Yarrow, there is a MASSIVE amount of writing on this topic—there is quite a lot of agreement but also (like many things in Islam) large points of disagreement.
I think for the purposes of EA/effective giving, in the simplest form:
Zakat is a wealth-tax levied against Muslims above a certain wealth level and given to a small prescribed group of eligible recipients. Strictly, zakat has to be in the form of the transfer of ownership of cash or commodities.
In the theology there are 8 permissible groups, only one of which I think we’d be able to target for EA purposes—the (Muslim) poor and needy. So any program we’d try and get to be zakat-certified would be checked that the recipients are muslim and are poor and a couple of other things. They’d also want to make sure that the funds are disbursed within one lunar year of collection.
Zakat has to be held in a non-interest-barring account, and shouldn’t be intermingled with non-Zakat funds. Zakat also can’t be used to cover transaction or operational fees.
Let me know if you have any other more specific points of enquiry?
Yarrow, there is a MASSIVE amount of writing on this topic—there is quite a lot of agreement but also (like many things in Islam) large points of disagreement.
I think for the purposes of EA/effective giving, in the simplest form:
Zakat is a wealth-tax levied against Muslims above a certain wealth level and given to a small prescribed group of eligible recipients. Strictly, zakat has to be in the form of the transfer of ownership of cash or commodities.
In the theology there are 8 permissible groups, only one of which I think we’d be able to target for EA purposes—the (Muslim) poor and needy. So any program we’d try and get to be zakat-certified would be checked that the recipients are muslim and are poor and a couple of other things. They’d also want to make sure that the funds are disbursed within one lunar year of collection.
Zakat has to be held in a non-interest-barring account, and shouldn’t be intermingled with non-Zakat funds. Zakat also can’t be used to cover transaction or operational fees.
Let me know if you have any other more specific points of enquiry?