Page 186 - UAE Truncal States

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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