362 chapter nine
third conference on Zakàh was particularly important as it focused
on issues related to these two points; explicitly to the first and implic-
itly to the second. The papers presented at the conference portrayed
that theme, with reference to the application of Zakàh to Bahrain,
Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Yemen,
Iran, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Malaysia. The countries that intend
to enact Zakàh laws within their legislation will find the compara-
tive study particularly useful as they may benefit from the experi-
ence of these countries.
The conferences papers could be divided into three main sets. The
first deals with financial control systems of Zakàh, the second looks
into the effect of obligatory as compared with non-obligatory systems
of collecting Zakàh on government revenue and tax payers, and the
third investigates the experimental practice of several countries in
managing Zakàh collection and distribution.
The control system focuses on three main kinds of control: Sharì"ah
control, to ensure that the collection and disbursement of Zakàh is
in accordance with the Sharì"ah rules, financial control, to make sure
that the collection and payment of Zakàh is within the basic govern-
mental accounting and financial rules without any financial irregularities,
and economic control to examine whether the application of Zakàh
has lead to the purposes for which Zakah was introduced and if that
is at the minimum cost of administration.
In his case studies of the countries under examination, Fouad al-
Omar stresses a few points with respect to the control of Zakah. Two
points are most prominent: first, the implementation of Zakàh still
poses a great challenge to Zakah administration with regard to the
collection and distribution of Zakàh. Second, Zakàh systems need to
be implemented in such a way as to keep administration costs to a
minimum. He suggests that serious efforts are still needed to create
new distribution channels for the Zakàh revenue so as to alleviate
poverty and discourage beggary, (Al-Omar, 1995). These points are
shared with Muœammad Akram Khan in his study of Zakàh in
Pakistan. Of the several views he mentions in his study, Khan is
concerned with the problem of control over idle funds that might
reach as much as a few billion Rupees that could have been dis-
tributed among the targeted population (Khan, 1995). Khan provides
an interesting comparison of the administration of Zakàh in Pakistan
and Kuwait. Given the different sizes of wealth and land between
the two countries, the comparison is quite intriguing. The two coun-