Assalamu Alikum wrt.

We all know that Islam is the most comprehensive religion on this earth. All of its aspects are to fulfill the necessity of the human nation. In the poor countries like Bangladesh and the African countries, I belive that zakat can be a source of poverty alleviation. Since I am from Bangladesh, and if I can be provided by some goodly information about alleviating poverty through zakat culmination, I may work on it and try my best to help the needy people of my country. Here, my question is how can zakat alleviate poverty in the society? Is it by simply colecting money from the rich and distrbuting it to the poor ones? Or there are some projects which can be taken to improve the system. I hope I will get the best answer in this regard. Wassalam.

-- Tawfique Al-Mubarak (tawfiqueam@yahoo.co.uk), December 15, 2003

Answers

Zakat in its entirety is only one of the fundamental tenets of Islam. So Zakat alone can’t alleviate or eradicate poverty if the other tenets of Islam are ignored. For a completely functional system where Zakat funds are automatically deposited to the National Public fund which is administered by State will have surplus and therefore need not be paid out completely for a given year. If we look at the example of the time of Caliph Umar Ibn Abul Aziz we know that there was non one to collect the Zakat because every living in the state were wealthy which allude to the very fact these examples can only be seen if a fully operational Islamic state exists until then it will all be a distant memory for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

-- Superintendent University (Superintendent.Family@gmail.com), October 03, 2004.