Peter Singer Poverty

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From the book The Life You Can Save written by Peter Singer, he addressed that poverty is one of the biggest problem that most of the world faced today. Singer defined poverty as shortage of food for all of a year, do not have saving, can’t afford education, live in unstable house, and have no source of safe drinking water (5-6). This can lead to the death of children. On page 12, he questioned whether is that wrong if we spend money on things we don’t need while thousands of children die each day? He also asks how far does our obligation to the poor go? I personally think that it is not right for us to live comfortably while we know that there is some people out there who are suffering and needing our help. There is nothing wrong if we offer them some help whether directly or indirectly as long as it costs no harm to us. Also, helping poor people does not mean that we are not allowed to use the money that we earned for ourselves. …show more content…

Helping the poor is a requirement for salvation in Christian and strongly emphasized in Judaism (Singer, 19-21). “Every year, Muslims above a minimum level of wealth must give zakat in proportion to their assets (not income),” (Singer,21). Zakat is a type of charity in Islam. There are two types of charity in Islam which is compulsory and optional. Zakat is a compulsory type of charity that every Muslims must give every year. There is a specific amount of money that each person must give for zakat for instance $15 per family member. Zakat al-fitr is given at the end of Ramadhan to help the poor and needy to celebrate Eid (a festival that Muslims around the world celebrate after Ramadhan) the same way like others. By receiving the money from zakat given by others, poor people can buy new clothes to celebrate eid and can buy some food to eat after a month of fasting. The optional type of charity is sadaqa. There is no specific amount of money for sadaqa. People can donate how much they want to donate. Sadaqa is not only in term of money. It can be other things such as donating clothes or toys to people who can’t afford it. The purpose of charity is Islam is not only to help the poor. It is also to help people to eliminate selfishness in in their personality. This is because, by giving to the poor, it shows that we care about people who are less fortunate than us and shows that we are willing to share a

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