economic thought in the qur"àn and sunnah 89Jizyah
While Zakàh was imposed on Muslims, Jizyahwas levied on non-
Muslims. The imposition of the Jizyahtax has been established in
the Qur"àn, as indeed has been the Zakàh. The tax was not to be
charged on women or children, even if they were wealthy, old men
who were not capable to work or had no wealth, or whoever con-
verted to Islam. All these principles were laid down by the Prophet
and exercised by his successors in the Orthodoxy caliphate. There
were some modifications of the application of thejizyah tax, how-
ever, starting from the Umayyad caliphate as we will se in due
course.
Islamic Economics in the Qur"àn and Sunnah and the Present TimeTo say that the Qur"àn and the Sunnah did not provide for a com-
prehensive system of economics, as some critics suggest, is to fail to
understand what the foundational source of a religion may provide
and what it may not. The Qur"àn and the Sunnah did not come
to provide a divine solution and a heavenly answer to every single
economic problem that may face a community, now, or in the future.
Rather, they have come to provide a foundational framework. From
that solid base, an economic system, detailed as it might be, can be
established. It is rather surprising to read some critics advocating
that since the Qur"àn and the Sunnah have not, in their opinion,
provided solutions to the economic problems of our time in such a
well diversified industrial society, they, the sources, cannot be regarded
as useful for contemporary economies. And how could they be divine
while they cannot be regarded as complete and comprehensive; the
argument continues. The early sources of the Qur"àn and Sunnah,
some critics claim, were dealing with a primitive society with sim-
ple economic problems that may not be applicable to the industrial
complexities of modern times; therefore they should be dismissed as
obsolete. Moreover, how could these sources be regarded as divine
while they had not anticipated all forms of our economic problems
in the twenty first century and had not provided answers for them,
the critics proclaim. But the opponents of Islamic economics, inten-
tionally or unintentionally, seem to fail to understand two important
points: first, the Qur"àn and Sunnah, and for that matter all God’s
Holy Scriptures, have not come to provide answers for every detailed