that will purify them and cause them to grow” (Qur’an 9:103).

Zakah is defined as a legally prescribed share of specific wealth set aside for a specific category of people. It is only “a share of wealth,” not one’s entire property; and the types of assets to which it applies have been detailed—some by the Messenger ﷺ and some in the Qur’an. Even within those categories, zakah is not due on every item; certain conditions must first be met.

Thus, by paying a small fraction of his assets, a person fulfils one of Islam’s pillars. Through it he purifies himself of miserliness and other base traits, and he wipes clean the pages of his record from sins, as the Prophet ﷺ said: “Charity extinguishes sin just as water extinguishes fire.” The most excellent form of charity is zakah: a single dirham paid as zakah is better than a dirham given voluntarily, for Allah, exalted is He, says in the Sacred Hadith, “My servant does not draw near to Me with anything more beloved to Me than what I have made obligatory upon him.” One unit of an obligatory prayer is therefore superior to a unit of a voluntary prayer; obligations outweigh supererogatory acts.

In zakah there is expiation of sins and beneficence toward creation, for the payer shows kindness to the recipient, and so he is counted among the doers of good—those who enter