Just came across this blog, Zakat Pages, which is a great resource to learn more about paying Zakat..

What it is so unique about this blog is that it tries to promote a new Zakat Collection Initiative that is closer to the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) that uses Gold Dinars!

I was pretty excited to know that you can actually purchase Islamic Gold Dinars & Islamic Silver Dirhams from certain websites; E-Dinar.com is one of them, in fact, with E-Dinar you can open an Islamic dinar denominated account and pay for things using Dinars & Dirhams!

If you aren't aware of this: Islamic Gold Dinars/Dirhams are Gold/Silver based currencies, hence have values attached to them. Unlike the US$ and UK£ or any other paper currency whose value are based on demand/supply, market confidence and are not linked to any particular commodity (other than the paper they are printed on!!).  It's actually a scary thought when you think that the $100 you have or £100 is simply not worth more than the paper printed on it, but it's market confidence into this paper that determines its value. You can read about this more online.

Question is, why would you want to purchase an Islamic Gold Dinar or Silver Dirham? For me the answer lies in 2 things:

1. It's easier to pay Zakat that way (The Zakat Pages blog explain more why this is so & even how to do it)

2. Gold is the most solid investment one can make (No matter what happens to the economy, the value of Gold is stable because you can't simply "print" more Gold). For as little as £50 you can buy yourself a Gold Dinar as a form of saving.

Well back to Zakat pages, in a nutshell: It's a great blog, that collects a number of resources from Internet sites around the topic of Zakat and Islamic Dinars/Dirhams, spent a good hour reviewing it today, and even ordering their advertised book "Zakat - Raising a Fallen Pillar" which should be an interesting read inshaAllah.