Islamic charity and global poverty
July 3, 2007 10:40 PM   Subscribe

Looking for statistics: How would I go about calculating how much impact Islamic charity or zakat can make on global poverty - if collected and distributed on a global scale?

Right now, in most countries the once-a-year, personal charity obligation, zakaat, is a local community effort. People disseminate the money/goods amongst the poor and other relevant projects around their locality or in their town/city/village. I have a feeling that a global version – although impractical at the moment – could be more effective and efficient for humanity as a whole, but wanted to do some ballpark estimation. How would I go about this?

Zakaat rules can get a bit arcane with special circumstances, but in general it is about 2.5% of an earning person's savings (cash or otherwise) and not actual income.
posted by raheel to Grab Bag (2 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow, what a great question. For the curious, here's a link to the Wikipedia article on zakat.

I lived in Indonesia last year, and it seemed to me that Islamic alms-giving was something that was becoming more and more technological - you could donate to the government's zakat scheme (see below) via an ATM or via direct debit from your bank account, and banks published lists of people who'd made significant donations in the newspaper in full-page newspaper ads, especially after the Yogyakarta earthquake in May of that year. However, at Eid al-Fitr, I was invited to a colleague's house and we helped slaughter and distribute a goat to people in the community, which was awesome because it was local, and she and her family knew who had the most need, as did the local mosques, which seemed like a good way to ensure a corruption-free set-up as the donations never got too large and were based on valuable personal relationships.

Indonesia does have something called Dompet Dhuafa Republik, which offers "zakat online" and is the government's official channel for Islamic charity giving. The "Zakat Untuk Pendidikan - 220,000Rp/bulan" banner at the top means "Zakat for Education - about $20/month," so perhaps there's a national scheme that allows people to target where their money is going. And while Indonesia is majority-Islamic, it's also officially secular, so the zakat money goes to public schools that serve kids of all religions, I imagine; you can read an article about how Dompet Dhuafa/BAZNAS (Badan Amil Zakat Nasional, the "national Islamic tax agency" ) have assisted the Yogya region post-earthquake here.

I do wonder if a more developed Muslim country, say Malaysia or the Gulf states, could sponsor NGOs from that country to head to less developed Islamic regions to do development/relief work - but is this not what the Red Cross/Red Crescent already do?

To attempt to answer your question, I'd say look for things like the Indonesian organizations I've mentioned above in majority-Islamic states, and in places like Sweden, France, Germany, the UK and the US, where many Muslims have settled/live but are not necessarily in a majority-Muslim community, I'd ask national Islamic service agencies: in the UK, that could be the Muslim Council of Britain or the Muslim Association of Britain, for example - they might be familiar with scholarly work in the area that might provide more detail that what you'd find on your own. Universities, too, might provide some detail - here's the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies department at NYU, which might be a good place to start given New York's sizable Muslim population.
posted by mdonley at 12:14 AM on July 4, 2007


I also think there is a fundamentally charitable argument for making Zakat more anonymous, the internet could seriously help.
An important element for me in charity is that no-one should know I'm doing it. In some of the families I'm friendly with in Peshawar the division of the lamb into exact portions according to the needs of the family receiving it has almost gone to ludicrous proportions. And yes, while it is the granny who distributes it, the poorer members of the neighbourhood, clan, association, group, whatever always knows where it is coming from.
Again wealthier family members should help out poorer ones, but there's a patronising feel to it that could be avoided with technology.
I'd be fascinated to follow the results of your search, please post back
posted by Wilder at 2:11 AM on July 4, 2007


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