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.
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.
Why do our leaders ruin everything lol
Because we don't stand up and call them to account for it.
Tbf, it's pretty hard to call out royals or dictators when you get "disappeared" for it.
Luckily there's plenty that haven't reached that level yet, and we can do something to keep them from getting there.
Who? every single country in the middle east [afaik] is an by a corrupt dictator.
There's countries outside the middle east.
I know. From my perspective i was talking abt countries in the ME but i forgot to mention that, my mistake.
Well, yes. And many leaders have proven they either don't care or are willing to make people disappear if they become inconvenient 😓
Often because those people sat around until those people had enough power to do it.
Oof yeah real. Especially in the US, mass and social media have most people focused on their own personal problems such that people don't see this happening in the background. "Fascists in the Whitehouse, sure, but my car needs new tires and there's that leak in the roof of the house that I'm living in even though it's owned by someone else who owns multiple properties... Hey maybe I actually hate that more than politics, so I'll just devote all my energy to that instead"
Is zakat collected by the state in Saudia or is it like in other countries where people choose who to give it to?
This must be why the UAE is such an egalitarian country... 😅
i mean, leaders of theocracies blatantly ignoring the parts of their religion that they don’t like is nothing new lol
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.
I mean, they did but abuse was also rampant in those orphanages and mental hospitals.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
In 2023, Elon Musk paid $11 billion in income taxes, which was one of the largest individual tax bills in history.
Which is more than 2,5% of his total wealth.
In 2021, Elon Musk paid a significant amount in taxes, with estimates ranging from $8.3 billion to $12 billion, making it one of the largest individual tax payments in U.S. history. This substantial tax bill was primarily due to Musk exercising stock options that were set to expire, which triggered a large taxable income event.
Blablabla. Basically, believe it or not. 2,5% isn't that big of a deal
I also read there was a year he paid $0, but even if he payed on average 2.5% yoy, that might relatively be a lot less than what someone working minimum pays on wealth (or in their case just income) tax.
Am just saying the islamic stuff is peanuts. 2,5% isn't much. That's already more than happening.
Elon musk is paying that much on his yearly income. I'm just comparing it to his total wealth.
A lot of his wealth are unrealised capital gains. His total wealth crippled this year with his shenanigans.
If this happened in USA. Then they'd relocate their wealth to other places while only keeping the bare minimum in order to generate an income there.
USA's average wealth is insanely high because it's a government that protects their wealth. Once it stops doing that, they will re-locate.
Your 1% holding the most of your country's wealth isn't actually holding your country's wealth. But that of the whole world. Your country is just a safe place to keep it.
In the US, people making minimum wage pay $0 in income tax in almost all states.
Let's see MBS give away money.
Higher chance he dies from a lightning strike inside his palace lmao
That's a tax.
But are you sure really rich people should have to pay it? /s
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