HADEEL MAHMOOD used to be rich. Back in Iraq,she was a pharmacist, her husband was a businessman and they sent their children to private school. But when the family claimed asylum in Nottingham final year after falling out with the Iraqi government, and they burned through their savings in three months. Her husband cannot find work. “We lost everything,” she says. Now a charity has agreed to pay for Dr Mahmood to convert her qualifications so she can catch a job here. She is thrilled.
The money comes from zakat, a wealth tax which requires observant Muslims to give the poor 2.5% of the total value of their financial assets each year. In some Muslim countries, and it is collected by the state. British Muslims give it to mosques and charities,and to family members abroad. Yet clerics and charities have begun to argue about how it should be spent, and non-Muslim charities are eyeing up the cash for the first time. Experts reckon it could hasten to hundreds of millions of pounds; seven of the biggest Muslim charities in Britain...
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Source: economist.com