The letter Non-Muslims paying 'jizyah' tax? refers. This has never really been an issue all this while. It has been in operation for so long, and has probably been in force even before the advent of the NEP.

Everyone has taken it as a given and it would really be better to leave it alone considering all the other cans of worms that are already open.

True, donations to a church or any other religious body only qualifies for tax relief on a project for project basis and even then the total qualifying sum may even be capped.

However, the fact remains that there is no equivalence in the tax treatment between these donations and that for zakat . This is clearly visible when you go through the Form B or when the Form J arrives.

For the uninitiated, this quite simply means that equivalent donations made towards qualifying projects of non-Muslim religious institutions are treated as deductions from income, which is then subject to tax.

This means if you made a donation of RM1,000, the benefit to you, assuming you pay the top rate of 28 percent will be RM280.

On the other hand, a Muslim making the same amount as zakat payment would have the RM1,000 treated as a rebate of tax that is set against his total tax that is due. In other words, he obtains a 100 percent relief for the zakat payment.

Indeed if he has other tax credits, he may even end up having a refund, if you choose to look at it that way.

Really, I would not mind this, provided all the funding provided by the government towards Islamic institutions - whether it be for their construction or for their operations - comes out of just this.

It does not matter that the rest of the government's funding towards managing the Malaysian economy comes from the tax paid by non-Muslims, as long as all those who live on the rest of our contributions will at least once in a while respect us for it and sometimes even acknowledge it.

However, the issue raised by Puspha, which seems rather prickling to me for once, is the introduction of the concept of dhimmitude . The question to ask is whether dhimmitude is the result of or a justification for the aforementioned tax treatment?

Somehow I do not think dhimmitude provided the justification when these provisions were put in place. However, I would imagine it would be that mentality that would fight to leave it in place today.