358 chapter nine
lay Muslims, but also in the debating corridor of Islamic public
finance. The views on this issue are divided: some believe that
the state may have the right to impose further levies besides
Zakàh if the revenue from Zakàh is insufficient to cover the soci-
ety’s needs, some restrict the right of the state to situations where
there is a call for jihàd and a need to finance military opera-
tions, and others rule out entirely the right of the state to impose
any levies besides Zakàh.The methodology of fiqh al-Zakàh is that of an academic researcher.
In his fiqh, al-Qardawi first, collects all Qur"ànic verses and authen-
ticated Hadiths that deal with the subject, second, divides the con-
tents in a sequentially coherent manner that makes it easy for the
reader to follow, and third, provides a thorough comparison between
the ruling of the early Rightly-Guided Caliphs as well as the jurists
of the main schools of thought, on the one hand, and a comparison
between Islam and other divinely revealed religions on the issue of
Zakah on the other, fourth, provides an analytical explanation of the
ruling to highlight the reasons for it and the intention behind it, and
fifth, concludes with his own opinion on the debatable issue supported
with reasons and explanation provided with considerable clarity. Al-
Qardawi examines all these issues and comes up at the end with a
recommended view that reflects, by his own statement, his effort in
reaching an opinion within the rules of ijtihàd(see chapter two of
this book for further discussion of ijtihàd).
Al-Qardawi’s Fiqh al-Zakàh is a crucial contribution to the Islamic
economics literature. In the twentieth century of Islamic economics,
it stands in parallel to the Abù-Yùsùf ’s eighth century Kitab al-Kharàj.
Islamic social security is added to the list of topics that were of
interest to Islamic writers in the late nineteen seventies to early nine-
teen eighties. Al-Fangari introduced to us his “Islam and Social
Security: a Comprehensively Concise Study of the Application of
Zakàh as a Tool to Achieving Islamic Social Solidarity” in its first
edition in the late nineteen seventies and continued to the third edi-
tion in the early nineteen nineties, (Al-Fangari, 1990). With his high
position as a government official in the Egyptian legislative council,
and as an academic in al-Azhar University, al-Fangari views reflects
his status as a senior government administrator and a distinguished
researcher in the oldest Islamic university in the world.
Al-Fangari’s main concern in his book is the role of Zakàh as an
institution and a policy tool for the achievement of Islamic social