It's different in the sense how it is looked at. When you know that not all the money you have is your own, that part of it belongs to the poor, who have a righ

It's different in the sense how it is looked at. When you know that not all the money you have is your own, that part of it belongs to the poor, who have a right to claim it[0]. This is different from having it seen as a "burden" of sort. > A few posts ago you said it all worked nicely and there were no poor because people did their duty. Well, there is no contradiction between the two. The people did they duty and paid their Zakat. People were generally more pious back then. It wouldn't have been too hard for them to hide their money -- not everything was tracked the way it is today :-) [0] http://quran.com/70/24-25 http://quran.com/70/24-25