Clarifying Zakāt

Zakāt is one of the foundations of subservience to God and one of the oldest aspects to the covenantal law. It shows that what God intended isn't jsut personal piety but the institution of an order that is sustained. In reference to its primordial judgement, God tells is in reference to the Israelites:

"They were simply commanded to serve God alone, with undivided loyalty to His code, as Hunafā, to uphold the salāh and zakāt. That is the long standing code." (98:5)

As such, one would assume that anyone claiming to adhere to the covenantal code as their subservience to God (in Arabic, muslim) would fully understand what is expected of him or her. However, that’s often not the case, and there’s a dire need to educate the sincere on what God expects. Therefore, the next few points will offer some basic clarifications of popular misunderstandings. They’re not intended to be scholarly with an array of justifications and evidence, nor will they deal with context-specific applications. They simply outline general propositions on some elementary but often misunderstood matters.

1. “Zakāt is compulsory charity”

‘Charity’ is an English word that doesn’t correspond accurately with the covenantal concept of zakāt. Charity is essentially a free-will offering. Zakāt is not. In earlier times, zakāt was popularly known as sadaqah in both Hebrew and Arabic. Today’s popular usage of the word sadaqah doesn’t strictly correspond to ancient times. It has never been seen as charity but as a just tax regimen ordained by the Most High on the polity of believing Hebrews (Leviticus 27:30-34, 2 Chronicles 24:6), and later, the Arabs (Qur’an 9:103 and 9:60). Thus we find that Abū Bakr referred to it as “a duty on wealth” (al Bukhari). The default position was that zakāt was collected and distributed to the categories stipulated by God as taxes and public expenditure. Of course, tax rates, regulations, and scope would change over the ages based on the context as God would see fit (which is true of any tax regimen).

2. “Zakāt is about feeding poor people”

As a tax regimen, zakāt isn’t simply about feeding poor people although welfare claimants from the vulnerable certainly find their share. God tells us that zakāt expenditure comprises of eight meta-categories:

"Covenantal contributions are designated for the vulnerable, the destitute, zakāt administrators, those whose allegiance needs to be stabilised, emancipation from bondage and debt relief, the cause of God, and the stranded. This allocation is mandated by God. God knows what sustains the order and governs with wisdom." (9:60)

A basic analysis reveals the public nature of zakāt expenditure, and even when thinking about the poor and needy, it’s not simply free-willed charitable altruism but welfare support to aid the vulnerable, circulate wealth, and strengthen the community or society (depending on its covenantal nature) by raising real GDP. Whilst this might make sense to many, for some this might seem novel but it’s not really. Ibn Qudāmah, al Nawawī, al Tabarī and many other classical jurists have explicitly articulated this.

3. “Zakāt is meant to be sent to the poor abroad”

Economies differ in their sizes and outputs, the costs of goods and services, as well as in socio-economic norms. Two poor people from different parts of the world can look very different but it doesn’t negate that they are poor in their context. On the point of collection and distribution, the Prophet famously said before the other categories were revealed, “taken from their rich and given to their poor” (al Bukhāri and Muslim) and from this it has always been widely deduced by jurists that collected public finances are to be spent in the region they are collected from.

Moreover, this doesn’t negate that there might be obligatory sadaqah (for those able) to be contributed to the poor abroad since zakāt is not the only form of obligatory financial contribution unbeknown to many. This would be in addition to zakāt which is the regional tax God wanted.

4. “The best time to pay zakāt is Ramadān”

This is a major misunderstanding that usually stems from the idea that giving charity during Ramadan accrues multiplied rewards. Whilst the point is true to general acts, it is unrelated to zakāt. Firstly, zakāt is not charity but a duty. Secondly, that duty becomes due once specific types of wealth have been held continuously above a certain threshold (nisāb) for a lunar year. So, say a person attained and maintained wealth over the nisāb in Muharram, it would be due the following Muharram, and to wait until Ramadan wouldn’t accrue multiplied benefits but instead anger God, and s/he would be in a state of offence until they paid it. Ramadan is indeed a month of charity, and not zakāt. As an analogy for those in the UK, it’s like paying your taxes on New Years because it seems auspicious, although it’s known that the financial tax year ends in April. In earlier times, the political authority would not only enforce the payment of the zakāt when it was due but would also prosecute offenders with additional fines or imprisonment for late payment.

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Now there is also a myth concerning zakāt distribution that I would like to address, and that is taking the ‘safer’ approach. On a general note, some advocates mistakenly assume that a restrictive approach to God’s law is the godliest approach, or the ‘safer’ way, but this sentiment is arbitrary since they rarely take this stance across the board and on every covenantal matter. For medieval scholars, the ‘safer’ option was usually espoused as the go-to position when the jurist, highly informed in matters of law, wasn’t entirely convinced by either of two irreconcilable conclusions. Generally, the more restrictive position (i.e. for the sake of being more restrictive) isn’t one that a scholar advocates openly, but a position they personally take due to their own uncertainty - a scholar has no business actively advocating something he isn’t entirely sure about.

Taking this sentiment in reference to zakāt spending categories, a restrictive approach where it is advocated simply for the sake of being restrictive, is illegitimate, for the following reasons:

Firstly, the categories are not singular, in that many of the eight comprise sub-categories. For example, ‘those in debt’ includes not only those who’s entrepreneurial spirit has been impeded by debt, but those who have partaken in hamālah: political costs associated with bringing two antagonistic parties together. We find that earlier jurists would differ on what they included under a particular category. For example, some took ‘God’s cause’ (fī sabīlillah) to also include scholars, and in one narration from Ahmad b. Hanbal he uniquely included those yet to perform hajj. Similarly, on ‘slaves,’ classical scholars from across the schools differed as to whether it included the mukātab (a slave buying his own freedom) and war captives. Even scholars of the same legal school would differ, essentially, on how to understand or interpret a category.

Secondly, what we find is that classical scholarship shows scholars from across the four schools continuously enquiring into how the categories ought to be taken and exploring what God meant by the eight stipulations rather than simplistically opting for a reductive application for the sake of it. To polemically argue against such enquiry today as if there is no space for it is ultimately to rail against classical scholarly traditions (the ‘modernism’ they abhor)! Nobody back then ever said “We shouldn’t be having this discussion and you’re all wrong for such philosophising – you’re all evil for not keeping it basic/literal!” Yes, they differed, but they did so viewing the debate as perfectly understandable. A common attitude in many quarters is one neither based on godly reasoning nor a claimed commitment to tradition, but one that is born of an unfortunate protectionist and reactionary attitude to modernity and blind allegiance to particular ethno-religious groups and their own interpretations.

Thirdly, where zakāt spending ought to be restricted is to the overarching meta-categories, in that zakāt spending is contained to eight divisions. In the hadith of Ziyād b. al-Hārith, the Prophet mentioned that God does not even allow for the Prophet to determine the categories, for He Himself has seen to it (Abu Dāwūd, al-Dāraqutni). However, we also know that the Prophet didn’t take these categories in the most restrictive or literal sense but that there was a deeper understanding as to what the eight parts in 9:60 were speaking to, hence the hadith of Qabīsah on hamālah, and hundreds of hadith expanding our understanding of the categories.

Fourthly, the reason the ‘safer’ approach to zakāt categories is a myth is because it implies many of the early jurists were reckless in their philosophising, or given to fanciful thinking  since they too engaged in wider exploration, or that the categories are to be restricted to the narrowest possible usages only, which prophetic practices show not to be the case. Furthermore, if one affirms all the schools are valid and correct then the most they can say is that they prefer a certain interpretation of the categories. The differences between schools of thought on this subject are very well known, so to act as if they do not exist and haven’t for a thousand years is intellectual dishonesty.

Fifthly, if the issue some have is the particular ways in which valid interpretations might be misapplied, then that should be articulated and done so in context - i.e. they should point out why they are suspicious or why there is distrust, rather than disingenuously railing against a principle that all the jurists they defer to have already affirmed.