Islamic redistribution through zakat historical record and modern realities

Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 275-293

  Kuran, Timur ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 79960010732     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (87)

1. Ahmed Abdel-Fattah El-Ashker and Muhammad Sirajul Haq, eds., Institutional Framework of Zakah: Dimensions and Implications (Jeddah: Islamic Development Bank, 1995).
2. Suliman Bashear, "On the Origins and Development of the Meaning of Zakat in Early Islam", Arabica 40(1993): esp. 84-85;
3. Franz Rosenthal, "Sedaka, Charity", Hebrew Union College Annual 23(1950-1951): esp. 421-423;
4. Mahmood Ibrahim, Merchant Capital and Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 19, 76;
5. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Mecca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 165-169;
6. C. Snouck Hurgronje, "La Zakat" (orig. Dutch ed., 1882), Oeuvres choisies, ed. G.-H. Bousquet and J. Schacht (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1957), 152-153.
7. M. A. Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 1:19-27;
8. Ibrahim, Merchant Capital, 99-109;
9. Fred McGraw Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 82-90;
10. Elias Shoufani, Al-Riddah and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 10-47, 71-106. For an interpretation that puts greater emphasis on religious factors
11. see Bashear, "Origins", 99-113.
12. Ibrahim, Merchant Capital, 140;
13. Shaban, Islamic History, 1:118-119.
14. M. Bravmann, "Surplus of Property: An Early Arab Social Concept", der Islam 38(1963):28-50;
15. Joseph Schacht, "Zakat", Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1934), 3:1202-1204. For the logic of redistribution norms in primitive societies and numerous examples similar to those of early Islam
16. see Richard A. Posner, "A Theory of Primitive Society", in his The Economics of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), chap. 6.
17. 2, 1:1143-1144.
18. Jonathan Benthall, "Financial Worship: The Quranic Injunction to Almsgiving", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n. s., 5(1999):29-31.
19. Frede Løkkegaard, Islamic Taxation in the Classical Period (Copenhagen: Branner and Korch, 1950), 93.
20. Snouck Hurgronje, "La Zakat", 164.
21. On this period's turbulence, see Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 1:187-217;
22. Shaban, Islamic History, chaps. 2-4;
23. Ibrahim, Merchant Capital, chaps. 5-7.
24. Abdallah Al-Shiekh, "Zakat", Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 4:366-370.
25. On the origins and practices of Christian asceticism, see Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture, 13th-18th Centuries, trans. Eric Nicholson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), esp. chap. 16.
26. 2, 6:194-195;
27. A. Grohmann, "'Ushr", Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1936), 4:1050-1052;
28. 2, 4:1030-1034.
29. Abu Yusuf, Kitab al-kharaj, trans. A. Ben Shemesh as Taxation in Islam (Arabic original c. 790; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 3:134-140.
30. Schacht, "Zakat", 1204.
31. Løkkegaard, Islamic Taxation, 120-125.
32. Schacht, "Zakat", 1204.
33. Løkkegaard, Islamic Taxation, 163.
34. See also Baber Johansen, The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent (London: Croom Helm, 1988), esp. 19.
35. Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 400-1500, trans. Julia Barrow (French original, 1964; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 290-293;
36. Robert B. Ekelund et al., Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), chap. 2.
37. Ahmad Oran and Salim Rashid, "Fiscal Policy in Early Islam", Public Finance 44(1989):75-101.
38. Ikram Azam, Pakistan and Islamic Economics (Lahore: Amir Publications, 1978), 97. The author attributes the passage to a 1952 book by S. A. Siddiqi.
39. Benthall, "Financial Worship", 30.
40. Personal communication with Fred Donner, May 12, 1997.
41. Maxime Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism, trans. Brian Pearce (French original, 1966; New York: Pantheon, 1973), 25-26;
42. Snouck Hurgronje, "La Zakat", 161-162;
43. Ibrahim, Merchant Capital, 145-148.
44. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Revival of the Religious Sciences, issued as Imam Ghazali's Ihya Ulum-id-Din, trans. Fazul-ul-Karim (Aratic original c. 1100; Lahore: Sind Sagar Academy, 1978), 34-35.
45. Yassine Essid, A Critique of the Origins of Islamic Economic Thought (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 141.
46. Timur Kuran, "The Provision of Public Goods under Islamic Law: Origins, Impact, and Limitations of the Waqf System", Law and Society Review 35(2001):301-357.
47. e siècle en Turquie: étude sociohistorique (Ankara: Editions Ministère de la Culture, 1990).
48. Abraham Marcus, "Poverty and Poor Relief in Eighteenth-Century Aleppo", Revue du monde musulman et de la Méditerranée 55-56(1990):171-179, quote at 171.
49. Benthall, "Financial Worship", 29-30;
50. Snouck Hurgronje, "La Zakat", 150;
51. Norman A. Stillman, "Charity and Social Service in Medieval Islam", Societas 5(1975):106-107.
52. Snouck Hurgronje, "La Zakat", 150.
53. Essid, A Critique of the Origins of Islamic Economic Thought, 201-202.
54. Michael Bonner, "Definitions of Poverty and the Rise of the Muslim Urban Poor", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 6(1996):335-344.
55. Certain early Muslim writers sought to soothe the poor also by proposing that they would be the "first to enter heaven. " See Bonner, "Definitions of Poverty", 341-343.
56. Josep-Antoni Ybarra, "The Zakat in Muslim Society: An Analysis of Islamic Economic Policy", Social Science Information 35(1996):643-656;
57. Benthall, "Financial Worship", 35;
58. Stillman, "Charity", 115.
59. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (1925; reprint, New York: Norton, 1967).
60. See, for example, Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984), chaps. 14, 16.
61. The point has also been made by Benthall, "Financial Worship", 36.
62. David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 87-88.
63. See Timur Kuran, "The Genesis of Islamic Economics: A Chapter in the Politics of Muslim Identity", Social Research 64(1997):301-338.
64. Sayyid Abu l-A'la Mawdudi, Let Us Be Muslims, ed. Khurram Murad (Urdu original, 1940; Kuala Lumpur: Noordeen, 1990), chaps. 19-23, esp. 220.
65. Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, trans. John D. Hardie (Arabic original, 1948; New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1970), 133-138, 267-270.
66. Naseem Quazi, "Economic Morality in Islam", Hamdard Islamicus 16(winter 1993):93.
67. M. Umer Chapra, Islam and the Economic Challenge (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1992), esp. 225-226, 270-275.
68. Al-Shiekh, "Zakat", 368.
69. See, for example, Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad, Economics of Islam, 2nd ed. (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1952);
70. Mohammad Abdul Mannan, Islamic Economics: Theory and Practice (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1970), 284-302;
71. Afzal-ur-Rahman, Economic Doctrines of Islam, vol. 3 (Lahore: Islamic Publications, 1976), chaps. 14-18;
72. Abdur Rahman Shad, Zakat and 'Ushr (Lahore: Kazi Publications, 1986). These books have all been reprinted many times, and Islamist bookstores with an English-language section tend to keep them in stock.
73. Ahmad, Economics of Islam, 91;
74. Afzal-ur-Rahman, Economic Doctrines, 3:218-224.
75. Ahmad, Economics of Islam, 90;
76. Afzal-ur-Rahman, Economic Doctrines, 3:206-207.
77. Ahmad, Economics of Islam, 89;
78. Afzal-ur-Rahman, Economic Doctrines, 3:225-226.
79. The early Muslims tried to fix the ratio between the price of gold and that of silver, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. See W. Barthold, Islâm Medeniyeti Tarihi, ed. Fuad Köprülü (Russian original, 1918; Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1963), 25. The exemption limits set by the Prophet probably reflected the price ratio that prevailed in his own milieu.
80. The clash between proceduralism and situationism has a long history in Islamic thought, as recognized by Majid Khadduri in his The Islamic Conception of Justice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), chap. 6. For general insights
81. see Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Reason of Rules (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), chap. 7;
82. Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), chap. 1.
83. F. R. Faridi, "A Theory of Fiscal Policy in an Islamic State", in Fiscal Policy and Resource Allocation in Islam, ed. Ziauddin Ahmed, Munawar Iqbal, and M. Fahim Khan (Jeddah: International Center for Research in Islamic Economics, 1983), 27-45.
84. For another statement in favor of allowing corrections of the redistribution effected through zakat, see Chapra, Islam and the Economic Challenge, 274.
85. For a broader critique, see Timur Kuran, "On the Notion of Economic Justice in Contemporary Islamic Thought", International Journal of Middle East Studies 21(1989):171-191.
86. See Timur Kuran, "The Economic Impact of Islamic Fundamentalism", in Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 318-325;
87. idem., "Islamic Economics and the Islamic Subeconomy", Journal of Economic Perspectives 9(Fall 1995):163-165.