Islamic redistribution through zakat historical record and modern realities

The year 1995 saw the publication of the proceedings of an international conference on zakat (alms) held five years earlier in Kuala Lumpur.1 The weighty volume's main theme is that today's zakat systems have a negligible impact on poverty alleviation-the very task they were expected to accomplish more effectively than secular redistribution systems. One contributor after another observes that even in countries where income redistribution has recently taken on an explicitly Islamic character, Muslims are by and large failing to live by Islam's only principal requirement that is squarely economic: the duty, incumbent on all adult Muslims except the poorest, to pay zakat on an annual basis. © 2003 State University of New York. All rights reserved.

Duke Scholars

Author Timur Kuran Economics