Masjid An Nur Jummah Khutbah Starts at 1:45 PM

Zakah Is a Commandment, Not an Option

Brother Ahmed revisits the obligation of zakah, tracing it from the earlier prophets through the stand Abu Bakr took after the Prophet's ﷺ death, and walks through how zakah is calculated and who it is owed to. This khutbah reminds us that zakah is a pillar of Islam like Salah, not an afterthought, and that fulfilling it starts with taking real responsibility for the wealth Allah has entrusted to us.

Brother Ahmed

8/14/2026

Brother Ahmed opens with the story of the tribes who, shortly after the Prophet's ﷺ death, stopped paying zakah on the claim that the obligation had died with him. He recounts how Abu Bakr, as the first Khalifah, stood firm and declared he would fight anyone who tried to separate zakah from Salah, understanding that the two were never meant to be split apart. Brother Ahmed notes that in the Qur'an, zakah is mentioned alongside Salah in nearly all of its 32 occurrences, yet many of us today have quietly reduced the five pillars to three, treating zakah and Hajj as optional rather than obligatory.

He then traces zakah back further than the Prophet ﷺ, showing that it was commanded to Bani Israel and other nations before Islam, and was even named as a defining trait of Prophet Ismail. He explains the seriousness of neglecting it, citing the scholarly consensus that denying zakah's obligation removes a person from Islam, and the verses describing withheld wealth becoming a source of punishment in the Hereafter. Quoting Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen, he reframes zakah as a bounty rather than a penalty, one that protects a person's wealth from loss of blessing rather than simply taking from it. From there he walks through the practical rulings: the difference between Zakat al-Fitr and zakah on wealth, the nisab thresholds for silver and gold, the requirement that this threshold be held for a full Hijri year before zakah is due, the 2.5 percent calculation, and the eight categories of people eligible to receive it from Surah At-Tawbah.

In the second half, Brother Ahmed highlights a less discussed benefit of zakah: it pushes believers toward financial discipline, since unlike the other pillars it requires sustained, intentional management of wealth over a full year. He points out that many people never even reach the point of qualifying to give zakah because of financial carelessness, and reminds us, through the hadith on the five questions every person will be asked on the Day of Judgment, that our wealth is an amanah we will be held accountable for, both in how it was earned and how it was spent. He closes by urging the congregation to take their finances seriously, not only to build stability for themselves and their families, but to actually reach the point of being able to fulfill zakah as Allah commanded.