125. Should anyone acquire one hundred mithqals of gold, nineteen mithqals thereof are God's and to be rendered unto Him # 97This verse establishes Huququ'llah, the Right of God, the offering of a fixed portion of the value of the believer's possessions. This offering was made to Baha'u'llah as the Manifestation of God and then, following His Ascension, to Abdu'l-Baha as the Centre of the Covenant. In His Will and Testament, Abdu'l-Baha provided that the Huququ'llah was to be offered "through the Guardian of the Cause of God". There now being no Guardian, it is offered through the Universal House of Justice as the Head of the Faith. This fund is used for the promotion of the Faith of God and its interests as well as for various philanthropic purposes. The offering of the Huququ'llah is a spiritual obligation, the fulfilment of which has been left to the conscience of each Baha'i. While the community is reminded of the requirements of the law of Huquq, no believer may be approached individually to pay it.
A number of items in Questions and Answers further elaborate this law. The payment of Huququ'llah is based on the calculation of the value of the individual's possessions. If a person has possessions equal in value to at least nineteen mithqals of gold (Q and A 8), it is a spiritual obligation to pay nineteen percent of the total amount, once only, as Huququ'llah (Q and A 89). Thereafter, whenever one's income, after all expenses have been paid, increases the value of one's possessions by the amount of at least nineteen mithqals of gold, one is to pay nineteen percent of this increase, and so on for each further increase (Q and A 8, 90).
Certain categories of possessions, such as one's residence, are exempt from the payment of Huququ'llah (Q and A 8, 42, 95), and specific provisions are outlined to cover cases of financial loss (Q and A 44, 45), the failure of investments to yield a profit (Q and A 102) and for the payment of Huquq in the event of the person's death (Q and A 9, 69, 80). (In this latter case, see note 47.)
Extensive extracts from Tablets, Questions and Answers, and other Writings concerning the spiritual significance of Huququ'llah and the details of its application have been published in a compilation entitled Huququ'llah.