in their crops and fruit, and in that case it is due, because such produce counts as manifest wealth.
The other three Imams—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad—maintain that zakah is obligatory on the property of a minor or an insane person in every circumstance, whether the wealth is open and visible or concealed. This is also the position of the overwhelming majority of scholars from the Companions, the Successors, and those who followed them.
Those who deny its obligation advance several arguments:
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Allah says, “Take from their wealth a charity by which you purify them and cause them to grow” (al-Tawbah 9:103). A minor or an insane person bears no sin that would require purification or spiritual growth.
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In Sunan Abū Dāwūd (4402) and in al-Nasāʾī, with an authentic chain from ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the Prophet ﷺ said: “The pen has been lifted from three: from the minor until he reaches puberty, from the sleeper until he wakes, and from the insane until he regains his sanity.” Anyone from whom the pen has been lifted is not legally responsible, nor is he addressed by the Lawgiver’s commands and prohibitions.
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Zakah is a purely devotional act, like prayer and the other forms of worship, and its performance is bound to those who are legally accountable. Since the non-accountable are exempt from all legal responsibilities, the obligation does not apply to them.
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Islam is solicitous of the wealth of the vulnerable, seeking its growth and forbidding any interference with it except in the best manner. If zakah were taken from such wealth year after year, it could be depleted, exposing its owners to need and poverty.
The proofs advanced by those who hold it to be obligatory include the following:
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The general wording of numerous Qurʾanic verses and sound hadiths that impose zakah on the wealth of the affluent in absolute terms, without excluding minors or the insane. Thus they fall under the verse, “Take from their wealth a charity” (al-Tawbah 9:103), and under the Prophet’s statement, “He has obligated upon them a charity to be taken from their wealthy….” The universality of these and similar texts therefore encompasses minors and the insane whenever they possess wealth.
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The hadith recorded by al-Tirmidhī (641) from ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, in which