Exploring the Guardianship of the Properties (wealth) Liable for Zakat with Emphasis on the Jurisprudential Principles of Imam Khomeini

Concerning the guardianship of the wealth liable for zakat, the generally accepted doctrine among Muslim jurists is that people can spend these collected properties for charitable and religious purposes determined in Islam. On the other hand, there is a relatively less widely accepted doctrine that holds the view that paying of the said wealth to the Islamic judge is an obligation. Grand Ayatollah Imam Khomeini’s statements in Tahrir al-Wasilah, while being congruent with the dominant doctrine, his words in his Al-BayÝ – which was later published – is in correspondence with the rather less commonly accepted doctrine. Drawing upon the descriptive-analytic method, and by means of data collection based on the library method and ducumentations, this article seeks to make study of the arguments for both sides, and to find an area of common ground between the two doctrines. The findings of the study show that there is some evidence for each of the doctrines. However, these arguments typically cannot take side with one of these doctrines and seem to be consistent with both in some way or other. The present research, having put forward two suggestions for removing the apparent contradictions between the arguments, looks at the possible soluion as well as the common ground between the two doctrines.