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Is the action of one who distributes charity valid if he allocates it specifically to non-Arabs and deprives needy Arabs of it?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The donor has the choice to place their charity wherever they wish. However, whoever withholds from Arabs or others out of hatred for their ethnicity, it is feared that they will incur sin. Love, hatred, loyalty, and enmity must be for Allah alone, and not for an ethnicity or race. Denigrating the Arab ethnicity and preferring others often stems from hypocrisy in the heart, as Sheikh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said. Preferring Arabism is preferring a race, not individuals; for a pious non-Arab is better than a negligent Arab. Thus, the Arab race is better than others, but this does not mean that every Arab individual is better than every non-Arab individual, for there may be among non-Arabs those who are better than most Arabs.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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