All this talk about Zakat [Archives:2003/689/Opinion]

Throughout the Holy Month of Ramadhan, the Government was on a public awareness campaign to try to convince the overwhelming majority of Yemenis not to forget their Zakat obligations and to pay them over to the State Treasury. The Yemeni people during this month of worship and meditation really need more healthier awareness than to be told how to undertake their religious duty obligations. As it is the Government is already eating up the oil revenues and other illegitimate taxation levies, according to Islam, by passing on transfers to the least needy element of the society. Millions of Yemeni Riyals were paid during this holy month to political icons for the sake of maintaining their loyalty to the status quo or to simply buy their silence on the poor state of conditions the majority of the people are facing. All this while the Government ignores the fact that these difficult conditions faced by the overwhelming majority of the people of Yemen are mainly due to Government incompetence and misallocation of resources, such as these undue gratuities.
If one visits any of the hospitals of Yemen, one is bound to see the awesome health problems faced by many people, and worst of all the poor access to modern health care that one expects to get when illness strikes. If one goes around the markets, one is appalled by the exorbitant prices one has to dish out to buy even reconditioned used clothes, so that their children will not feel left out in the cold this holiday, while the wardrobes of the elite are already on their way from Harrods’s, Macy’s or Bamberger’s. This is the kind of disequilibrium that one cannot fail to see as our Government demands that the Zakat should be paid by the destitute to further enrich these already excessively wealthy elements of the establishment, who are living in their plush residences and who for all that matter are getting all their gratuities from the Government and the business establishment that hopes to gain the favor of this elite, as Government officials close their eyes while these horrendous merchants squeeze out all the earnings of the remaining elements of the society who have all been lobbed into poverty. There is no middle class anymore in Yemen, because the human resources of the country have not been given the appropriate value of their output, whereas expatriate workers are paid according to the “international staff” wages. How can these destitute be expected to make Zakat payments, when the Lord Almighty has only imposed the Zakat on those who have surplus funds that have passed over for more than one year. This observer and many other analysts are baffled by the insistence that Zakat be paid by the destitute while the well to do are continuously awarded by the Zakat and all the other revenues of the Government.
I was speaking to a sweets and desert maker, who relies on seasonal output for his income, which is usually the Month of Ramadhan. He told me that the Zakat collectors have been harassing him on a daily basis seeking the payment of highly exaggerated evaluations of his Zakat dues. These assessors he states have estimated his tax dues on the basis of the Ramadhan income for every month of the year. The truth of the matter is he says that during the rest of the months of the year he is lucky to earn 10% of the Ramadhan income, which is hardly enough to keep him under subsistence level. Yet, the assessors will continuously insist that their assessments are correct and indisputable.
As the President of the Republic rightly has said, during the time of the Imam, the entire Government functioned on the Zakat revenue and thus was able to manage without need of any other sources of revenue. But now, with the Government flooded with all sources of revenue, one is at a loss, why the Zakat should be chased so persistently, from people who are unable to make ends meet, and who are exempted by Divine Ordinance from Zakat payments, if it comes from subsistence means?
Another important point is that people are voluntarily prone to pay their Zakat obligations because they know it is a God ordained duty, if they are able to afford it. However, people have in the past been reluctant to make such payments to the Government, and find their own channels to clear their obligations to the Almighty. They have funneled their Zakat Tax Payments to charitable organizations, to institutions that work for the propagation and the defense of the Faith, to other Moslem brothers in other countries, who are in destitute conditions or who are refugees, etc. No one is really keen on wanting to cheat the Almighty of what is due as Zakat payments. One can not fail to take note of the multitude of women in Jewelry and Gold Sales outlets, assessing the value of their jewelry, so they can meet their Zakat obligations voluntarily. Thus there is really no need for Zakat assessors, as they only tend to delve into extortion practices or bribery, in order to be able to keep with their wealthy neighbors, who have found their niches in other questionable enterprises, that have drained the pockets and the souls of the vast majority of the poor people of Yemen.
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[archive-e:689-v:13-y:2003-d:2003-11-27-p:opinion]