If you get a chance, take some time to hear what Clare Lopez has to say. Once again, the Indonesian numbers ought to give pause to those who like to cite this most populous of all Muslim countries for its “moderation”: a full 98% of all Indonesian Muslims who responded to this survey told Pew that they pay theirzakat. That is a remarkable level of compliance with a tax obligation that actually has no enforcement mechanism aside from societal pressure and would seem to indicate the effectiveness of that peer pressure on Muslim behavior. Even though the wording of the questionnaire wrongly equated zakat merely with “charity,” it is highly likely that many, if not most, Muslims who participated in the Pew survey know that zakat is an obligatory annual tax levied on all Muslims and Muslim companies. Indeed, zakat is one of the Five Pillars of the Islamic belief system and one that President Obama inaccurately singled out as one of his own “obligations” as U.S. President to help support on behalf of American Muslims.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 21:51:14 +0000
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