Zakat and poverty in Islam

In Islam, Muslims are expected to assist each other and pay particular attention to the poor and needy in society. Very early in Islamic history, political and legal institutions emerged in which some of these responsibilities assumed a legal status whilst others were practised as social obligations or ethico-moral necessities. Among the responsibilities that became mandatory and implementable by the Islamic state were the annual disbursement of zakat (obligatory alms) and assistance to beneficiaries known as al mustahiqqin and the maintenance of dependents called nafaqa. Islam is built upon five pillars: faith, prayer, alms, fasting, and pilgrimage and is therefore considered more than just a spiritual system. Among these pillars zakat comes in third position. It reveals Islam’s acknowledgement of the existence of poverty in society and therefore highlights an obvious relationship between charity and poverty. This is a dialectic relationship in which charity is seen to lead to the alleviation or eradication of poverty and poverty in turn leads to charity.