I ONCE had a conversation with an American economics professor about how religions provide mankind with the means to fight, and get rid of, poverty.

Today even in the richest country of the world, the United States, statistics show that one in every five Americans lives below the poverty line. In Denmark, a country where each citizen owns three cows on the average, one out of ten families cannot afford milk for their children.

What about us in the Muslim world? I told the professor that Islam asks every Muslim who can afford to save money for one year to pay 2.5 percent of that money as zakah (alms) and that one way in which that money can be spent is in assisting the poor. The professor took out a calculator and after a few minutes’ work said that if this percentage were applied in Chicago, every family in the city would be able afford a home and a car.

In a small Saudi town, the manager of a local bank told me that just 2.5 percent of depositors’ money in his bank translated into more than SR40 million. This is enough to meet all the needs of every poor family in that region. The figure is three times that of social insurance allocations for the province.

Our religion provides us with the economic and financial tools that, if used as prescribed by God, would leave no one poor in the Muslim world. But we seem not to know how to apply the system and leave it to humans to interpret and apply as they choose.

— Ali-Al-Mousa/Al-Watan