There exists, however, in all Muslim societies and communities in Africa a minority that criticize social and political conditions in society with the stated aim of striving for an Islamic solution to poverty and injustice. The common denominator for this group is that they are urban educated Muslims, having both a traditional educational background and, usually but not always, a modern, secular one, too. For them, the concept of poverty more readily forms part of a religious discourse involving feasible strategies for change. Their basic idea is to highlight the possibilities of generating new forms of financial resources by combining Islamic ethics and norms with a modern development-oriented outlook. Their vision is the usability of obligatory almsgiving in a modern context, namely that, instead of the traditional individual-centred ‘person-to-person’ charities, zakāt or obligatory almsgiving should be directed to become the source of communal and collective societal improvement.

This study focuses on the conditions of poverty and the debate among Muslims in Ghana, a West African country with a substantial but largely economically and politically marginalized Muslim population.