Zakat Opportunity!

****UPDATE****

Ibrahim has been released from Jail and his creditors have been paid off.

Upon release we found he has to pay a few hefty government fines for overstaying his visa (while he was in jail) and also to renew his visa.

I am reactivating the fundraiser, as I had deactivated it after Ramadan.

For full story please see below.

*****************

My revert friend Ibrahim Mustapha (Pradeesh Gopalakrishnan), from Kerala, India, is in jail in the Sultanate of Oman for 4+ years due to the inability to pay a debt.

In Oman and other Muslim countries, an inability to pay off a debt can land you in jail until your debt is paid.

I gave him the Shahada in 2010 and have known him since childhood.

Ibrahim has been in jail since December of 2020, and before that, I remember him as a person who would fundraise Zakat for other people.

He had started a business in Oman as a middle party in the wholesale supply of food items like rice. He had purchased it on credit, hoping to make a small profit by moving large quantities of product.

But he suffered a loss as someone bought 2 wholesale containers of rice from him on credit and absconded without paying him after taking the delivery.

He was left holding a very large debt which he could not pay. To keep his business afloat and in desperation, he took more loans, getting trapped deeper and deeper into a cycle of debt.

His creditors filed cases on him, and he was arrested.

His father was already a stroke patient, and his mother also suffered a heart attack while he was in jail.

Recently, his mother was able to sell some family property and paid off a large part of his debt.

What remains is an amount of around $7,000 that will get his creditors paid, and I am trying to raise a couple thousand more to give him a fresh start.

There is an operational cost associated with the fundraising and the transfer fees to his lawyers in Oman.

To release a prisoner is a very fundamental aspect of Islam's Zakat. I request you all to please be generous and help out this brother.

Regards,

Faiz Ahmed