Resources are not only gifts from God to all human beings but also a trust. Accordingly, Islam emphasizes an equitable distribution of income and wealth for the fulfillment of the needs of everyone. As a consequence of the application of one’s skills and efforts, one’s birth, location, and timing, and other factors extreme inequalities emerge between people. In the absence of adequate social restraints and mechanisms for re-distribution, wealth invariably concentrates in the hands of a few. To counter this, in part, God has enjoined the believing society with strict laws of inheritance and public disbursement of windfalls, establishing the institution of zakat to redress extreme or highly skewed inequalities of income and wealth. As God states it in the Quran:
So that [wealth] does not merely circulate between the wealthy among you. (Al-Hashr, 59:7)
In every society, there are those who may find it hard to earn a living through their own labor, whether owing to disability, lack of opportunity, or depressed production or wages. Islam addresses this by making helping the needy an individual and collective responsibility, first within Muslim families and society, and then through the global Muslim community at large. Moreover, it forbids, in the strongest and broadest terms, stigmatizing the destitute or blaming them for their condition (Qurayshî, Annual Zakât Computation Guide, 9-13).
If a Muslim society does not apply the comprehensive economic injunctions of the Quran and the Prophet, the zakat charity alone will not be enough to recreate poverty-free societies, as we have just described. We have plenty of examples of this insufficiency in the Muslim societies of our times.
Yet were Muslims to prudently apply the principles of zakat in a current Muslim country, it would not, in isolation of all other factors, cure poverty. Zakat is part of a godly economic outlook on, and practice in, the world. For example, Islam forbids extravagance, whether or not one is rich or poor. Thus owning utensils made of gold and silver, or residing in ostentatious homes, is considered excessive, even forbidden.
In addition, Islam also forbids earning interest. Rather, it inspires human beings to work for their money, not to live off the incurable debt and financial misery of others. Moreover, Islam calls upon the rich to employ the poor. The amazing historical successes of zakat demonstrate the great efficacy of the divinely-ordained system at work within the context of Islam’s other economic injunctions.
Among people who have internalized Islam’s concepts of selflessness, self-restraint, conservation, sufficiency, contentment, modesty, extended family and familial responsibility and love of the poor; and amid societies whose members are committed to upholding the divine covenant of all Muslims to secure the individual believer’s unfettered right of total worship, zakat charity has unambiguously demonstrated its transformative power.