Islam's Reformers .pdf

permissible.5) If you donates a part of the dain which a poor personowes you to that poor person, the zakât of that part will havebeen paid. It will be necessary to pay the zakât of the remainingpart separately as ’ain. You cannot count what you havedonated as the zakât of the remaining part, for the remainderwill become ’ain when you take it back and the zakât of ’ain willhave been paid as dain, which is not permissible.It is written in Al-fiqhu ’ala ’l-madhâhibi ’l-arba’a, whichcovers the teachings of fiqh according to each of the fourmadhhabs separately, that whereas it is necessary in the threemadhhabs to pay the zakât of paper money, its zakât is paidwhen the gold or silver equivalent of it is obtained in the Hanbalîmadhhab.The zakât of paper money is paid not out of their own valuebut out of the values written on them, for their own value is verylittle and it cannot reach the border of richness. As alreadywritten above, the values on them indicate the property which isdain. Since the zakât of dain cannot be paid as dain, the zakâtof paper money cannot be paid in paper money. It is necessaryto pay it in ’ain, that is, to get the dain property into your handsand then hand it to the poor person. Moreover, any kind of debtmust be paid from the property of zakât first. While there isproperty of zakât, that is, gold and silver or commercial goods, itis not permissible to pay the debt by giving other property, forexample, rugs and pearls that are used in the house and whosezakât is not to be paid. The zakât of paper money, too, is a debtwhich one owes to the poor. One has to pay this debt from theproperty of zakât. Gold is the property of zakât of the personwho is not a tradesman but who is rich only by possessingpaper money, because paper money is the equivalent of gold.They are not the equivalent of silver. If a person has variouskinds of property of zakât such as gold, silver, commercialgoods and zakât animals, he has to pay his debt from gold andsilver first [1] . The goods a person who is not a merchant buysare not his commercial goods. It is not permissible for him tobuy something other than gold to pay the poor as zakât, for thegoods that are not commercial for him cannot be paid as zakât.He has to buy gold and pay it.[1] ad-Durr al-mukhtâr, and Radd al-muhtâr, p. 8.- 210 -