Zakah According to the Quran & Sunnah

Zakah is the third Pillar of Islam. It is also, this book argues, the first pillar of Islam's economic system — the primary mechanism for implementing economic justice and providing sustenance to those the economy has left behind. Islam is unusually sensitive on both counts, and those two issues are the essence of this work.

Why a Full Reference Is Needed

Most Muslims can state that Zakah is 2.5{'c283': 'Fast According to the Qur\'an & Sunnah', 'c017': 'Treatises on Zakat and Fasting', 'c159': 'Important Warning Against Ribaa'}nd stop there. The moment a real calculation begins, the questions multiply. What about a pension. A house that is rented out. Shares held long-term versus traded. Business stock. Gold jewelry that is worn. Money owed to you that may never arrive. Livestock. A harvest.

Getting these wrong means either short-changing people who hold a right over your wealth, or paying on what was never liable.

What Is Covered

All the main issues, category by category:

• Gold and silver, and paper money
• Livestock, with the thresholds for each kind
• Fruits and grains, and rented land
• Buried treasure and minerals
• Trade goods, shares and stocks
• Exploited assets — property held to generate income rather than to trade

The categories covering shares, paper money and income-generating property are the ones a modern reader needs most and finds least often, since the classical manuals were written for a different economy.

Its Aim

The author's stated objective is to serve as an easy and authentic reference. That is the right ambition for a book of this kind: it is meant to be opened once a year with a spreadsheet in front of you and to answer the question you actually have.

Related Reading

• Fast According to the Qur'an & Sunnah — the same treatment for fasting
• Treatises on Zakat and Fasting — Shaykh Ibn Baz's concise treatise on Zakat
• Important Warning Against Ribaa — the prohibition of ribaa, from the same author's field