Towards A Unified Zakat System

government (strongly in favour), Islamic banks (in favour)and national banks (against), significant differences ofopinion were found when dealing with charitableorganisations. Although all countries are in favour, Bahrainis the most in agreement (mean = 4.0), Kuwait is the leastin agreement (mean = 3.36), while Saudi Arabia and the UAEare in the middle with means of 3.51 and 3.61 respectively.The chi-square is significant with a significance level of5.1 percent, which is close to the 5 percent level. It can,therefore, be said that the difference in means betweencountries regarding the attitude towards charitableorganisations is not due to chance but due to some otherfactors. So far Saudi Arabia and the UAE respondents havevery close means due to the homogeneity of the twocountries' populations. Both countries have a conservativepopulation with the vast majority being from the Sunni sect.Bahrain is the least conservative with 75 percent of thepopulation being from the Shiite sect. Kuwait is slightlymore conservative than Bahrain with a strong Shiiteminority.6.2.4 Who should distribute Zakat?As mentioned in the previous chapter, the Zakat base is 2.5percent of Muslims wealth. Due to a surplus of oil revenue(that reached its peak in the 1970s) the government used to219