Zakah on Paper Currency and What Some Journalists Write
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Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. The questioner says: From time to time, some journalists write articles on the issue of zakah not being obligatory on paper currency, and they quote from some scholars. Is what they mention correct, and is the matter one of scholarly disagreement?
Answer:
What they mention is invalid. It is not the case that paper currency exempts one from zakah. Paper currency is a substitute for silver, a substitute for silver, and the substitute takes the ruling of the thing it substitutes. That means they drop the zakah if there is no longer any zakah on it, because there is no dealing in gold or silver, but rather in paper currency. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. The questioner says: From time to time, some journalists write articles on the issue of zakah not being obligatory on paper currency, and they quote from some scholars. Is what they mention correct, and is the matter one of scholarly disagreement?
Answer:
What they mention is invalid. It is not the case that paper currency exempts one from zakah. Paper currency is a substitute for silver, a substitute for silver, and the substitute takes the ruling of the thing it substitutes. That means they drop the zakah if there is no longer any zakah on it, because there is no dealing in gold or silver, but rather in paper currency. Yes.
Source
شرح كتاب المنتقى من أخبار المصطفى صلى الله عليه وسلم، بداية من كتاب الزكاة : باب الحث عليها والتشديد في منعها — islamhouse.com (54:37)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.