364 chapter nine
right of the state, or non-obligatory, where Zakàh is left to individuals
to pay to beneficiaries voluntarily. The economic implications of
these two systems occupied the attention of Abdin Salama who looked
into the effect of changing the system from non-obligatory to oblig-
atory in the Sudan on the level of Zakah revenue. Compared with
Zakàh proceeds before the introduction of the compulsory system,
the proceeds after the change of the system to obligatory increased
substantially. But administrative costs, particularly with regard to the
distribution of Zakah revenue, seemed to be particularly high. The
low revenue before the introduction of the obligatory system in 1984
does not seem to be caused by lack of religious motivation among
the Sudanese, but rather it was due to lack of confidence by Zakàh
payers that the government administration would use the Zakàh pro-
ceeds solely for purposes stipulated in the Sharì"ah. There seems to
be suspicion that government administration did not separate Zakàh
revenue from that of other taxes and used Zakàh for financing gen-
eral purposes that are not related to the needs of Zakàh beneficiaries.
Hence Abdullah’s emphasis on the need to publicise the distribution
of Zakàh (op. cit.) and Salama’s stress on the necessity of separating
the Zakàh department from other tax departments in the same min-
istry (op. cit.).
How and to what degree does the application of a compulsory Zakàh
system affect the voluntary payment of Zakàh to beneficiaries directly,
is a question that has occupied the attention of Islamic macro-
economic researchers. The existence of the ritual aspect of Zakàh
implies that there is not necessarily a causal negative relationship as
Zakàh is paid to please God. In an empirical study applied to Pakistan,
Faiz Muœammad arrived at some important conclusions: (a) the
needy, the poor and charitable organizations depends more on un-
official Zakàh payments than on official payments from government
Zakàh agents, (b) people’s drive for voluntary Zakàh payment has
not subsided after the introduction of the compulsory system, and
(c) voluntary Zakàh payment depends on a number of socio-economic
and religious factors prominent in the community (Muœammad, 1995).
The above studies and many others can provide the country that
wishes to introduce Zakàh to its financial system with the choice of
models that should help public administrators decide how to deal
with one of the most important aspects of economics in a Muslim
country. Needless to say, the above section does not intend to pro-
vide an exhaustive list of what has been written on the subject. The