What is the philosophy behind the obligation of paying Zakat?
One of the obligations in Islam is the payment of “Zakat” to the poor, of course this ruling is not obligatory for every property, and in fact it is applied to nine things and even in these nine things, if their amounts reach to a specific limit, paying Zakat is obligatory, otherwise the payment of Zakat is not obligatory.
And these nine things are: wheat, barley, date, raisin, gold, silver, cattle, camel and sheep. And there is another kind of zakat that is paid at the end of the month of Ramadan.
We leave the jurisprudential dissection to its appropriate place, but now let’s talk about the philosophy behind this ruling,
In Islam, helping the poor and needy is so much recommended, in a lot of cases this helping is not obligatory but there are some obligatory kinds of helping as well, like what is mentioned in Islamic rulings as the penalty for breaking the fast. There is a Narration that is narrated from the Prophet of Islam who said:
“The one, who makes the heart of a believer happy, has made me happy and the one, who makes me happy, has made Allah happy.”
Imam Reza our 8th Imam peace be upon him said:
“The best life is for the one, that the life of others is supplied and made prepared beside his/her life. (It means the one that helps the other to have a better life)”
The same Imam said:
“The one who removes from a believer, a sorrow from the sorrows of the material world, Allah will remove a sorrow from the sorrows of the hereafter.”
And there are a lot of verses and Narrations that can be mentioned as guides for us in this regard and we don’t mention them here.
The benefits of helping others can be as followings:
1) It decreases the distance between different levels of the people of a society, or social gap. If the levels of society differ so much from each other and the wealthy do not care for the poor, in many cases the poor will refuge to different corrupted works, like stealing or selling the narcotic or addiction to it or -God forbid- adultery etc. of course we do not say that every poor is so, but all of the poor are not in the same level of moral issues and they might commit such mentioned sins, and if the wealthy help the poor, it can be a way for the security and the health of the society which its benefits reach to the wealthy people as well,
2) If the wealthy people do not help the poor, it is something against their conscience and humanistic emotions, for example how they can sleep comfortably while in their neighbor, there are some people that have no enough place to live and rest? or how they can eat the best meals and don’t help the poor, while there are hunger individuals in their vicinity?
3) It is a way for increasing the sustenance; there is a verse in the holy Quran in chapter Al-Bagharah verse 261 that says:
مَّثَلُ الَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ كَمَثَلِ حَبَّةٍ أَنبَتَتْ سَبْعَ سَنَابِلَ فِي كُلِّ سُنبُلَةٍ مِّئَةُ حَبَّةٍ وَاللّهُ يُضَاعِفُ لِمَن يَشَاءُ وَاللّهُ وَاسِعٌ عَلِيمٌ
“The example of those who give their wealth in the way of Allah is like a grain of corn that sprouts seven ears, in every ear a hundred grains. Allah multiplies to whom he will, Allah is the embracer, the knower” .
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Source:
Tebyan.net
