Q. You have mentioned that zakah is payable every year, but some scholars say that this is not true. Zakah, according to them, means purification, and once money is purified with the payment of its zakah, then no more zakah need to be paid for it. Please explain.
S.F. Mohamed, Riyadh
A. To say that zakah is payable once only, and that no money is to be zakatable twice, is a claim that needs to be proven by either a Qur’anic verse or an authentic Hadith. There is definitely no Qur’anic verse to suggest this, and to my knowledge, there is no Hadith to support such a claim. Zakah is an annual duty, payable on the same date every year, and its calculation is well known. Besides, this is the normal practice in all Muslim communities, right from the time of the Prophet up to this day, and it will continue to be the practice for the rest of time. It is inconceivable that all this practical evidence should be mistaken, and those “scholars” you are referring to in your country are correct. Besides, I cannot imagine that anyone making such a claim could have done any serious study of Islamic fiqh, let alone be classified as a scholar.
Zakah is paid annually, on every property one owns other than what he needs for his own and his family’s living. It is levied on capital, profits and income, provided that one owns more than the threshold of zakah, which is equivalent to 85 grams of gold. When a person, male or female, owns this amount, he becomes a zakah payer. He should make a note of the date, and then the following year, and every subsequent year, on the same date, he should calculate what he owns. If it is still over the threshold of zakah, he must pay zakah at the rate of 2.5 percent, except for money that incurs a higher duty. This holds true even if at sometime during the year he dropped to below the threshold of zakah before recovering and going over the threshold once again before the zakah date.
It should be remembered that zakah is an act of worship that does not only purify one’s money, but also ensures the eradication of poverty in the Muslim community. Therefore, it must be paid every year. Besides, it is an act of showing our gratitude to God for giving us more than what we need for our living.
