an Islamic paradigm, this partial mistake would have been somewhat excusable. Yet the paradigm in question is anything but Islamic; it is nothing more than the blind imitation of certain irreligious Europeans!
It is a conscious refusal to draw benefit from the law of Allah, exalted is He, which He revealed to the heart of Muḥammad ﷺ as a light and guidance for mankind in every time and place. To Allah, then, we complain of the wicked scholars and salaried functionaries who buttress tyrannical rulers with fatwas that deviate from the straight course of Islam and from the path of the Muslims. Allah the Exalted says: “Whoever opposes the Messenger after guidance has become clear to him and follows a way other than that of the believers, We shall leave him to the path he has chosen and enter him into Hell—what a terrible destination!” (Q 4:115).
From this ḥadīth we derive a well-known juristic principle: zakāt on crops varies in proportion to the effort and expense involved in irrigating them. If the land is watered by rain, springs, or rivers, the zakāt due is one-tenth. If it is irrigated by buckets, water-lifting camels, artesian pumps, and the like, the amount due is half of one-tenth (i.e., one-twentieth).
Nor is this zakāt payable on every agricultural yield, no matter how small; it becomes obligatory only when the produce reaches the niṣāb (minimum taxable threshold) established in the Sunnah, as set out in other well-known aḥādīth.
143 – “The people most severely tried are the prophets, then those who most resemble them, and then those who next resemble them. A man is tested according to the strength (in another wording: the measure) of his religion: if his religion is firm, his trial is intensified; if there is weakness in his religion, he is tried in proportion to it. Affliction will not cease to cling to the servant until it leaves him walking upon the earth without a single sin.”
Narrated by al-Tirmidhī (2/64), Ibn Mājah (4023), al-Dārimī (2/320), al-Ṭaḥāwī (3/61), Ibn Ḥibbān (699), al-Ḥākim (1/40–41), and Aḥmad (1/…).