Poverty may be understood as a general lack of contentment or 'lack of peace of mind.' It is not necessarily an absolute condition, but a relative one--the level of income at which one is poor can vary from society to society.
The institution of zaka is at the core of Islam.
The author attempts in the article to discuss the place of the institution of zaka as the key component of a fiscal system in a developing Islamic economy. The author refers to the 'superstructure' of an economic system as the overall values, ideas, and attitudes of the society. In an Islamic society, the superstructure is one grounded in the idea of Tawheed (God's one-ness) and God's role as the sustainer of all creation. Islamic societies strive for a broad concept of well-being called falah. Falah pertains to well-being in the physical sense an in a non-material sense as well.
The establishment of bayt al-mal (treasury of an Islamic state) by Nawaz Sharif is a big step towards the creation of an Islamic welfare state.
In February of 1992, Pakistan's prime minister Mohammed Nawaz Sharif announced that a bayt al-mal would be created with initial assets at 2 billion rupees.
The author, from the International Islamic University of Malaysia, puts forth a suggestion regarding the transfer of zaka funds into long-term investments. His scheme centers around the issuance of shares of an institution he is proposing called the Awqaf-Zakah Investment Fund (AZIF). Instead of getting cash from the zaka administration, recipients would be given shares of AZIF redeemable at stores for goods while zakah funds are invested.
Islamic Banker has chosen Oasis Crescent Global Equity Fund as the best performing fund for the year 2001, returning –1.57 percent in a year where none of the Islamic equity funds yielded a positive return. The rankings could be improved upon by incorporating ratings on a geographic basis, and the study encountered difficulty in certain cases due to a lack of transparency, high turnover rates, and disparities in the amount of information provided by companies.
The article deals with technical procedures and rules of paying zaka . Drawing on numerous ahadith, the author reviews the 2.5% requirement on excess cash assets held by an individual for one year's time. He discusses the requirements of zaka for wealth in livestock (for example, one goat for 5-9 camels) in great detail and he addresses how mich zaka one pays on precious metals. Questions involved regarding changes in value since the Prophet's time are discussed.