Grand Ayatollah Shirazi: Khums is paid in honor of the Messenger of God replacing zakat

The daily scholarly meeting of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi was held on Tuesday, the 12th of Safar. In this session, like the previous meetings, the Supreme Religious Authority answered the questions of the attendees about various jurisprudence issues.

In this meeting, Grand Ayatollah Shirazi discussed the reason for the obligation of Khums, and said: “What is definitely established from hadiths is that Khums was mandated in place of Zakat in honor of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him and his family, because obligatory Zakat, but not mustahab Zakat, cannot be paid to the descendants of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him and his family.”

The Marja further stated: “Now the question arises as to whether the rulings of zakat apply to khums as well. In response to this question, a group of fuqaha, including the Author of Urwa al-Wuthqa, late Mohammed Kazem Yazdi, and the late Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Shirazi, have said that except in cases where there is a special ruling regarding khums, if there are no mandates regarding khums in conflict with what is mentioned for zakat, the same ruling related to zakat is valid about khums.”

The Supreme Religious Authority went on to state that there is a tradition used for the ruling of zakat which says, “If someone does not receive zakat, claiming that he does not use it, the Prophet has said to give him zakat as a gift, not telling him it is zakat,”. However, the Marja continued, “We don’t have such hadith about Khums, and so whether the same ruling applies to Khums for someone who refuses to accept it is an issue where there is disagreement among fuqaha. A group of them have argued that because based on the traditions that says khums is a substitute for zakat, it can be inferred that the aforementioned practice is permissible.”