Zakat, giving charity made me a better version of me

Growing up I was always kind of tight. It's somewhat my parents influence not not their fault exactly. They worked many jobs to try and pay for everything, and whilst we still got to have things and we were fortunate to not be deprived, there was always a strong sense of needing to save every tiny bit we could.

So I had managed the basics of pillar 1 2, and 3. I had spoken the Shahada , I had learnt enough that I could pray, at least in a basic way - and I had managed my first Ramadan. The 4th pillar for me to understand was Zakat.

Zakat is the obligatory charity that all Muslims need to give to the poor and needy. There are more complex terms of what exactly this constitutes, but that is basically it. You work out your savings based wealth and you donate 2.5%. You also donate based on things like total gold owned by grams over a certain amount.

I completely agreed with this and knew it was both a good thing to do generally, and also a way to be better fulfilling my religion. But the idea of giving away, albeit a small portion of, my savings - felt awkward.

I felt like a person who believed in charity and helping others, and in many ways I did do this in other ways. Most of my jobs up until this point had been within charities. I am aware of the waste that they had financial, but also all the good they do. It was just the compulsion to save made giving away money feel hard or not comfortable in some way. I always did it, and knew it was good to do so and was glad when I had, just this weird, semi-selfish feeling of anxiety beforehand.

Zakat is only a yearly occurrence so it's not something that felt like a big deal. I just felt a little disappointed in myself for not finding it completely easy.

The first year was the weirdest, but the coming years were easier. And now I feel a sense of happiness when giving charity, Zakat or otherwise.

It felt like there was a misalignment between what I believed and what I actually was. And through Zakat, I managed to smush those to things together and have the better parts of both. There's been other things like this I have experienced in my life and it is always a nicer feeling at the end. I think sometimes we can be ignorant to how we are because we tell ourselves that we are something that we want to believe we are, and of course, we believe it.

In Islam, there is a strong emphasis on knowledge leading to action. And I feel like in this case and others it has helped me be the version of me that I wanted to believe I was before, but for real this time.