Question of the day: What are the rules for paying zakat and alms in light of the increase in the number of needy people?
ويجيب عن هذا السؤال فضيلة الدكتور فضل مراد أستاذ الفقه والقضايا المعاصرة بكلية الشريعة في جامعة قطر، قائلاً: الله سبحانه وتعالى يوزعها على ثمانية أقسام، فجاء في كتاب الله «إِنَّمَا الصَّدَقَاتُ لِلْفُقَرَاءِ وَالْمَسَاكِينِ وَالْعَامِلِينَ عَلَيْهَا وَالْمُؤَلَّفَةِ قُلُوبُهُمْ وَفِي الرِّقَابِ وَالْغَارِمِينَ وَفِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ وَابْنِ السَّبِيلِ فَرِيضَةً From God, and God is All-Knowing, All-Wise.”
He added: These eight categories, if the zakat was distributed according to what God commanded, the problem of poverty would be solved, because the owners of gold are obligated to pay 2.5%, as well as the owners of trade and stock exchange funds. It reaches 100 billion dollars, and this means that it solves the problem of poverty in the Islamic and Arab worlds. And he continued: Even if people committed themselves globally to paying zakat, it is above a trillion dollars, and therefore zakat solves the problem of poverty, and therefore its types varied from trade, gold, silver, and currencies, as well as from crops, in which it reaches 10% or 5%, at the expense of watering it. If it is from the sky’s water at no cost, and if it is irrigated at a cost, then it is 5%, and if agricultural products are extracted from wheat, for example, which is available in the world, according to what we have seen from the research, then hundreds of millions of poor families can be satisfied with this zakat.
He pointed out that Muslims approached two billion, and many of them suffer from poverty, and the zakat of the agricultural crop, which is the tenth or half of the tenth of wheat, can cover 300 million poor people, adding: What do we care about the zakat of livestock, the zakat of camels, sheep, and other zakat?
