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The Islamic Basis of Society

         Zakah
         The giving of zakah (alms-tax) is one of the five duties incumbent
         on  every true Muslim. This institution gradually developed from
         voluntary giving away of worldly possessions to the poor, into an
         obligatory contribution in the form of taxation to the expansion and
         maintenance of the early Islamic State under the Caliph Abu Bakr. In
         later centuries the governments based the rate of taxation and the
         assessment of taxable items on the traditional system for the giving
         of zakah, and even the term zakah was retained,07 although the
         revenue was not always used for distribution among the poor nor for
         the cause of spreading Islam.00
           In the Trucial Slates certain taxes and dues were paid to the Rulers
         on produce, possessions and imports,09 for which the word zakah
         was sometimes used among other more specific terms. But the true
         meaning of zakah in this area, which after all had not remitted tax to
         the central Caliphate for many centuries, was the giving to the poor.
         While the worldly authorities are entitled to tax a person on his
         visible and assessable property, the undisclosed wealth (batin) of a
         person, such as his gold and silver coins and his merchandise in his
         store, is estimated by himself and he has to put aside a fixed
         percentage to be given away. This assessment is made annually; for
         example, if someone held 1,000 gold sovereigns on a certain date and
         did not make use of them for a year, he had to put aside 25 sovereigns
         as zakah. It was neither the Ruler’s, nor the qadi’s, nor indeed
         anybody else’s business to monitor this yearly payment. It was
         entirely up to the individual’s conscience to fulfil this duty of Islam
         very carefully, including even the little heap of unsold pearls tied up
         in a cloth, or the stock of wood in the shop.
           It was also for the individual to decide how he distributed this
         zakah, but if someone had relatives who were less well-off than
         himself, it was considered meritorious to give generously to them
         first and only then to turn to the poor strangers or to send the zakah
         to Mecca for distribution to the poor. Many people who did not
         understand the method of assessing zakah consulted a mulawwa' or
         the qadi, who had access to the legal interpretations of this
         obligation. Judging from the more easily visible manifestations of the
         unquestioning, deep religiousness which was practised in the
         traditional society, it may be assumed that the obligation to give
         zakah was generally observed.


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