As for the third question—namely, when a person dies after zakah has already become obligatory upon him—one group of scholars maintained that it must be paid out of the estate as a whole. This was the position of al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, Isḥāq, and Abū Thawr.

A second group said: if the deceased explicitly directed it in his will, it is taken from the one-third of the estate that a person may bequeath; if he left no such instruction, nothing is due. Among this group, some held that the zakah takes precedence over other bequests when the one-third is insufficient, whereas others said it does not. Both opinions are attributed to Mālik, but the well-known view in his school is that zakah, in this circumstance, is treated like any other bequest.

As for their disagreement concerning property that is sold after zakah has become due on it, one party said: the collector takes the zakah from the very property, and the purchaser then recovers its value from the seller; this is the view of Abū Thawr. Another party said: the sale is null and void; this is the opinion of al-Shāfiʿī. Abū Ḥanīfah held that the buyer has the option either to uphold the sale or to rescind it, and that the one-tenth is to be taken from the fruit or grain on which zakah was due. Mālik said: the zakah remains the seller’s responsibility.

The reason for their divergence lies in how they analogize the matter. Those who likened the sale of property liable for zakah to destroying or forfeiting that very property said that the zakah becomes a liability attached to whoever destroys or forfeits it. Those who regarded the sale as neither destruction nor forfeiture but rather as comparable to selling what one does not own said that the zakah continues to attach to the property itself; whether the sale is thereby void or valid is a separate inquiry to be discussed in the chapter on sales, God willing.

Of the same order is their dispute over zakah on gifted property. In some of these issues there are detailed distinctions within each legal school which we have chosen not to pursue, for they fall outside our present purpose and, in any case, it is difficult to set out the rationales for those distinctions: the majority of them rest on juristic preference (istihsān). Examples include their differentiation between debts that are subject to zakah and those that are not, and between debts that cancel the zakah obligation and those that do not.

This, then, is what we deemed sufficient to mention in this summary: a clarification of who is liable for zakah, the conditions of ownership that make it obligatory, and the rulings that apply to the liable person.

One famous ruling still remains to be treated: what is the status of someone who withholds zakah without denying its obligation? Abū Bakr—may Allah be pleased with him—held that such a person is judged as an apostate, and he applied that ruling to the Arabs who refused to pay zakah: he fought them and took their dependants into captivity. ʿUmar—may Allah be pleased with him—disagreed, releasing those who had been enslaved; the majority adopted ʿUmar’s view.

A further group went so far as to declare an unbeliever anyone who withholds any mandatory duty, even if he does not deny that it is obligatory.

The root of their disagreement is this: does the name “faith,” as the opposite of unbelief, apply to inner belief alone, or is the presence of outward works a condition for it? Some held that works are indeed a requisite; others did not, saying that even if a person does not utter the testimony of faith, so long as he affirms it inwardly, his standing with Allah is that of a believer.

The majority—the Ahl al-Sunnah—maintain that it is not required in that regard, that is, in the belief that constitutes faith, whose opposite is