5-Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle - Hakikat Kitabevi

mean to say that one should not give zakât in paper money. It
means that the paper money should be given compatibly with
the Sharî’a. To give the zakât of one’s commercial property in
paper money compatibly with the Sharî’a, one should do as the
rich person would do who wanted to pay debts concurrently with
the poor person by intending to give the poor person the
amount of gold equivalent to what the poor person owed him.
And this is instructed as follows in Ashbâh, in Redd-ulmukhtâr,
and at the end of the sixth volume of Hindiyya: The
rich person borrows the gold equivalent for the paper money
which he wants to give the poor and which is less than the
amount of nisâb from his wife or from someone else. Then he
finds a pious poor person. If he still cannot trust him, he says to
him, “I shall give zakât in paper money to a few acquaintances
of mine and to you. Our religion commands that zakât should be
given in gold. In order to change the gold into paper money
easily, I want you to appoint so and so as your deputy to take
your zakât and to spend it as he likes. Thus you will have
helped me follow the Sharî’a. And you will earn thawâb for this.”
Thus a person whom the rich person trusts is appointed the
deputy. A rich person can also be the deputy. He gives the gold
with the intention of zakât to the deputy in the poor person’s
absence. Hence, the zakât will have been given to the poor. A
few minutes after receiving the gold, the deputy sells them for
paper money to the rich person, and then gifts the paper bills
which he has received to the rich person. And the rich person
distributes these paper bills to that and other poor people, [to
schools where they teach the Qur’ân, and to those Muslims who
serve the religion and make jihâd]. If he gives it to the rich its
thawâb will be less. If he does not give them to anybody or if he
gives them to people who do not have the qualifications
prescribed by the religion, such as those who do not perform
namâz, he will escape the torment for (not having given) zakât,
but will not attain its thawâb. If there is a poor person who he is
sure will not take away the gold, he gives his zakât directly to
this poor person. A few minutes after receiving the gold, the
poor will sell it to the rich who has paid his zakât. He gives the
paper money that he had taken back to the rich as a gift. He
may as well give the gold back as a gift instead of selling it. And
the rich will distribute the paper money of the same value to the
places we have described above. The rich returns the gold to
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