Modern economic movements date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. All these movements have the common belief that society is economically flawed and not in favor of the general population. The doctrines proposed by these movements were all brought forward with the promise of reform and better means of livelihood for the people. Many of these doctrines, when implemented, failed to perform as promised and were put aside.

The current principle that the Baha’i leadership has proposed, is a solution to the economic problems of the modern world. How this model will perform when implemented has yet to be seen.

Religious teachings about social justice have exiasted ever since antiquity. This is a goal most, if not all, religions have been striving to achieve. The system proposed by Shia Islam, is based on two different actions: The first is a legal obligation which is enforced by the government and the second is a religious obligation, which is unto the adherents to apply to and is not enforced by the government.

In the first form, a certain percentage of certain kinds of wealth, when exceeding a fixed amount, are paid to the government to be used for the welfare of the general population and also the needy. In the second form, the wealthy are recommended to pay charity to the needy. It is up to them to decide to pay these alms and they are in no way obliged to do so although God will judge them in the hereafter for these actions:

God has placed the sustenance of the needy amongst the wealth of the wealthy. No poor person starves but because of the benefiting of a wealthy person. God will question [the wealthy] because of [these actions].[1]

Some of the elements of the model proposed by `Abdu’l-Bahā are strikingly similar to the Islamic model. Borrowing elements from Islam is so common, that when `Abdu’l-Bahā is asked about the tax called zakāt, he replies:

We ordered that the zakāt be paid as has been revealed in the Quran.[2]

Even though both religious and social movements before Bahā’u’llāh had all strived to reach this goal, `Abdu’l-Bahā claims this principle is new and no religion has spoken about it:

He has set forth the solution and provided the remedy for the economic question. No religious Books of the past Prophets speak of this important human problem.[3]

[1] Sayyid Raḍī, Nahj al-balāgha, saying no. 328.

[2] `Abd al-Ḥamīd Ishrāq Khāwarī, Ganjīniy-i ḥudūd wa aḥkām, chap. 12, p. 149.

[3] `Abdu’l-Bahā, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 455.