What is ātū al zakāt?
What is ātū al zakāt? . By:sam-(Google translate below) Arabic: ātū al zakāt. Claimed by the Traditionalist as the imperative to pay an obligatory alms tax, all details pursuant to which are — by his own admission — not in the Qur’an, but which are presented by him as one of the principal tenets of the religion he promotes. Leaving aside the fact that the concept of an obligatory alms tax is nonsensical (since taxes are taken under compulsion whereas alms are given freely), one is expected to accept the Traditionalist’s claim that al zakāt means a set tax on believers, and mentally ascribe that sense to the word where it occurs in a book in which not only is that assertion nowhere confirmed, there is no case in which the context unambiguously indicates such a meaning. Moreover, where the recipient of the Qur’an is asked about what one should give, no amount is fixed, and the clear implication is that giving is voluntary (2:215, 2:219). Certainly, the Qur’an exhorts believers to give ch...