AMI Publishes Proceedings from the Contemporary Fiqhī Issues Workshop 2019

Al-Mahdi Institute is pleased to announce the publication of the proceedings from AMI Contemporary Fiqhī Issues Workshop 2019 on the “Efficacy of Financial Structures for Islamic Taxes and Dues.” The entire volume is available for readers to access online for free. A print version of the publication will be available for purchase in the coming weeks. For distributors interested in bulk purchases, please forward your inquiries to [email protected].

From the Introduction by Wahid M. Amin:

“For over a millennium, Islamic law has institutionalised money (and other economic assets) to implement its vision of a just society. Be it religious taxation in the form of zakāt, charitable donations in the form of ṣadaqa or religious endowments (awqāf), the dowry that is paid by a man to his would-be wife in a marriage contract, or the different categories of financial compensation within Islamic criminal and tort law, the Sharia utilises money and wealth for a diverse range of functions and objectives. Some of these assume a functioning political framework involving government officials and an Islamic judiciary system, while others seem to be effective only in the pre-modern contexts in which they were conceived and implemented. In the contemporary age, Muslims live under different models of government that range from Islamic governments such as the Islamic Republic of Iran to secular states such as the United Kingdom, each with their own financial structures. In the West, Muslims are already subjected to a variety of state taxes, many of which are used for the same welfare objectives as traditional Islamic taxes, which raises interesting questions about the need and efficacy of further Islamic taxation in addition to these other forms of tax already paid by Muslim citizens of the secular state. The papers in this volume therefore engage the topic of religious taxation in Islam from a wide range of philosophical, sociological, ethical, historical, and cultural perspectives, each offering unique insights and perspectives on the possibility of financial structures within Islamic law developing and evolving with the times and in accordance with different models of government.”

View the online publication below: