Zakat in Islam: A Powerful Poverty Alleviating Instrument For Islamic Countries

Abstract

The study presented an analytical justification of the how importance of Zakat to humankind. It is a theoretically dominated empirical study that looked into the analytical views of justification about how Zakat can alleviate poverty from the society. The results of the study disclosed with some concrete justifications that Zakat can be considered as a well being program to establish peace, prosperity and socio-economic development for mankind as a whole all times. However, the study could not consider a good number of numerical examples in favour of the main message of the study because of lack of data availability. Nevertheless, this work showed its originality in substance and made a unique contribution to the literature on Islamic finances and management. It observed that to introduce a reliable and efficient Islamic finances “Zakat” collection is only one side of the coin and thus highlighted two prolonged approaches to the issue. That is whether..
conclusively as individuals, we have done our responsibility to Allah (SWT) by
giving Zakat to the relevant authorities. Secondly, whether the Zakat fund is
managed in a way that would reduce the poverty rate, dependency, and create sustainable employment for the intended recipients as stated in the Holy Qur'an. This study proposes that if Zakat are fully collected and distributed to the deserving people according to Shariah law, we can expect to root out poverty from the society.