The portions of zakat: fractions and percents

This lesson asks you to understand and recall commonly used percents, fractions and decimal equivalents. The museum offers one context, the fixed portions in zakat, and no worked problems; the other contexts are for your class to bring. ¹

Start from the fraction each portion names, then write it as a decimal number and as a percent. Compare the portions the record names: which is largest, and by how many times?

The jurists define zakat as the transfer of a fixed portion of a defined wealth to a defined recipient ^{2 3}. The portions themselves are set down in a book. Abu'l-Wafa' al-Maraghi lists the thresholds in his Qadaya: twenty mithqals of gold and two hundred dirhams of silver, at a quarter-tenth ⁴; and a fifth on minerals and buried treasure ⁵. The museum restates one author's list and nothing more. Turning each portion into a decimal and a percent is your class's work.

The list names a kind of wealth first and a portion second: gold and silver at one portion, minerals and buried treasure at another. Using one example from the record, why does a list of portions need to name the kind of wealth before it names the portion?

• Zakat (alms tax): the definition, the thresholds and the rates, as the record gives them.
• Sadaqa: a word that, in the jurists' usage, covers zakat and also voluntary alms.
• Saving (idkhar): how the jurists treat wealth whose zakat is unpaid.

Read Zakat (alms tax). Make a table with the fraction, the decimal and the percent for each portion the record names, and learn those equivalents.