Towards A Unified Zakat System

nationality. The basis for this approach to the collectionof Zakat is to be consistent with the Shariah and to allowthe Zakat Department to collect Zakat (which is imposed bythe government of Saudi Arabia). According to Islam this wasimposed by Allah. In the other GCC countries (Bahrain,Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates), no regulation has yetbeen set for Zakat, so Islamic banks in these countries dealwith Zakat and accept Zakat from any one who will pay it.The distribution is then based either on the bank's decisionor on the Zakat payer's recommendation. Charitableorganisations in these three countries also carry out thesame task of collecting and distributing Zakat.When the sample by country grouped, the general attitudetowards the four types of organisations does not change. Ascan be seen from table 6.5(b), the ranking of the overallmeans do not change in comparison to table 6.5(a).Table 6.5(b)Who should collect ZakatZakat should be Freq. Mean Rank Sub-group mean by country SD MIN MAX Chi-sqcollected by BA KU SA UAEP. valueGovernment 159 3.96 1 3.64 3.87 4.24 3.97 1.28 1 5 4.30(Dept. of Zakat). 230Islamic banks 159 3.22 3 3.00 3.05 3.39 3.37 1.27 1 5 3.06. 383National banks 159 2.07 4 2.33 1.90 1.96 2.16 1.04 1 5 2.59-. 460Charitable 159 3.60 2 4.00 3.36 3.1 3.61 1.21 1 5 7.78. 051organisationsBA= Bahrain KU= Kuwa it SA= Saudi Arabi a UAE= United Arab EmiratesThe government is still ranked first, with national banksstill the least favoured body for collecting the Zakat.Respondents from the four GCC countries seem to have thesame attitude, since the chi-square statistic for the217