Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 5: The Book of Zakat

The Book of Zakāt is Book 5 of al-Ghazālī’s Revival of the Religious Sciences.

Zakāt is two and a half percent. This book asks what the rest of the wealth is doing to you. Al-Ghazālī sets out what is owed, on what, and to whom, with the precision the law requires — then turns the question around. Giving has inward conditions as exacting as the outward ones. Receiving has duties of its own. A gift given with the wrong heart costs the giver more than the amount.

He treats the kinds of zakāt, the manners of paying and of receiving, voluntary charity — when to give openly, when in secret, when it is better to refuse — and why giving is a cure before it is a duty. Book 4 was the worship of the body. Book 5 is the worship of the wallet.

This English is taken from the classical Arabic of the Iḥyāʾ, not rebuilt from an older translation. It can be read straight through, or studied beside the original.

Give what is owed. Then learn what giving is for.