Zakat: Drawing Insights for Legal Theory and Economic Policy from Islamic Jurisprudence
![handle is hein.journals/pittax7 and id is 45 raw text is: ZAKAT: DRAWING INSIGHTS FOR LEGAL THEORY AND
ECONOMIC POLICY FROM ISLAMIC JURISPRUDENCE
Russell Powelt
I. INTRODUCTION
The rapid development of complex income taxation and welfare systems
in the 20th century might give the impression that progressive wealth
redistribution systems are uniquely modem. In fact, religious systems that
provided similar mechanisms for addressing economic injustice and poverty
alleviation are centuries old. Judaism and Christianity adopted the tithe as a ten
percent marginal tax on income, and both traditions developed pathways for
redirecting revenue to the poor. For some people, tithes and offerings to
charitable organizations for the poor remain religious obligations. Religiously
motivated charitable giving is demonstrably significant in the funding of
charities meeting the needs of the poor in the United States.' A tradition
similar to the tithe also developed in Islamic practice and jurisprudence. Zakat
(sometimes transliterated as zakah in English) is the obligation of almsgiving
t The author is an associate professor at Seattle University School of Law and would like to thank
John Makdisi, Charles Pouncy, and Frank Valdes for graciously offering to read a draft of this article and
for suggesting a range of helpful and insightful comments. Thanks also to the faculties of University of
Miami and Florida International University for their questions and comments at an FlU Faculty Colloqium,
where an earlier version of this work was presented. Finally, special thanks to my research assistant, Robert
Cadranell.
Editors Note: All translations of source documents were performed exclusively by the Author
and the Pittsburgh Tax Review does not warrant the accuracy, reliability, or timeliness of any information
translated by the Author.
1. Arthur C. Brooks, Religious Faith and Charitable Giving, POL'Y REV., Oct. & Nov. 2003, at 39,
39, 43, 49:
[R]eligious people are 33 percent of the population but make 52 percent of donations and 45 percent
of times volunteered. Secular people are 26 percent of the population but contribute 13 percent of
the dollars and 17 percent of the times volunteered .... [M]uch charitable activity is harmonious
with social advocacy and functions in partnership with government.
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Zakat: Drawing Insights for Legal Theory and Economic Policy from Islamic Jurisprudence
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