CHITRAL: General Ziaul Haq, the ex dictator President of Pakistan for eleven years, introduced many reforms in his half baked attempt of imposing an Islamic system in the country, e.g the ‘Nizam e Saalat’ (compulsory prayer) reform and the compulsory zakat deduction from personal bank accounts, to name two.

Zakat, though is obligatory to Muslims was a form of tax in the times of Muslim rulers when there were no other levies like income tax, GST, withholding tax, fuel adjustment tax, ‘solar’ tax, this tax, that tax, etc. Then zakat was the only source of income for the government and it was perfectly logical for the government to receive it compulsorily.

Most of the people sign a declaration that they would pay zakat personally and their accounts be not deducted for the same. Only few simple people who are caught off guard who don’t sign such declaration are penalized with the 2.5 percent deduction from their account. Every body knows how this zakat money is spent (mostly misappropriated) or dished out as political bribe etc.

The budget is here and it would be appropriate to eliminate this rule of compulsory deduction of zakat from personal bank accounts. .. CN report, 25 may, 2024