Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu waRahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
There is no harm in giving the Zakah to the widowed sister so long as she is in need of it.
Answering your question, Dr. Salah Al-Sawy, Secretary-General of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America (AMJA), states:
There is no harm in giving the Zakah to the widowed sister so long as she is in need of it. Rather, your charity is a charity and an act of kinship, in which case she has more of a right to it than another (person) that has the same need.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.