By Tariq Elsaid, LMSW, TiiP
An important disclaimer: This paper was not written by an Islamic scholar. It is written by someone who does not even consider himself to be a student of knowledge, but rather a lover of those who dedicate their lives to inheriting the written, oral, and lived tradition of Islam from sound, authentic scholars and institutions. This analysis draws upon my professional formation as a clinical psychotherapist and editor of scholarly publications, both of which contribute to the interpretive framework applied to the alleged fatwa and its psychosocial aftermath.
Abstract
Given that a fatwa addresses a community, it has overarching power that can shape collective psychology, guide social movements, influence political decisions, and determine how Muslims view, live, and navigate their traditional adherence amid calamities. This thought-piece contends that the alleged fatwa on “Giving Zakat for Political Campaigns” exacerbates psychological—and by extension, psycho-social—vulnerabilities in the pursuit of political influence by abandoning an extensive history of consensus-established Islamic methodologies. The decision to subordinate contextually preserved traditional practices—which have continuously ensured civilizational providence and flourishing for Muslims, even under seemingly unbearable trials—aligns strikingly with patterns observed in objectively maladaptive paradigms that cultivate unhealthy modes of being, which often lead to psychological disorders, defense mechanisms, and intellectual distortions.
In other words, the very nature of jettisoning traditional methodologies in hopes that Muslims are the object of sympathy, with the presumption that it would lead to some kind of refuge, is, in and of itself, a feeding ground for psychological illnesses that render its followers untethered, evershifting, and indeed, sympathetically fooled in the face of any hardship.
Introduction
The objective of undertaking any kind of treatment is to achieve a state of health, which necessarily entails firmly grounding oneself in a degree of resilience against anything that jeopardizes said health. A type of defense, fortitude, dynamism, principle, and Way is required to firstly, prevent future harm—such that one is proactively healthy—and secondly, to wield the ability to navigate an occurrence appropriately, courageously, and sanely in situations where one has no option other than to face the harm.
Much like a surfer unable—and maybe unwilling—to stand his ground amidst the waves that test his balance is likely to fall, so too does an inability to maneuver the oft-expected vicissitudes in our lives result in the birth of theological, psychological, and even physical illnesses. The surfer who gives up by relinquishing his board and throwing himself under every challenging wave he is faced with never develops fortitude, courage, endurance, or skill upon the advent of life’s unceasing tests. One who is inexperienced in
surfing could even reasonably question designating the title of surfer to an individual who has no methodology for navigating the great waves, no sagacity in responding as a surfer is meant to respond when faced with fear, and no principle in maintaining balance on his board which would otherwise enable him to weave creatively and profoundly through the ocean’s expectedly unpredictable forces.
The alleged joint fatwa on permitting zakāt to non-Muslim political entities appears to give us laymen who are struggling to hold onto the axiomatic tenets of faith during our challenging climate, a reason to “let go,” giving way to a myriad of psycho-somatic ailments, and rendering us incapable of remaining steadfast when faced with difficulty. This move pushes Muslims to submit foundational elements of their faith before oppressors, instead of submitting to God through the firm retention of their faith. Arguably, and perhaps objectively, this Ummah has historically faced a higher degree of calamity than that of our current scale, which God has factually delivered into economic, intellectual, religious, and civilizational prosperity.
Relinquishing a pillar as “basic” as zakāt should have any Muslim on guard, even if they are not well-versed in the scholarly mechanisms informing the claim. Our standards of knowledge should be above uncritically adhering to new-age claims that, to anybody, seem antithetical to how the consensus of scholarly and lay Muslim bodies practiced zakāt consistently for nearly fifteen centuries. Because of the growing confusion and dilution of religious material in our time, one should obtain a standard beyond the bare minimum Islamic education to the degree that they are able to read an alleged fatwa like this and immediately detect logical fallacies, academic incoherence, interpretive overextensions, and historically unheard-of “methodologies.”
The psychosocial repercussions of such an alleged fatwa are the aftermath we clinicians experience in psychological settings. Let us look beyond the overgeneralized disorders of “anxiety and depression,” which everyone knows about, and get a little more sophisticated. When seen through a psychoanalytic lens, the alleged fatwa implicates traits of the following maladaptations on a massive scale: Learned Helplessness, Low Distress Tolerance, Dependent Personality Disorder, Identification with the Aggressor, and Fawning
Learned Helplessness
“. . .individuals are said to learn that they lack behavioral control over environmental events, which, in turn, undermines the motivation to make changes or attempt to alter situations. . . The phenomenon was first described after . . .experiments in which nonhuman animals exposed to a series of unavoidable electric shocks later failed to learn to escape these shocks when tested in a different apparatus, whereas animals exposed to shocks that could be terminated by a response did not show interference with escape learning in another apparatus. . . A syndrome with three features developed:
a) A motivational deficit characterized by a failure to respond when challenged with further aversive events
b) An associative deficit characterized by impairment of learning from successful coping.
c) An emotional deficit characterized by apparent underactivity to painful events—although later research revealed by assaying corticoid levels that the animals were very stressed.
In the 1970s, [Martin E. P] Seligman (one of the psychologists who first described the phenomenon of Learned Helplessness) extended the concept from nonhuman animal
research to clinical depression in humans and proposed a learned helplessness theory to
explain the development of or vulnerability to depression. According to this theory, people
repeatedly exposed to stressful situations beyond their control develop an inability to
make decisions or engage effectively in purposeful behavior. Subsequent researchers
have noted a robust fit between the concept and posttraumatic stress disorder” (American
Psychological Association, 2018).
Learned Helplessness is essentially a state where an individual stops trying to change adverse conditions because they believe nothing will work. It is classically conditioned despair when prompted with any hardship. The alleged fatwa can be said to pressure people to a “last resort” out of desperation. Such desperation, however, should be directed towards God alone, while subsequently moving with strategic action through the world’s hardships, animated by a firm adherence to traditional methodologies preserved by our predecessors, along with a breeze of Prophetic optimism that God will deliver us from this, too! For His promise was true for those who came before us, those who endured relatively worse conditions.
Low Distress Tolerance
“Distress tolerance, defined as the ability to withstand aversive emotions, plays a significant role in depression and anxiety. Distress tolerance is an individual-level characteristic that impacts the way people experience and respond to negative emotions. Individuals with low distress tolerance are unable to endure negative emotions, experience negative emotions as unacceptable, and use unhealthy emotional coping strategies, which in turn create further exacerbations in symptoms. . . [Furthermore] elevated depressive and anxiety symptoms increase the risk for recurrent cardiac events and mortality after [acute coronary syndrome]” (Luberto et al., 2021).
If we are to simply relinquish something as foundationally necessary as zakāt each time the ummah is faced with a hardship, we would take part in hollowing out our religion. Thus, becoming psychospiritually fragile, defeatists, who are unable to withstand anything that would serve as a means of developing virtues like courage, patience, resolve, and bravery. Furthermore, we would be Goldilocks-like, selective Muslims who can only embody the tradition if all the conditions are “just right”. And if they’re not, then we would have no choice but to resort to some kind of aberrant way of being, which is in direct contrast with how our great predecessors dealt with afflictions more challenging than ours.
Our history is filled with heroes who were known for tolerating difficulty by gripping even firmer to their Islamic principles, as opposed to hopelessly caving at the first sight of a trial or oppressor. The alleged fatwa appears to encourage Muslims everywhere to escape the oppressor’s afflictions by meekly seeking his refuge in hopes that he ceases his reign of tyranny. It can be deduced from this study that the notion of principally compromising produces the very psychological ailments we experience in unmanageable multitudes today.
Dependent Personality Disorder
“Dependent personality disorder (DPD) is a mental health condition that involves an excessive need to be taken care of by others. A person with DPD relies on people close to them for their emotional or physical needs. Others may describe them as needy or clingy. People with DPD believe they can’t take care of themselves. They may have trouble making everyday decisions, like what to wear or what food to eat, without others’ reassurance. They usually don’t realize that their thoughts and behaviors are problematic. . . [and exhibit] lasting patterns of behavior that are out of touch with cultural norms (how we’re expected to act)” (Cleveland Clinic, 2023).
The alleged fatwa appears to encourage us to depart from religious norms and who we always were as an ummah of resilient courage and traditional creativity, to become docile wooers, claiming the latter as the “most effective” way to bring about change. We necessarily become someone else because we are taking from something other than what we have been given, resulting in the emergence of identity crises and mass intrapsychic confusion.
Identification with the Aggressor and Fawning
“To feel safe, we may become very skilled, often unconsciously, at reading other people’s
minds, guessing what they want from us, and complying with their desires. We might meet
other people’s needs through appeasement, submission, or caretaking, or by becoming
disconnected from our own needs, wishes, and longings.” Here, we may add, “. . .as well as our tradition, religion, and moral standings.”
“We learn that by prioritizing others, we stand a chance to remain safe and unharmed, preventing the possibility of rejection, disappointment, or violence. In recent years, this type of reaction has been associated with the so-called “fawn” response to complex trauma, characterized as a defensive and protective reaction that aims at appeasing or pleasing others to feel safe. However, this idea is not new. This kind of process has been recognized by psychoanalysis for decades through the concept of “identification with the aggressor. . .”
. . .Ferenczi understood identification with the aggressor differently. He observed that many victims of childhood sexual abuse experienced helplessness and anxiety in the relationship with their abusers, to the point of “[subordinating] themselves like automata to the will of the aggressor, to divine each one of his desires and to gratify these; completely oblivious to themselves they identify themselves with the aggressor” (Ferenczi, 1949). As psychoanalyst Jay Frankel (2002) puts it, “we stop being
ourselves and transform ourselves into someone else’s image of us.” To be safe from abuse, the child needs to learn what is expected of them and become who the adult needs them to be, by “identifying” with the adult’s needs, expectations, demands, and desires” (Delboy, 2025).
The alleged fatwa ignores 97.5% of discretionary wealth, all of which could technically be spent towards lobbying, while elevating the remaining 2.5% (zakāt) as that which would bring about the most geopolitical change. The former is obviously larger and more impactful than the latter. But here, the alleged fatwa appears to overlook zakāt’s original divine reservation for the poor and destitute, to favor political entities in an attempt to provoke sympathy, which is thought to produce real sustainable change. “Look, these Muslims are going against their traditional norms and giving us politicians the wealth that their God has mandated them to give to the poor. Let’s stop bombing them.” It is, evidently, desperately renouncing one’s values and attempting to obey he who disobeys God, in hopes of the disobedient granting refuge out of sympathy. Thus, by departing from traditional steadfastness, our values, intellects, and very spines insufferably depart from us.
Academic Irrationality from Protestant-like Individuality
Through academically unsophisticated attempts that would not suffice for publication on any professional platform, the alleged fatwa evidently cherry-picks and name-drops unbacked historical events to deliver a wildly unprecedented hodgepodge of a conclusion. It glaringly replaces a living tradition of excellently wielding both rational and revelational methodologies for disappointingly shoddy fideism. Demonstrably, the alleged fatwa makes scant use of neither reason, nor revelation—as proven by too many dissents and refutations to mention here. One does not need to be a jurist, mufti, or even a Muslim to see that there is no coherent string of reason involved whatsoever, which is obviously central for the efficacy and validity of any argument presented—especially one as unprecedented as this. This lack of sound reason not only disqualifies any piece of writing from being seriously considered, but in any discipline, naturally facilitates strangely absurd verdicts, religious or not.
As it pertains to the formal structure of the alleged fatwa, there is little to distinguish it from young, overzealous Muslims who rely on nothing more than their own presumably infallible, intrinsic ability and inspirations to guide them through the supra-rational terrains of the religion toward the right answer. This is a common phenomenon that scholars, imams, chaplains, and now [Muslim] psychologists face today. After watching an uncontextualized and oversimplified YouTube clip here, reading a translated passage of a rarified classical Arabic work there, literally interpreting a shādh ḥadīth, and feeling something in prayer, young and untethered, hot-headed boys reach what they think to be authoritative religious conclusions that are not to be challenged. But just because someone is passionate about something does not in any way qualify them to pursue it independently. Especially as it pertains to matters of religion.
Such is the inevitability of a modern ideology that jettisons nearly 1,500 years of a traditional system of learning, acquiring, formulating, producing, and living. Instead of a Way of grounded principles, the result is an arbitrary playing field where anyone can say whatever they want without having gone through any kind of formal tutelage. Hence, the religion becomes whimsical, unserious, and laughable in the eyes of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Scholarly Steadfastness
A myriad of legitimate scholarly refutations have been made in response to the alleged fatwa, some even dissenting from their own council members. What they all have in common is mercifully offering an usūl al-fiqh, fiqh al-ʿibādāt, fiqh al-muʿāmalāt, and fiqh al-maʾālāt 101 class, not just for the council members who issued the alleged fatwa, but perhaps for us laymen to proceed with caution through knowing the difference between the use of sound, preserved methodologies, and new iconoclastic shots in the dark. Notably, this is beautifully and gently executed without implying any kind of character assassination or ill will, which, in and of itself, is exemplary of their inherited conduct (Adab), which we know is the crown of the tradition to be embodied, and subsequently enacted by true heirs, subservient only to God and the Prophetic Way.
To the layman, one response appears to stand out from the lot of coherently strung, traditional refutations: Shaykh Amin Kholwadia’s A Rejoinder to the Statement on Zakat by AMJA and FCNA. In it, he reminds readers of the historical triumph Muslims creatively achieved despite facing great difficulty time and time again. To achieve this success, Muslims necessarily adhered steadfastly to their tenets and tradition, while employing brilliantly creative tact and optimism—qualities unrestrictedly bequeathed for anyone willing to follow in the footsteps of our accomplished predecessors. Shaykh Amin’s rejoinder serves as an invigorating reminder that we are not alone and that we do not have to throw away our principles to be successful. He equips the reader with a board and shows the way to surf the great wave before us, the same way great men and women of our tradition navigated their calamities. As opposed to the alleged fatwa, which seems to perpetuate the effect of hopelessness, misplaced desperation, and undermining any historical account of how the world’s bravest Muslim exemplars persevered through their trials, Shaykh Amin’s response restores strength in one’s grasp of The Way.
We need not kneel before our oppressors and beg them to solve the problem that they themselves began. We can do this. By following in the footsteps of those who followed in the footsteps of the Prophet of God Himself, we can also traverse difficulty and triumph without leaving behind our lifeline. Alas, this requires knowledge of the traditional Way, which necessarily entails sound teachers, sound books, and historically sound methods. It is not sufficient to know nothing while resorting to someone who has a few letters in front of their name and can pronounce Arabic fluently. An adequate teacher is not someone who makes us solely feel motivated or inspired, which is often just another short-lived substitute for cheap dopamine rushes. Nor is opening a couple of history, ḥadīth, or tafsīr books (many of which are intended exclusively for scholars) and seeing a vague connection between a few concepts sufficient for us to independently conclude anything. Let this be a reminder for Muslims everywhere, leader or layman, to equip ourselves with the tools necessary, not just to navigate life’s endless waves of hardship, but also to defend ourselves from efforts that dilute, contort, and evidently misguide us when and where guidance is needed most.
We must hold to the guides God gave us—the righteous scholar. We must fortify ourselves through undertaking our Islamic sciences—aqīdah, fiqh, and tazkiyah—along with the auxiliary sciences that aid us in detecting dangerous fallacies to ourselves and our salvation—logic, grammar, and rhetoric. We must proceed in the Way the archangel Gabriel taught us, sitting at the feet of one who knows, thereby fortifying ourselves, our tradition, and our Ummah from theological, psychological, and intellectual harm. Godwilling, through such efforts of holding onto this tradition of ours, we too can triumph through the fearsome waves God places before us, and follow in the footsteps of those who dedicated their lives to showing us the Way.
WORK CITED
