‘Why we extend Zakat disbursement to non-Muslims’
The Chief Imam of Al-Habibiyyah Mosque and Director of the AlHabibiyyah Islamic Society of Nigeria, Ustaz Fuad Adeyemi in this interview marking the 15 anniversary of the organisation told Daily Trust why it extends its Zakat disbursement to both Muslims and non-Muslims.
Al-Habibiyyah Islamic Society of Nigeria is celebrating 15 year anniversary. How would you describe the journey so far?
We started Al-Habibiyyah in 2003 with an academy where we teach people to read Qur’an in four months. Some people called us fraudsters including notable scholars, but today some of those who called us ‘419’ have sent their children, family and relatives to come and study at the academy.
We did the first Waleemah (graduation) in June 2003. And during the 2004 graduation, we met the then Permanent Secretary of the MFCT Dr Babangida Aliyu who gave us Plot 753 where An-Nur Mosque is presently located at Maitama. Mallam Nasir ElRufai was the FCT Minister then.
Later the idea of starting an Islamic organisation was conceived and we started with Hisbullahi-Galeeb. The name was later changed to AlHabibiyya Islamic Society at the point of registration at the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
What were the reasons for establishing the society?
Our main initial aim was to teach the elite how to read Qur’an within the shortest periods. At hajj and Umrah, I saw many personalities who cannot read Qur’an. In 2002 there was an influential personality who we were sitting together. He was using tesbih for prayer and a Malaysian boy asked him why he cannot be using Mas’af. The man asked what was Mas’af and the boy said it was Qur’an and he brought one from the pavilion of Haram and the man said he cannot read.
I noticed the pain in his eyes and I wrote a note to Allah praying to give me the opportunity such that if people come for Umrah and by the time they were coming for Hajj, they should be able to read the Qur’an. I prayed that Allah give me the grace to help those elites to be able to read and understand the Qur’an.
If you noticed the elites, you can observe that they were disabled and nobody think of how to help or support them, virtually everyone were concerned on what they can get from them.
I also decided that my relationship with them would be to help others through them with what Allah endowed them with. And that is why Al-Habibiyya is regarded as a meeting point between the haves and have-nots, so that they would be able to contribute to the progress of Islam.
Al-Habibiyya has strings of programmes during and after Ramadan. What prompted the organisation into zakat disbursement?
After we started with the academy, we began the Jumat service, this lead to the society and the society led to our doing the Qur’an Tafsir (exegeses) during Ramadan Fasting.
During one of the tafsirs, a woman came that she needed assistance to feed her family as she was a widow with four children. We contributed money among ourselves in 2003. About 10 days later when Ramadan was 21, another woman came with similar challenge with eight children. From then till Ramadan was closed to 30 we supported seven families. I had a discussion with Alhaji Sulaiman Kunmi Olayiwola, a member of Al-Habibiyya, that we should start a programme to cater for the needy especially during Ramadan and that he should chair the initiative.
We set up a committee to start working for the 2004 Ramadan. Before that time, I travelled to United States for a Visitors Leadership Programme where I saw a pastor helping poor people. I said that if this was happening in America, it means that for every one poor person in America, it would be equivalent of over 1000 in Nigeria. So I decided that we would do and expand it. We were able to expand it such that US Embassy in Nigeria supported us in 2005 and 2006.
We realize that some people were donating their zakat to the Ramadan Food Bank Programme and we were using it wrongly, so we decide to separate the zakat fund from other donations. This was why we set up a special zakat committee with the former Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Lawal Uwais as the Grand Patron. We registered it separately as AlHabibiyya Zakat Foundation which we launched in 2009. We did the first disbursement with N5million. The last disbursement in 2017 was N8m and the beneficiaries included Christians to promote peace and tolerance in the country. Muslims and non-Muslims would continue to benefit from our empowerment programme.