Towards A Unified Zakat System

choose and what maximises their utility. Producers are alsofree to produce what they want in order to minimise costand maximise profit. The balancing or filtering devicebetween the two is market-determined prices that willdetermine what and how much will be produced and consumed.This, according to Chapra (1992) frustrates the realisationof socio-economic goals because:Unhindered individual preferences, combined with valuefreeadvertising and easy access to credit, createsunlimited wants, while the highly skewed incomedistribution enables the rich to transfer scarceresources for the satisfaction of their unnecessarywants. (Chapra, 1992: 14)This means that while the reliance on price mechanism doesrestore equilibrium between supply and demand, it does thatat the expense of the poor and their wellbeing (Chapra,1992). Replacing this price filtering system by acentralised planned system would worsen the result; it issufficient to see the result in the socialist countries torealise its inconveniences. Islam adopted the pricemechanism but, in addition, introduced a complementarymechanism, which would at least reduce unnecessary claimson resources. This might be called the ethical or moralfilter.All potential claims and preferences of consumers andproducers are passed through this moral filter. Thus, we82