zakat is taken only from believers; the ḥadith, however, states this even more plainly.

Anyone who studies the Prophet’s biography, the history of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and the other caliphs and kings of the Muslims knows with certainty that they never levied zakat on non-Muslim subjects. Instead they collected from them the jizyah, as laid down in the Book and the Sunnah.

It is therefore regrettable that some would-be jurists, in the name of “reform” at times and “social justice” at others, depart from the path of the believers. They repudiate what is proven in the Book and the Sunnah and what Muslims have consistently practiced, employing interpretations scarcely different from the hermeneutics of the esotericists; and on the other hand they affirm matters of which they have no knowledge—indeed, matters that the texts explicitly negate. Examples of this are many, but it is enough for us now to address the issue indicated by this ḥadith and the noble verse. We have read and heard some shaykhs today say that the state may collect zakat from the wealthy among all its citizens, whether believers or disbelievers, and then distribute it to their poor without distinction.

Only a few weeks ago I heard this very idea from one of the senior scholars of al-Azhar during a television forum in which he was discussing social security in Islam. Among the things he stated was that the National Union in Cairo would collect zakat from all wealthy citizens and distribute it to their poor! One of the attendees stood up and asked him for the evidence permitting this. He replied, “When we convened the sessions of the social committees, we passed in one of them a resolution allowing it, relying on one of the Islamic schools of law—the Shīʿī school.” I assume he meant the Zaydi school.

Here is the lesson to be learned: that shaykh and those who accompanied him in that session ignored the evidence of the Book and the Sunnah and the consensus of the early generations that zakat is exclusive to believers, basing their dissent instead on the Zaydi madhhab. And do you, dear reader, know the reason for this? It is nothing other than to placate certain rulers in their social and economic policies—and if only those policies had been based upon