36إِنَّمَا الحَياةُ الدُّنيا لَعِبٌ وَلَهوٌ ۚ وَإِن تُؤمِنوا وَتَتَّقوا يُؤتِكُم أُجورَكُم وَلا يَسأَلكُم أَموالَكُمMuhammad AsadThe life of this world is but a play and a passing delight: but if you believe [in God] and are conscious of Him, He will grant you your deserts. And withal, He does not demand of you [to sacrifice in His cause all of] your possessions:1Although the life of this world is "but a play and a passing delight", God does not want to deprive the believers of its rightful enjoyment: and so He expects them to sacrifice only a small part of their possessions in His cause. This passage evidently foreshadows the imposition of the obligatory annual tax called zakah ("the purifying dues"), amounting to about 2.5 percent of a Muslims's income and property, as pointed out by most of the classical commentators in connection with the above verse (hence my interpolation). The proceeds of this tax are to be utilized in what the Qur'an describes as "the cause [lit., "way"] of God", i.e., for the defence and propagation of the Faith and the welfare of the community; and its spiritual purpose is the "purification" of a Muslim's possessions from the blemish of greed and selfishness. (It is to be noted that the payment of zakah was made obligatory at the very beginning of the Medina period, that is, at approximately the same time as the revelation of the present surah.)