Zakat Fund bill ready for House debate

Not to be outdone by the opposition Puea Thai party which has been advocating a semi-autonomous administrative model for the deep South to be called Nakhon Pattani, the Democrats have its own to promote the activities of Zakat Fund, a form of mandatory contributions to be paid by well-to-do Muslims in accordance with their wealth for charitable purposes.

A draft bill to promote the activities of Zakat Fund has already been approved by the cabinet and sent to the House of Representatives for deliberations.  The establishment of the Zakat central fund is to put together all the zakat contributions made by affordable Muslims in the three southernmost provinces in one place so that they can be properly regulated and managed for charitable activities.

The essence of this bill is that the Zakat contributions which are currently mandatory will be made voluntary and that the contributions must be used to help or support people who strictly adhere to Islamic teachings.  In other words, the bill is intended to prevent Zakat contributions from falling into the hands of Islamic militant groups to finance their terrorist activities.

The Zakat Fund will be managed by a national committee headed by the minister of social development and human security.  The committee comprises representatives from Finance, Interior and Foreign ministries, and the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand.  On the local levels, there will be provincial committees for each of the three provinces which will oversee the fund.

The bill requires that committee members representing the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand and the resourceful persons’ group must be a Thai national of at least 30 years old, have good human relations with people from the other religious faiths and must have faith in democratic system with the King as the head of state.

Zakat Fund will be made up of contributions from the government, donors, foreign governments or organizations or revenues from the contributions.

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Thank you : Photo from website http://www.ahlulbait.org/main/content.php?page=sub&category=5&id=629