from zakat committees. There are even zakat calcu-
lators available on the Internet. People may donate
to needy individuals or to mosqUes, charitable
organizations, and educational institutions. Only a
few modern nations, such as saUdi arabia, Kuwait,
Libya, pakistan, and sUdan, have attempted to
administer almsgiving through government agen-
cies. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001,
attacks on the United States, a number of Islamic
charitable organizations connected with zakat have
been investigated or closed down in the United
States and abroad because of suspected links with
with radical groups engaging in terrorist activities.
Muslims living in the United States and Europe
have had to look for other ways to fulfill their alms-
giving obligations because of this.
Further reading: Laleh Bakhtiyar, Encyclopaedia of
Islamic Law: A Compendium of the Major Schools (Chi-
cago: ABC International Group, 1996); Azim Nanji,
“Ethics and Taxation: The Perspective of Islamic Tradi-
tion.” Journal of Religious Ethics 13 (1985): 161–178.
alphabet
Since Islam is a religion found in many differ-
ent cultures, its followers speak many different
languages, which are written in several alphabets.
The most important of these is the Arabic alpha-
bet, consisting of 28 letters written as a script
from right to left. This means that there is no
separate printed form for individual Arabic let-
ters, as there is in English; it also means that the
shape of the letter can be affected by its position
at the beginning, middle, or end of the word. All
the letters are consonants, but three of them can
also represent long vowels: a ̄, ı ̄, and u ̄. There are
no letters for the short vowels (a, i, and u); they
are either not written, or they are represented by
optional markings called diacritics written above
and below the consonants. Historically, the Arabic
alphabet evolved from ancient Semitic scripts that
were used by people living in northern Arabia
and syria. It gained widespread use only after the
appearance of Islam in the seventh century, how-
ever. Nearly all of the most authoritative Islamic
religious texts, including the Quran, were origi-
nally written in the Arabic cursive script.
Through the centuries, as Islamic religion and
civilization spread to new lands, native peoples
began to adopt the Arabic language and use its
alphabet to write their own languages. Not all of
these people were Muslims; Middle Eastern Jews
and Christians adopted both the Arabic language
and alphabet. By the 10th century, Arabic letters
were adapted to write the Persian language and
then related dialects such as Kurdish and Pashto,
as well as the Turkic languages. To do this, addi-
tional consonants were required to represent
sounds occurring in those languages but that do
not occur in Arabic (for example, p as in pony,
ch as in chair, and g as in game). Urdu, which is
today the official language of pakistan, is based on
a Persianized form of the Arabic alphabet. Arabic
letters have also been used to write languages spo-
ken in medieval Spain, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Alongside the Roman alphabet, which is used to
write English and other Western languages, the
Arabic alphabet is one of the most widely used
in the world today. tUrkey, one of the largest
Muslim countries in the Middle East, switched
from the Arabic alphabet to the Roman in 1928,
when its government was being reconstituted
along strongly secular lines. However, the Arabic
alphabet is still widely used in Arab countries, and
(in its Persianized form) in iran, aFghanistan,
and Pakistan. Moreover, it has been successfully
adapted for print media (newspapers, magazines,
books, etc.) and the internet, so it continues to
play an important role in the communication of
religious and secular information, knowledge, and
opinions in the modern world.
The Arabic alphabet is especially important in
Islam because it was used for writing the words
Muslims believe God revealed to mUhammad in
the seventh century. Most Muslims attempt to
learn the Arabic letters so that they can read the
qUran. Some 29 suras in the Quran begin withalphabet 39 J