Paying Zakah to build a cancer hospital

23-12-2012 | IslamWeb

Question:

My mother and sisters paid Zakaah due on their property to the foundation of a Children’s Cancer Hospital; and later on some people made us doubt the validity, under Sharee‘ah, of paying Zakaah for such projects. What should we do now, especially with the difficulty to pay Zakaah once again?

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Answer:

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His Slave and Messenger.

 

Building hospitals is not among the Zakah disbursement channels; therefore, what your mother and sisters paid is not Zakah, and they are still liable to pay it; and it is due on them to pay Zakah once again, so long as they did not depend, in giving out Zakah for that project, upon a Fatwa of a scholar. If they depended upon a Fatwa of a scholar, we hope that they would be free from obligation.

Allaah Knows best.