Zakat as a Mode of Poverty Alleviation

Abstract

Poverty has been an issue of extreme vetting since the dawn of humanity and is currently battering the Muslim World severely with stats indicating that Muslims are only 23% of world’s population but have a share of 50% in global poverty. This is quite baffling and perplexing fact as Muslims have been bestowed with an economic system designed by Almighty ALLAH which surely is good enough to eradicate poverty but improper implementation has hurt Muslim World direly. Zakat is an essential component of Islamic Economic System which bounds rich people to transfer 2.5% of their wealth to poor people of society and through proper implementation of Zakat system poverty got completely eradicated during era of Hazrat Umer e Farooq (R.A.). Zakat system has been subject to several modifications as a result of prolonged western domination and rise of secularist views, recent studies have suggested several models of zakat implementation that can rejuvenate the past success but have failed to do so, due to lack of clear path and refusal to build a zakat system on the basis of fundamental principles taught by Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) considering them obsolete. This study intends to systematically identify the root causes behind the faltering performance of zakat system and try to eliminate them by designing a system that is based upon the fundamental principles as guided by Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) as well as in line with current economic dynamics. Another important objective of this study is to have a uniform zakat system throughout the Muslim World so that real benefits of zakat can be enjoyed and whole Muslim World may prosper.