Earning, saving and giving

This lesson asks you to explain what spending, saving, earning, investing and donating mean, and to name the main things to consider in basic decisions about each. The museum offers records on two of the five, saving and donating, as jurists describe them; earning, spending and investing, and your own decisions, are for your class to bring. What the records describe is the history of a view, not financial or religious guidance. ¹

For one of the three ideas, list two things a person might consider before deciding. Say which of them the record names and which you added yourself.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence records that saving (idkhar) is putting a thing aside for the time of need, and that the jurists keep to this sense ². It records one case: if a person has stored staple food beyond his need, and another then comes to be in dire need of it, he must give it to him ³. On giving, it says that sadaqa transfers the thing itself and admits no taking back, while a loaned object must return to its owner ⁴.

The record says saving is putting a thing aside for a time of need, and that food stored beyond a person's need goes to someone in dire need. Why might a town need both people who save and a rule about sharing what is saved, and not only one of them?

• Saving (idkhar): what saving meant to the jurists, for a person and for the state.
• Sadaqa: what the word covers and how the jurists tell it apart from a gift, a present and a loan.

Read the records Saving and Sadaqa. Pick one and write two sentences on what a person would consider before acting.