Zakat

Zakat is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, an obligatory almsgiving institution requiring Muslims who meet a minimum threshold of wealth, the nisab, to donate a fixed proportion, conventionally two and a half percent of qualifying accumulated wealth held for a full lunar year, to specified categories of recipients. The Quran identifies eligible categories of zakat recipients, including the poor, the needy, and those employed to administer its collection and distribution, and zakat is conceptually distinguished in Islamic jurisprudence from sadaqah, voluntary charitable giving, in that zakat is a mandatory religious and, in many historical Islamic states, legally enforced obligation rather than a discretionary act. Historically, zakat functioned as a formal institution of state-administered redistribution across much of the classical and medieval Islamic world, with early Islamic caliphates maintaining dedicated treasury departments to collect and distribute it, and the institution has continued into the modern era, with some contemporary Muslim-majority states, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan and Malaysia, maintaining state-administered or state-regulated zakat collection systems while in most other countries it remains a personal religious obligation discharged voluntarily or through independent charitable organizations. As an institution zakat functions simultaneously as an act of individual religious worship and as a structured mechanism of wealth redistribution intended to address poverty and support the wider Muslim community.