Q. Who is a Syed? Has a Syed privileges and rights other Muslims don’t enjoy?
Abd Al-Wakil
A. Syed is a title that in some Muslim countries is applied to a descendant of the Prophet (peace be upon him) through his daughter Fatimah and her husband, Ali ibn Abu Talib, who was the Prophet’s cousin. There is no special status for Syeds in Islam, because Islam does not group people into classes. Nor does it give a special status for anyone, regardless of people’s social standing. All are equal in God’s sight. All are responsible for themselves.
The Prophet was keen to emphasize this to his own relatives. He called on the closest of them to him and told them that he would not be able to give them any special status so as to be treated differently from the rest of mankind on the Day of Judgment. He further told them that the people who would work for their future life, doing the duties God requires all His servants to do and making an endeavor to earn God’s pleasure, would be better placed on the Day of Judgment than any of his relatives, if the latter felt that they need not do any of that on account of their relation with the Prophet.
However, there is one restriction that applies to the Prophet’s descendents. They may not benefit by zakah, even if they are poor. This does not deprive them of any privilege, because the poor among them are helped through another source of finance that the Muslim state may have, namely, one-fifth of what the state may win in war. Having said that, a number of scholars, particularly Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, feel that at times when the Muslim state suffers from weakness and is unlikely to win anything in war, depriving the Prophet’s descendents of the benefit of zakah may be counterproductive. Hence, such scholars consider that if the poor among the Prophet’s descendents accept zakah, there is nothing wrong with that.
