be an illustrated handbook entitled 'Islamspeak Explained For Infidels', which would go very nicely with Mr Spencer's tongue-in-cheek 'guide for dhimmis' which was recently published in Dutch, complete with cartoon illustrations.
In her follow-up article in USA Today* in response to Raymond's article, Cathy Lynn Grossman claims that "As for giving only to Muslims, there are ample examples in many communities of Muslim generosity to all neighbors in need."
So ends the article. No examples of Muslims giving to non-Muslims through zakat are presented. There may indeed be some examples, but these I suspect are statistically rare, and even those probably involve some kind of Islamic "strings attached," such as exposure of the non-Muslim recipients to da'wa. What percentage of Muslims give to charity that benefits non-Muslims directly? What percentage of Muslim charities give what percentage of the money or goods that they collect to non-Muslims?
Muslims may be inhibited from giving charity to non-Muslims not only because of the prevailingly negative attitudes toward disbelievers as fostered in the Quran, but also specifically because the Quran tells believers to "never help" the disbelievers (28:86).
*Aug 24, 2009
Muslim charity, religious rules: Open to interpretation? by Cathy Lynn Grossman
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2009/08/muslim-charity-religious-rules-open-to-interpretation/1?csp=34
While giving to non-Muslims through zakat is not permissible, Muslims can give to non-Muslims through voluntary charity, according to The Reliance of the Traveller. (Though again, the attitudes fostered in the Quran would tend to inhibit Muslims from giving charity to non-Muslims).
Result 89 from 227
The Reliance of the Traveller. Version 1.06 - By Ahmad Ibn Naqib Al-Misri
BOOK H: ZAKAT >> Chapter H-8.0: Giving Zakat to Deserving Recipients
H-8.24
It is not permissible to give zakat to a non-Muslim, or to someone whom one is obliged to support (def: m-12.1), such as a wife or family member.
Result 92 from 227
The Reliance of the Traveller. Version 1.06 - By Ahmad Ibn Naqib Al-Misri
BOOK H: ZAKAT >> Chapter H-9.0: Voluntary Charity
H-9.7
(O: It is permissible to give charity to a person not in need, or to a relative of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). It is offensive for a person not in need to accept charity, and preferable that he avoid it. It is unlawful for such a person to accept it if he pretends to be needy, and is unlawful for him to ask for charity. It is permissible to give charity to a non-Muslim (n: but not zakat, as above at h-8.24). )