About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

14 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y 1 (2018-2019)

handle is hein.journals/nwjlsopo14 and id is 1 raw text is: Copyright 2018 by Northwestern University School of Law Volume 14 (Fall 2018) Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy Charity Disparity: The Challenge of Applying Religious Law on Zakit in the United States Ahmed E. Taha* Sohaib I. Khant Legal pluralism is generally defined as a situation in which two or more legal systems coexist in the same social field.' One type of legal pluralism occurs when a group of people is subject to both the law of its country and to a religious law. Practicing Muslims in the United States are in this situation-they must fulfill numerous personal obligations imposed by Islamic law within the context of the American legal system. Doing so is usually not difficult; however, it causes significant problems in at least one area: calculating their annual almsgiving (zakat) required by Islamic law. Muslim jurists disagree about how much zakat should be paid on certain modern financial assets created by American corporate, securities, and tax law, such as publicly traded stocks and 401(k) retirement accounts. As a result, American Muslims can choose from a wide range of zakat calculation opinions, which are usually presented on the internet without a framework of legal reasoning. This causes inequity, confusion, and creates a moral hazard for American Muslims that threatens to undermine the societal and spiritual purposes of zakdt. Zakat is a mandatory almsgiving in Islam. As one of the five central pillars of Islam, paying zakat is one of the most important religious obligations of Muslims.2 Each year, Muslims whose wealth exceeds their basic needs must donate a specified portion of their financial assets and certain tradable assets, such as business inventories, livestock, and agricultural produce. Detailed rules exist for calculating zakat, and these rules differ somewhat by asset type. Thus, Muslims seeking guidance regarding how much zakat to pay have turned to Islam's scriptural sources and jurisprudential tradition, Muslim scholars and jurisconsults, and, in present times, even Islamic websites for information about these rules. * Ahmed Taha is a Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law; J.D., Ph.D., Stanford University; B.A., B.S., University of Pennsylvania. T Sohaib Khan is a Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University; M.A., Duke University; B.S., Lahore University of Management Sciences. The authors are grateful for helpful comments and suggestions from Abdullah Ali, Sami Catovic, Michael Helfand, Yousseflsmail, Asifa Quraishi, and Asma Sayeed. 1 Sally Engle Merry, Legal Pluralism, 22 LAW & Soc'Y REV. 869, 870 (1988). 2 The other four pillars are the profession of faith (sincerely declaring belief that there is no god except God-Allah in Arabic-and that Muhammad is a messenger of God), the five daily prayers, fasting from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan, and making the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one's lifetime. THE STUDY QURAN: A NEW TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY 740 n.30 (Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al. eds., 2015).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most