When belief shapes a view of fairness

This lesson asks you to analyse how social and cultural belief systems affect people's views on equity and social justice and the decisions they make. The museum offers two cases from one tradition, an author's reading of equality and the jurists' rule of zakat; your class will bring other belief systems and the Canadian questions on which they bear. ¹

Notice who is said to owe what to whom, and whether the duty is described as a favour or as a right. Then ask whose reading you are looking at: the tradition's jurists, or one author.

Read one author's argument closely. Muhammad al-Khidr Husayn holds that people were created equal in fitra and differed only in social life: Islam set obligations on a basis of parity, with no privilege of noble over commoner or king over subject, and piety alone alters neither limits nor rights ^{2 3}. In his reading, brotherhood in religion forbids distinction in rights, and Abu Bakr and Umar addressed the ruled on the principle that the strong is weak until right is taken from him and the weak strong until he is given justice ^{4 5}. The judge does not rule for himself, and 'Umar litigated against a commoner. The record gives all this as the author's reading of the texts and reports he cites, not as a jurist's rule.

Within one tradition, jurists answered the question "who counts as needy?" differently. The Encyclopaedia of Islam article, as the museum's record reports it, says the schools differ on who counts as wealthy and so barred from receiving zakat: the Shafi'is use a means test of sufficiency over a lifetime, the Hanafis a property test of owning a nisab above basic needs. The article reads this as showing different views of zakat as a means of transferring wealth ⁶. They differ on distribution too: the Shafi'is require a private payer to give to at least three persons from each class, whereas the Hanafis allow a single person from any class ⁶. The record reports these positions side by side and rules on none of them ⁷.

Zakat is often called a tax on property, not income, though the article calls this only approximately true, since crops owe it once, at harvest, with no holding period ⁷. Classical jurists explained why only some property is liable through the idea of growth: the property is growing or meant for growth, in fact or in principle ⁷. The article adds that in the Middle Ages zakat was also the name of various taxes with no basis in Islamic teaching, probably because of its religious associations ⁸. So the word "tax" can describe the duty only approximately, and it can also describe levies that carried the name without the teaching.

Sort the voices before you use them. Equality in Islam rests on two authors, Muhammad al-Khidr Husayn and Muhyi al-Din Afifi Ahmad, and the record says of Husayn's account that it is the author's reading. Zakat gives the jurists' definition and the thresholds as Abu'l-Wafa' al-Maraghi lists them in his Qadaya: five camels, thirty cattle, forty sheep, and twenty mithqals of gold at a quarter-tenth ⁹. The practice record reports the schools' differences from the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and says it rules on none of them ⁷. These answer three different questions: what an author argues, what the jurists define, where the schools part.

Husayn holds that piety alone alters neither limits nor rights ³, yet the Shafi'is and the Hanafis, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam reports, judge who may receive zakat by different tests, lifetime sufficiency or ownership of a nisab above basic needs ⁶. Which test better fits a belief that people stand equal in rights, and what is the strongest objection to your choice?

• Equality in Islam: Husayn's reading in full, and a second author who cites a hadith against wronging a covenanted non-Muslim.
• Zakat (alms tax): the jurists' definition, al-Maraghi's thresholds and al-Tabari on the meaning of the word.
• Zakat (obligatory alms): where the schools differ, how collection changed over the centuries and the modern re-examination.

Read Equality in Islam and Zakat (alms tax). For each, write one sentence saying who is said to owe what to whom, and mark whether it is a jurist's rule or an author's reading.