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tax the rich (in islam) (discuss.tchncs.de)
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[-] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 75 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Despite all our faults in Islam, Zakat is such a good/common sense idea.

Anyways, despite living in an Islamic country i doubt our billionaires pay zakat anyway. If they're fine with butchering, prostitution drinking and drugs i think they're going to sleep just fine at night not paying their tax.

[-] SattaRIP@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 week ago

Don't worry, zakat is another Islamic concept the clergy (I think that's the right English word) abuse and twist to line their pockets. Zakat and khons are both about donating to the needy, but both ideas have been twisted so many times. Khons details are different but the word is related to the number 5. The first version I remember being told is that you pay one fifth of your yearly earnings' leftovers.

[-] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

Why do our leaders ruin everything lol

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Because we don't stand up and call them to account for it.

[-] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Tbf, it's pretty hard to call out royals or dictators when you get "disappeared" for it.

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[-] ArtemisimetrA@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

Well, yes. And many leaders have proven they either don't care or are willing to make people disappear if they become inconvenient 😓

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[-] Venator@lemmy.nz 35 points 1 week ago

This must be why the UAE is such an egalitarian country... 😅

[-] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 1 week ago

i mean, leaders of theocracies blatantly ignoring the parts of their religion that they don’t like is nothing new lol

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Hence why all religions should be abolished.

We don't need religions to do basic taxes. Just keep upping those brackets until you reach 100% of income and 50% of ownership per year. See how fast the rich become normal people

[-] goneNoWhere@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 week ago

Ah yes straight up remove religious freedom. What a reasonable idea

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[-] Bosht@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Sure, it's great, but humans have proven time and again that religion causes more abuses over time than not. Yes, tax the rich. Using a religious text to justify it is weird. I do actually appreciate the info as I didn't know this about Islam, but in the same vein it's still religion which inherently leads to systems of abuse and shitting on people in the name of a deity. Not that humans aren't good enough at doing that without religion, but I feel religion just gives them more of a reason when believing they're serving some higher power.

[-] sunflowercowboy@feddit.org 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Religion has proven time and time again, man hates happiness of others more than themselves.

Organized religion proves to decay by wantingly creating a structure that can be exploited rather than simply derivative. Islam is an abrahamic religion but it really should just be Christian, and honestly more orthodox than western christians. They love the virgin Mary. So tithing isn't a surprise, as that is a jewish tradition.

Religion should be used because that believing that you serve a higher power is important. However, often times folks believe the higher power is foreign. Rather than within, you are capable, you are lord, you can enact your will. It is only truly religion that explains that this power must be limited, tempered, and weathered to be revealed. It is there for when death grasp's your heart, strangling it until you weep your soul into every action.

Humans are just selfish and forget that if they are sent by god, so were they. That we no longer live in untamed wilds, but manufactured instability. Privileged kids grow up experiencing little death, and live their life time with eyes closed. Yet they think they see with eyes unclouded, but their hearts so empty of meaning.

Sharingan in Naruto is inspired by this very fact.

Good men have no mortal bindings and so they can ascend to serve God's will truly. God's will? Protect the weak, the exploitable, and indefensible. The system is built around moving the lower classes for profit, for labor, or just as polifical pawns in a chess game. That is the only right act man can do, anything else will blur the lines.

As an atheist, I have written god as dead. However I believe we carry fragmentary hopes, and together we can form a god. Sadly, through exclusion, division, and persecution - god cannot exist truly, but incomplete and corrupted. Not everyone is voicing their version of god, gods, etc. Except anime because Japan is massively ahead in the urban hellscape of progress. (And a lot of east asia, Kowloon is an extreme example, sadly it's gone.)

FMA literally was a reforming of the bible's beliefs with antifascist ideology, with reverence for islamic continuation of belief. Attack on Titan is mainly these parasocial fears in a post-nuclear world as collectively cities grow but social development wanes. Isekais literally romanticizes death because life is leaving these natural wonders behind.

I took this journey when my brother was murdered. I believed in no god, and yet I have found a lot of reflections in each manuscript I process, each literature I discover. By his phantom, I became enlightened. I wish I could just have him instead, but all I can be is thankful I am alive.

[-] Maalus@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

Our sister company is Zakat approved and runs water trucks in Gaza using the funds that people donate

[-] cevn@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

What company is that?? Sounds amazing.

[-] Maalus@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Dont want the name out here, but PMd it to you.

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago

Zekat is often seen as giving money to others, but it's just any act of love towards another person.

It's become muddled with money too much in these modern times.

That being said, yes please, tax the rich.

[-] huppakee@lemm.ee 8 points 1 week ago

Back in the day Christians took care for the sick and the homeless, they built orphanages and hospitals for the mentally ill. The amount of Christians didn't decrease but the way these vulnerable people were cared for changed greatly. The more we have a society were we pay the government to solve these issues, the less we need charity.

I don't know if Zakat-evasion is a problem in islamic countries, but I guess if we change the rules to get the billionaires to pay the ones evading taxes now will just change their tactics and continue to give a shit about the rest of society.

[-] PlaidBaron@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I mean, they did but abuse was also rampant in those orphanages and mental hospitals.

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The individual must realize that he is no more than the steward of this property, which is fundamentally the possession of society; this must make him accept the restrictions that the system lays upon his liberty, and the bounds that limit his rights of disposal. On the other side, society must realize its fundamental right to such property and must thus become bolder in prescribing the regulations and in laying down the laws which concern it. Thus only may we arrive at principles that will ensure complete social justice in the profitable use of property, which cannot be an end in itself nor a subject of actual ownership. The clearest instance of this is the matter of the tenure of land; thought cannot conceive that any man should be the owner of the land itself; all that he can possess is its irrigation and its crops, which means that the matter is one of the profitable use of a possession rather than one of actual ownership.

Sayyid Qutb spends much of this chapter in Social Justice in Islam insisting that it’s not full on socialism, but it’s definitely not free market capitalism.

In part, he has to write a lot about how not socialist he is because of the popularity of Islamic socialist movements. They were huge players in Egypt and Iran.

One can debate how those inspired by Qutb have kept to his ideas, but the society he describes is very much focused on ensuring everyone has enough to eat. (It’s also a society where I end up stoned to death in a public square, so you win some you lose some.)

Islam at least also forbids interest. There’s a complicated banking system, and I’m pretty sure there still are ways to fuck people over, but getting broke people trapped on the payday loan cycle at least isn’t one.

interesting. i had heard that Islam does apparently not have private land ownership (?) and a friend told me that 200 years ago, they didn't even have actual borders between countries (and, i assume, villages or administrative districts?) thus it was all a continuous area with names and region designations being rather vague. i wonder whether that has to do with the idea that land cannot be possessed by some kind of monarch or king? do you know more about this?

[-] andros_rex@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

According to the Islamic theory of landed property, development and fructification of what one possesses binds ownership. Property can be acquired through developing and utilizing arable fertile (farming) land with no previous claim of ownership.* However, the right someone has acquired to a piece of land is not lost merely through non-use; it vanishes only if someone else brings that land under cultivation.* The purpose of such law is to benefit the general public by bringing life to the virgin land and to ensure the continuity of utilization. * No privately owned natural resource is to be left unused. Meanwhile, the concept of sharecropping is acknowledged by most Islamic schools of thought as a justifiable mode of acquiring property rights.

A couple of other interesting discussions about different types of property rights in that article too. Critical to keep in mind that it’s a religion and that there are multiple traditions/legal schools of thought. (Shia versus Sunni is the biggest rift, but there are others.)

Fear of Islamic socialism was why the US kept the Shah in power.

As far land borders - that is seriously a huge and complicated and difficult topic. (Numismatic research - coins - often shows how often we don’t really have documentation of what was happening. Kingdoms that are only known to exist because they put out a few pieces..) That’s the kind of topic that people do post doc work on.

[-] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

We would be better off disallowing organized religion in public and forcefully redistributing all excess wealth perpetually.

[-] laserm@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

No, we should built impenetrable wall between the state and religion, but right to believe and exercise religion is a very fundamental and basic human right.

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[-] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

"Obligatory charity." Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

It's just how Zakat is structured in Islam. "Tax" would also work, but Zakat is specifically earmarked for social welfare (and military uses) so obligatory charity captures the nuance better I think.

[-] sucius@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

Military uses? How's that charity?

[-] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 points 1 week ago

So that was an oversimplification; Quran 9:60 specifies the eight recipients of Zakat, and one of them is "for the sake of God", which has been interpreted by most (but not all) scholars to refer to providing supplies and arms to non-professional (conscripted or volunteer) soldiers during Jihad. Some scholars have been more expansive of their interpretation of this, but that's the majority opinion. This might seem out of place, which is fair but consider a situation where a Muslim state has to go to war but doesn't have the funds to raise an army and as a result loses territory. As far as I understand it's basically a wartime "oh shit" button.

[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Let's see MBS give away money.

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[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Elmo give 2.5% of his wealth?

Fuck that shit.

At best people like him should get to KEEP 2.5 % of their wealth. More reasonable, likely, will be TJ jail them as few billionaires can claim to gave gotten there without stepping on the back of someone. Elmo personally should be jailed for life.

Also, we don't need religions for tax. Just tax the rich fucking bastards

[-] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Elmo give 2.5% of his wealth?

You seem to be misreading.

Give 2.5% of their wealth, each year, not just give 2.5% of their income. There's a huge difference.

Wealth gets taxed every year, unlike income which gets taxed only once. So in 20 years, the wealth tax is roughly 20*2.5% which is 50%. And in 30 years it's closer to 75%.

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[-] Valmond@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

That's a tax.

But are you sure really rich people should have to pay it? /s

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Did you read the title?

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this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
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