{ "name": "traditions", "description": "The Giving Traditions Library.", "license": "CC BY 4.0. Cite “Charitology (charitology.org)”.", "generated": "2026-10-26", "data": [ { "id": "christian-almsgiving-and-tithing", "path": "/record/traditions/christian-almsgiving-and-tithing/", "title": "Christian almsgiving and tithing", "summary": "Christianity inherited the tithe, a tenth of one’s produce, from the Hebrew Bible and made giving to the poor a central act of faith. Practice varies widely between churches, and Catholic teaching adds that what the poor are owed in justice comes before charity.", "tradition": "Christianity", "origin": "The tithe laws of the Hebrew Bible and the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, developed in church law and teaching over two thousand years", "practice": "Giving alms to people in need, ideally without seeking credit, and in some churches giving a tenth of one’s income to the church", "lens": "The works of mercy, such as feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, are relief given as a duty, not as an extra. Catholic teaching also holds that justice must be satisfied before charity, which looks past relief to what keeps people poor.", "sources": [ { "title": "Deuteronomy, chapter 14 (New American Bible, Revised Edition)", "url": "https://bible.usccb.org/bible/deuteronomy/14", "publisher": "United States Conference of Catholic Bishops" }, { "title": "Matthew, chapter 6 (New American Bible, Revised Edition)", "url": "https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/6", "publisher": "United States Conference of Catholic Bishops" }, { "title": "Matthew, chapter 25 (New American Bible, Revised Edition)", "url": "https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/25", "publisher": "United States Conference of Catholic Bishops" }, { "title": "Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2 (New American Bible, Revised Edition)", "url": "https://bible.usccb.org/bible/acts/2", "publisher": "United States Conference of Catholic Bishops" }, { "title": "Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2443–2449, Love for the Poor", "url": "https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8F.HTM", "publisher": "Holy See" }, { "title": "Tithes", "url": "https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14741b.htm", "publisher": "William Fanning, The Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent)", "year": 1912 }, { "title": "Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching", "url": "https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/seven-themes-of-catholic-social-teaching", "publisher": "United States Conference of Catholic Bishops" }, { "title": "Tithing", "url": "https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/tithing?lang=eng", "publisher": "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", "year": 2023 } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\nChristian traditions differ widely on giving. This entry draws mainly on the Bible and Catholic teaching, with one example from another church.\n\nThe tithe, a tenth, comes from the Hebrew Bible. Part of it supported the Levites, who had no land of their own, and Deuteronomy adds that every third year the tithe was to be stored in local communities so that the Levite, the resident foreigner, the orphan and the widow could “come and eat and be satisfied.” In this form the tithe was partly a way of feeding people in need.\n\nJesus taught that alms should be given quietly, without seeking praise, so that the left hand does not know what the right is doing. In his parable of the Last Judgment, those who fed the hungry, welcomed strangers, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited prisoners were told they had served Christ himself. In the Book of Acts, the first believers held their goods in common and sold property to share according to each person’s need.\n\nAt first the clergy lived on voluntary offerings. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the earliest church laws on tithing came from the Councils of Tours in 567 and Mâcon in 585, and Charlemagne’s laws enforced tithes by the end of the eighth century. Today practice varies. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example, asks its members to give one-tenth of their income.\n\n## Charity and justice\n\nThe Catechism of the Catholic Church lists the works of mercy, including feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and clothing the naked. It calls giving alms to the poor one of the chief signs of love for others, and also a work of justice. It goes further: the demands of justice must be met first, and what is already owed in justice should not be offered as if it were a gift. Quoting Saint Gregory the Great, it says that meeting the needs of the poor gives them what is theirs, not ours. The U.S. Catholic bishops describe this as an “option for the poor and vulnerable,” judging a society by how its most vulnerable members are faring.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nThe works of mercy are relief, and the tradition treats them as a duty, never as a lesser good. Its teaching that justice comes before charity, and that a society is judged by how its poorest fare, also points upstream, toward the structures that decide who is poor in the first place." }, { "id": "dana", "path": "/record/traditions/dana/", "title": "Dāna in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain traditions", "summary": "Giving, dāna in Sanskrit and Pali, is honored in three religions that grew up in ancient India, each with its own emphasis. Buddhism treats giving as the first step in letting go of greed, the Bhagavad Gita ranks gifts by the giver’s motive, and Jain laypeople support the monks and nuns who have given up nearly all possessions.", "tradition": "Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism", "origin": "Ancient India, in the teachings of the Buddha, Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita, and the vows of Jain laypeople", "practice": "Gifts of food, money and support to monks, nuns, temples and people in need, judged as much by the giver’s intention as by the gift", "lens": "The sources here emphasize intention, attachment and spiritual development alongside material support. The Buddhist sources describe the gift of the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teaching, as the highest gift. These are accounts of giving within the traditions, not a single test of effectiveness shared by all three.", "sources": [ { "title": "Dana: The Practice of Giving", "url": "https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel367.html", "publisher": "Bhikkhu Bodhi (ed.), Buddhist Publication Society, Wheel Publication 367/369, via Access to Insight", "year": 1990 }, { "title": "Bhagavad Gita, chapter 17, verse 20", "url": "https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/17/verse/20", "publisher": "Swami Mukundananda, Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God" }, { "title": "Bhagavad Gita, chapter 17, verses 21 and 22", "url": "https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org/chapter/17/verse/21", "publisher": "Swami Mukundananda, Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God" }, { "title": "Jainism", "url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jainism", "publisher": "Paul Dundas and the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica", "year": 2026 }, { "title": "Ritual practices and religious institutions in Jainism", "url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jainism/Ritual-practices-and-religious-institutions", "publisher": "G. Ralph Strohl and the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica", "year": 2026 } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\n*Dāna* is the word for giving in Sanskrit and Pali. Buddhism and Hinduism make it a central virtue, and in Jainism, which shares their roots in ancient India, giving to ascetics and the poor is part of the vows laypeople take. Each tradition gives it a different weight, and in all three, how and why a gift is given matters as much as what is given.\n\n## In Buddhism\n\nIn the Buddha’s teaching, giving comes first. It is the first topic in his step-by-step teaching, the first of the three bases of meritorious action and the first of the ten *pāramīs*, the perfections a seeker after awakening cultivates. Essays edited by the monk Bhikkhu Bodhi describe giving as the antidote to greed, the first of the roots of unwholesome action.\n\nLaypeople give food and other support to the *Sangha*, the community of monks and nuns, which the texts call a “field of merit.” A gift made from respect and without expecting a return is valued above one made from fear or to win a reputation. The highest gift of all is the gift of the Dhamma, the Buddha’s teaching.\n\n## In Hinduism\n\nThe Bhagavad Gita sorts gifts by the quality of the motive behind them. The highest kind, called *sattvic*, the quality of goodness, is given to a worthy person at the right time and place, simply because giving is right, with nothing expected in return. A gift given grudgingly, or in hope of something back, belongs to the lower quality of passion. A gift given at the wrong time or place, to the unworthy, or with contempt belongs to the lowest, the quality of ignorance.\n\n## In Jainism\n\nJainism teaches a path to spiritual purity through nonviolence toward all living creatures. Among the vows Jain laypeople take is offering gifts and service to monks, the poor and fellow believers. The monks and nuns depend on that support: Digambara monks beg for their single daily meal using their cupped hands as an alms bowl. Britannica notes a stark contrast between the prosperity of the Jain lay community and the self-denial of the ascetics it supports. On Samvatsari, the last day of the Shvetambara festival of Paryushana, alms are given to the poor.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nThe sources in this entry discuss the giver’s intention, the recipient and spiritual development, alongside the material gift. They do not establish one view shared by every school or practitioner in these three religions. The fit with Charitology’s depth scale should not be forced. One connection is the Buddhist distinction between material support and the gift of teaching: it asks readers to consider both meeting a need and changing understanding." }, { "id": "dasvandh-and-seva", "path": "/record/traditions/dasvandh-and-seva/", "title": "Dasvandh and seva", "summary": "Sikhs are taught to live by honest work and to share what they earn. Dasvandh, giving a tenth of one’s income to the community’s common fund, and seva, selfless service such as working in the gurdwara’s community kitchen, are two of the main ways they do it.", "tradition": "Sikhism", "origin": "The teaching of Guru Nanak, recorded in the Guru Granth Sahib, and the institutions built by the Gurus who followed him", "practice": "Giving one-tenth of one’s earnings to the community’s common pool, and serving others in person, especially in the langar, the gurdwara’s community kitchen", "lens": "Sikh teaching sends material gifts into a common fund rather than from one person to another, because personal charity can demean the receiver and inflate the giver. Pooled giving sustains shared institutions, from kitchens to welfare projects, so the tradition builds structures of mutual support, not only acts of relief.", "sources": [ { "title": "Dasvandh", "url": "https://eos.learnpunjabi.org/DASVANDH.html", "publisher": "Wazir Singh, The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Punjabi University, Patiala" }, { "title": "Sevā", "url": "https://eos.learnpunjabi.org/SEVA.html", "publisher": "Jaswant Singh Neki, The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, Punjabi University, Patiala" }, { "title": "Langar", "url": "https://www.britannica.com/topic/langar", "publisher": "Encyclopaedia Britannica" } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\nGuru Nanak (1469–1539), the first Guru and founder of the Sikh tradition, taught that the person who truly knows the way lives on what they earn by honest work and shares part of it with others. The line appears on page 1245 of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture, and it is the root of two practices.\n\n*Dasvandh*, literally “a tenth part,” is the practice of giving one-tenth of one’s earnings, in the name of the Guru, to the common resources of the community. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism calls it a religious obligation. Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, set up 22 districts, each led by a Sikh who taught and passed the community’s offerings to the Guru. When work on the sacred pool at Amritsar and the Harimandar shrine at its center began under Guru Ram Das, Sikhs were asked to set aside at least a tenth of their income for the common pool, collected by appointed ministers. Manuals of Sikh conduct from around the time of Guru Gobind Singh codified it.\n\nThe encyclopedia distinguishes dasvandh from ordinary charity. It meets the needs of the community: the gurdwaras, the Guru’s community kitchen and projects of social welfare and uplift.\n\n## Seva\n\n*Seva* means service, and in Sikh teaching it is also worship. Because God pervades creation, serving people is a way of serving God. The tradition recognizes service with the body, with the mind and with material means. Service with the body is considered the highest and is asked of every Sikh. In a society where manual labor was looked down on and assigned to the lowest castes, the Gurus made it an honored religious practice. They built it into institutions such as the *langar*, the Guru’s community kitchen, and into everyday service to the congregation, such as grinding grain and drawing water. In the langar, Britannica notes, everyone sits in one line, and the institution began as a protest against caste.\n\nGiving through material means was deliberately made impersonal. Offerings and dasvandh went into the community’s common funds rather than from one person to another. The encyclopedia explains why: personal philanthropy can humiliate the person who receives it and swell the ego of the person who gives, while self-effacing service to the community is ennobling. Sikhs are particularly asked to serve the poor.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nSeva’s purpose is devotion and the dissolving of the ego, not efficiency, yet the design is clear. Pooling gifts into shared institutions, and protecting the dignity of the person helped, echoes the higher rungs of [Maimonides’ ladder](/record/traditions/tzedakah/). A kitchen that feeds whoever comes is relief, and the common fund that keeps it running is structure." }, { "id": "mutual-aid-societies", "path": "/record/traditions/mutual-aid-societies/", "title": "Mutual aid societies", "summary": "Long before modern charities and welfare states, people pooled small, regular contributions so that whoever fell sick, lost a family member or hit hard times could draw on the group. Burial societies, friendly and fraternal societies and savings circles carry the same idea, that the helpers and the helped are the same people.", "tradition": "Mutual aid, across many cultures", "origin": "Burial societies of ancient Greek and Roman artisans, medieval guilds, the friendly societies of 17th- to 19th-century Britain, and community savings and burial groups such as South Africa’s stokvels", "practice": "Members pay into a common fund that pays out in turn, or when a member faces illness, death or hardship", "lens": "Mutual aid turns relief into a standing arrangement, ready before the crisis and run by the people it protects. Where it grows into rules and institutions, as friendly societies did when they became insurers and unions, it works at the level of structure.", "sources": [ { "title": "Friendly society", "url": "https://www.britannica.com/money/friendly-society", "publisher": "Encyclopaedia Britannica" }, { "title": "Preamble of the Free African Society, 1787", "url": "https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3h465.html", "publisher": "Africans in America, PBS" }, { "title": "About Stokvels", "url": "https://www.nasasa.co.za/about-us/about-stokvels/", "publisher": "National Stokvel Association of South Africa" }, { "title": "History", "url": "https://www.nasasa.co.za/about-us/history/", "publisher": "National Stokvel Association of South Africa" } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\nIn a mutual aid society, members contribute regularly to a shared fund that protects each of them. Nobody is only a donor and nobody is only a recipient. Each member pays in while they can and draws out when they need to.\n\nThe idea is old. Britannica traces friendly societies, voluntary groups that protected members against the costs of illness, death and old age, back to the burial societies of ancient Greek and Roman artisans and the guilds of medieval Europe. Friendly societies arose in the 17th and 18th centuries and were most numerous in the 19th. They went a step further than earlier groups by working out the size of the risks they covered and how much members needed to pay in to meet them. Trade unions, fraternal orders such as the Odd Fellows, and life insurance companies all grew out of them.\n\n## In America\n\nIn Philadelphia in 1787, Absalom Jones, Richard Allen and other free Black residents founded the Free African Society. Members paid a shilling a month. After a year, the society could help members in need, supporting them through illness and providing for the widows and orphaned children of members.\n\n## Stokvels and burial societies\n\nIn South Africa, a *stokvel* is a group of people who know each other and pool regular contributions toward a shared purpose. The National Stokvel Association of South Africa lists several kinds: burial societies that help with funeral costs and bereavement, grocery stokvels that buy in bulk, savings stokvels, rotational stokvels in which members take turns receiving the pooled money, social clubs and investment clubs.\n\nTheir recognition was hard won. In the late 1980s, stokvels were treated as illegal deposit-taking institutions under the country’s banking law. The association was founded in Soweto in 1988 to represent stokvels before the Reserve Bank, and in 1990 the Reserve Bank exempted stokvels from the Banks Act if they registered with the association.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nMutual aid is relief and repair organized in advance, by the people who need it. Its members decide how it works, the opposite of the [Missing Voice](/diagnosis/missing-voice/). And when it gains rules, legal standing and lasting institutions, it changes structure: friendly societies helped give rise to modern insurance and trade unions. The Encyclopedia’s entry on [mutual aid](/record/encyclopedia/mutual-aid/) covers the concept. When private provision adds to public provision and when it replaces it is [Open Problem 21, the Government Question](/open-problems/the-government-question/)." }, { "id": "the-gospel-of-wealth", "path": "/record/traditions/the-gospel-of-wealth/", "title": "The Gospel of Wealth", "summary": "In 1889 the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie argued that the rich are trustees of their fortunes and should give them away, wisely, while they live. His essay helped shape modern philanthropy, from the public library to the giant foundation, and so did the questions critics have asked about it ever since.", "tradition": "Modern Western philanthropy", "origin": "Andrew Carnegie’s two articles in the North American Review in 1889, and the foundations he and other industrialists created", "practice": "The very rich giving away most of their fortunes during their lifetimes, to institutions that help people improve their own lives rather than to relief or to heirs", "lens": "Carnegie dismissed most almsgiving and wanted fortunes spent on lasting institutions, such as libraries and parks, that help people rise, a clear preference for structure over relief. His critics add that the most structural question of all is who gets to decide.", "sources": [ { "title": "The Gospel of Wealth", "url": "https://carnegie.org/publication/the-gospel-of-wealth/", "publisher": "Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Corporation of New York (2017 edition of the 1889 articles)", "year": 1889 }, { "title": "History", "url": "https://carnegie.org/about/history/", "publisher": "Andrew Carnegie Foundation (formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York)" }, { "title": "The Strike at Homestead Mill", "url": "https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-strike-homestead-mill/", "publisher": "American Experience, PBS" }, { "title": "Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better", "url": "https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/publications/just-giving-why-philanthropy-failing-democracy-and-how-it-can-do-better", "publisher": "Rob Reich, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society", "year": 2018 }, { "title": "About the Giving Pledge", "url": "https://www.givingpledge.org/about-the-giving-pledge/", "publisher": "The Giving Pledge" } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\nIn June and December 1889, Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born steel magnate, published two articles in the *North American Review* that together became known as *The Gospel of Wealth*. The problem of the age, he wrote, was the proper administration of wealth.\n\nHe saw three ways to dispose of a great fortune: leave it to one’s family, which he called the most injudicious; leave it to public causes at death; or give it away during one’s lifetime, the path he urged. He also backed heavy, graduated taxes on large estates, calling them the wisest form of taxation. A rich man should live modestly, provide moderately for his family and manage the rest as a trust for the community. The essay’s most famous line is its verdict on those who fail to: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”\n\n## What it rejected, and what it built\n\nCarnegie was scathing about charity that met immediate needs. He guessed that of every $1,000 spent on so-called charity, $950 was spent unwisely, in ways that produced the very evils it meant to cure. The rich should instead build what he called ladders for the aspiring: universities, libraries, medical institutions, parks and other public institutions. He followed his own advice, paying for more than 2,500 library buildings. See [Carnegie’s public libraries](/record/case-studies/carnegie-libraries/).\n\n## Its legacy and its critics\n\nCarnegie Corporation of New York, now the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, calls the essay a foundational document of philanthropy. Its central idea, that the very rich should give most of their wealth away, is alive today. The Giving Pledge, founded by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, is a promise by the world’s wealthiest people to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.\n\nCriticism followed quickly. In 1892, at Carnegie’s steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, managers locked out workers to cut wages and break the union, and a gun battle with hired Pinkerton agents left nearly a dozen people dead. Carnegie, who had backed the plan from Scotland, was widely condemned as a hypocrite. More recently, in his 2018 book *Just Giving*, Rob Reich argues that large-scale philanthropy turns private wealth into public influence that is hard to hold accountable, can last indefinitely and is subsidized through the tax system.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nCarnegie’s gospel points upstream, to institutions that let people rise. Charitology doesn’t share his dismissal of relief, since every level of the [depth scale](/method/#depth) is needed. And his critics press a question his essay answered with confidence in the judgment of the rich: when they decide what the public receives, who holds them to account? That is part of [Open Problem 21, the Government Question](/open-problems/the-government-question/), and of the [Prestige Economy](/diagnosis/prestige-economy/)." }, { "id": "tzedakah", "path": "/record/traditions/tzedakah/", "title": "Tzedakah and Maimonides’ ladder", "summary": "In Jewish tradition, giving is an obligation of justice, and the 12th-century scholar Maimonides ranked eight levels of it. The highest helps a person no longer need charity at all.", "tradition": "Judaism", "origin": "The Hebrew Bible and rabbinic law, set out systematically by Maimonides in the 12th century", "practice": "Regular giving to the poor as a duty of justice, ranked by how much dignity and independence it preserves", "lens": "Maimonides’ highest level emphasizes helping someone become self-sufficient. Charitology reads this as a connection to preventing future need and preserving agency, not as proof that the wider causes of poverty have ended.", "sources": [ { "title": "Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:7", "url": "https://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah%2C_Gifts_to_the_Poor.10.7", "publisher": "Sefaria" }, { "title": "Maimonides’ Eight Levels: A Contemporary Reading", "url": "https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/maimonides-eight-levels-a-comtemporary-reading/", "publisher": "My Jewish Learning" } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\n*Tzedakah* is usually translated as “charity,” but the Hebrew root is closer to *justice* or *righteousness*. In Jewish law, giving to people in need is an obligation rather than an optional kindness.\n\n## The ladder\n\nIn his code of Jewish law, the *Mishneh Torah*, Maimonides ranked eight levels of giving. The lower levels describe how a gift is given: grudgingly or cheerfully, less than one should or enough, openly or anonymously. Higher levels protect the dignity of the person receiving help, for example when neither side knows the other.\n\nThe highest level is different in kind. It is to help a person become self-sufficient through a gift, a loan, a partnership or a job, so that they no longer need to ask for help at all.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nCharitology’s depth scale runs from relief to source. Maimonides put prevention of need at the top of his ladder eight centuries ago. The tradition doesn’t treat relief as unworthy, since every level on the ladder is still a fulfillment of the obligation. It ranks them, and the ranking points upstream." }, { "id": "ubuntu", "path": "/record/traditions/ubuntu/", "title": "Ubuntu", "summary": "Ubuntu is a Southern African idea of shared humanity, often summed up as “a person is a person through other persons.” It is an ethic of community and solidarity rather than a doctrine of charity, and it has shaped South African law and the country’s approach to reconciliation.", "tradition": "Southern African moral thought", "origin": "The ways of life of Southern African peoples before colonial rule, expressed in sayings such as umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, and taken up in modern South African law and philosophy", "practice": "Living in community with others, identifying with them and acting in solidarity, which includes helping one another; invoked in South Africa’s transition to democracy and by its Constitutional Court", "lens": "Ubuntu has no ladder of gifts. Because it places a person’s humanity in their relationships, its concern is less with what one gives than with whether community and dignity are sustained, and South Africa invoked it to help rebuild a divided society.", "sources": [ { "title": "Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 200 of 1993 (repealed), National Unity and Reconciliation", "url": "https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-act-200-1993-repealed-28-jan-1994", "publisher": "South African Government", "year": 1993 }, { "title": "S v Makwanyane and Another (CCT3/94) [1995] ZACC 3", "url": "https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html", "publisher": "Constitutional Court of South Africa, via SAFLII", "year": 1995 }, { "title": "Ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in South Africa", "url": "https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1996-20962011000200011", "publisher": "Thaddeus Metz, African Human Rights Law Journal 11(2)", "year": 2011 } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\n*Ubuntu* is a word from the Nguni languages of Southern Africa, with related terms such as *botho* in Sotho-Tswana and *hunhu* in Shona. It literally means humanness. It is often summed up in the saying *umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu*, “a person is a person through other persons.”\n\nIn a 1995 judgment, Justice Yvonne Mokgoro of South Africa’s Constitutional Court wrote that ubuntu generally translates as humaneness and, most fundamentally, as personhood and morality, taking in group solidarity, compassion, respect and human dignity. The philosopher Thaddeus Metz argues that the saying is not just an observation that people depend on each other. It is a call to become more fully human through relationships with others, by identifying with them and by acting in solidarity with them, which includes helping one another.\n\n## In public life\n\nSouth Africa made ubuntu part of its transition to democracy. The 1993 interim constitution closed with a section on national unity and reconciliation, which spoke of “a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.” In 1995, when the Constitutional Court struck down the death penalty in *S v Makwanyane*, several judges drew on ubuntu. Justice Langa wrote that its dominant theme is that the life of another person is at least as valuable as one’s own. Metz notes that the word itself does not appear in the final constitution adopted in 1996, though the court later called ubuntu the underlying motif of the Bill of Rights.\n\n## A live debate\n\nUbuntu’s place in public life is contested. Metz describes three common objections: that it is too vague to guide decisions, that it puts the group above individual freedom, and that ideas formed in small, pre-colonial communities don’t fit a large modern society. He also notes that there was never one single understanding of ubuntu across the region’s many peoples. Metz argues that a careful interpretation answers these objections. Whether it does is itself part of the debate.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nIt would overclaim to call ubuntu a doctrine of giving, and Charitology does not treat it as one. Its contribution is a different starting point. Help is not a transfer from a giver to a receiver but part of what it means to live in community, and the measure is whether people’s dignity and their ties to one another are restored and sustained." }, { "id": "zakat-and-sadaqah", "path": "/record/traditions/zakat-and-sadaqah/", "title": "Zakat and sadaqah", "summary": "In Islam, zakat is a required yearly payment on wealth above a set threshold, owed to eight groups the Qur’an names. Sadaqah is voluntary giving of any kind, and its lasting form, sadaqah jariyah, keeps benefiting people long after the gift is made.", "tradition": "Islam", "origin": "The Qur’an, which names zakat’s recipients in verse 9:60, and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad", "practice": "A yearly obligation of 2.5 percent of qualifying wealth, a gift of food at the end of Ramadan, and voluntary gifts of money, time or kindness, including lasting gifts such as wells, schools and endowments", "lens": "Zakat is a recurring duty that moves wealth to people in need every year, and its recipients include debtors and people held in bondage, whose freedom it helps buy. Ongoing charity and endowments reward gifts that keep producing good, so the tradition values lasting institutions as well as relief.", "sources": [ { "title": "Surah At-Tawbah 9:60", "url": "https://quran.com/at-tawbah/60", "publisher": "Quran.com" }, { "title": "What is Zakat", "url": "https://nzf.org.uk/knowledge/what-is-zakat", "publisher": "National Zakat Foundation", "year": 2021 }, { "title": "Zakat and your family", "url": "https://nzf.org.uk/knowledge/zakat-and-your-family/", "publisher": "National Zakat Foundation", "year": 2023 }, { "title": "What is Zakat and how to pay it", "url": "https://islamic-relief.org/zakat/", "publisher": "Islamic Relief Worldwide" }, { "title": "Sadaqah", "url": "https://islamic-relief.org/sadaqah/", "publisher": "Islamic Relief Worldwide" }, { "title": "Sadaqah jariyah", "url": "https://islamic-relief.org/sadaqah/sadaqah-jariyah/", "publisher": "Islamic Relief Worldwide" }, { "title": "Sahih Muslim 1631, The Book of Wills", "url": "https://sunnah.com/muslim:1631", "publisher": "Sunnah.com" }, { "title": "Waqf (endowment)", "url": "https://islamic-relief.org/waqf-endowment/", "publisher": "Islamic Relief Worldwide" } ], "review": "draft", "body": "## What it is\n\n*Zakat* is one of the five pillars of Islam, the core practices of the faith. The word comes from an Arabic root associated with growing, increasing and purifying. Once a Muslim’s wealth has reached a minimum threshold, called the *nisab*, and a lunar year has passed, they owe 2.5 percent of their qualifying wealth.\n\nThe Qur’an names who may receive it, in verse 9:60: the poor, the needy, those who collect and administer it, those whose hearts are to be won over, the freeing of people from slavery, people in debt, the cause of God, and stranded travelers. Rules about giving to relatives differ between schools of Islamic law. The National Zakat Foundation notes that eligible siblings and other relatives may receive zakat, while restrictions apply to close relatives whom the giver must support. At the end of Ramadan, Muslims who have the means also give *zakat al-fitr*, a gift of food made before the prayer that marks the festival of Eid.\n\n## Sadaqah\n\n*Sadaqah* is voluntary charity, given in any amount and at any time. It is not limited to money: the charity Islamic Relief Worldwide notes that a smile or a helping hand can count as sadaqah.\n\nOne form is singled out. In a saying recorded in the collection *Sahih Muslim*, the Prophet Muhammad taught that when a person dies their deeds come to an end, except three: a recurring charity, knowledge that benefits others, and a pious child who prays for them. That recurring charity, *sadaqah jariyah*, covers gifts that go on helping, such as a well, a school, a hospital, a planted tree or a skill taught to someone.\n\nThe *waqf*, or charitable endowment, gives that idea an institutional form. A donor sets aside an asset, such as land, a building or cash, so that the asset stays whole and its returns go to good works. The legal form appears to date from the ninth century, and within about a hundred years endowments were supporting places of learning and hospitals across the Islamic world.\n\n## Through the source lens\n\nCharitology’s depth scale is a modern frame, and zakat has its own logic of obligation and purification. Still, the recipients the Qur’an names run from relief for the poor to the repair of a life, as in clearing a debt or ending someone’s bondage. Sadaqah jariyah and the waqf reward giving that lasts, the kind that builds and sustains institutions. Zakat is the duty, and sadaqah in all its forms is the voluntary good built on top of it." } ] }