The Efficacy of Financial Structures for Islamic Taxes And Dues

For over a millennium, Islamic law has institutionalised money (and other economic assets) to implement its vision of a just society. Be it religious taxation in the form of zakāt, charitable donations in the form of ṣadaqa or religious endowments (awqāf), the dowry that is paid by a man to his would-be wife in a marriage contract, or the different categories of financial compensation within Islamic criminal and tort law, the Sharia utilises money and wealth for a diverse range of functions and objectives. Some of these assume a functioning political framework involving government officials and an Islamic judiciary system, while others seem to be effective only in the pre-modern contexts in which they were conceived and implemented. This volume gathers papers from the 7^th AMI Contemporary Fiqhi Issues Workshop hosted by Al-Mahdi Institute, exploring the efficacy of financial structures for Islamic taxes and dues. It explores the laws of religious taxation in Islam from a variety of historical, philosophical, ethical, and sociological perspectives.