Zakah In Alleviating Poverty In The Muslim World In Modern Countries Case Study

Discuss the role of zakah in alleviating poverty in the Muslim world in modern times
The underdevelopment of Muslim world in the modern time is seen yet to be resolved. Few factors lead to this problem as stated earlier by Lewis (2002) who bluntly pointed out the failure of Muslims is due to lack of freedom. His strong critics on this issue held by his view of Middle East, which in his opinion has failed to contribute to the growth of Muslims even in the attempt of the revolution within all aspects including economics. While Nienhaus (2007) said, the monopoly of the jurist (fuqaha) has been another contribution to the lack of development within Muslims communities. This statement is supported by statistics of The World Bank (2013) which discovered
However, in this modern world, it is expected that zakah management should play essential institutional that represent something more than just being an additional institution (Oran, 2009). Zakah also has been managed differently as per Al-Omar (1995) comparative study in Nienhaus (2007). This can be seen in various practical uses of zakah institutions within countries. Countries like Malaysia, Pakistan and Sudan has made it as compulsory act through the application of salary deduction (for Income zakah) while countries like Bangladesh, Iraq and Jordan still maintain it as traditional notion of voluntary act. Besides discussing only the structure of zakah administration, it is also important to see how zakah is being managed in an economic management view. Referring to Suhaib (2009) who suggested that zakah should be under the control of government (Muslim), he also mentioned the management of the fund must be done separately from the local and central government budgets. Also highlighted in his paper, the fundamental of different between zakah and taxation within 3 major aspects; i) Limitation of utilization of zakah fund versus tax, ii) Efficiency measures between tax and zakah and iii) Function of zakah as an anti-hoarding tool. Another study about the management of zakah held in Indonesia discovered that a few problems occurred because of the complexity of “charitable fund” in the sense of political, theoretical, juridical and also sociological. This has to be tackled in order to ensure zakah really plays the role efficiently. Dakhoir et.al (2014) suggested that in order to manage zakah effectively and efficiently, we need to integrate the institution within Islamic banking institutions as it can function as both profit making and charitable bodies, which is in line with the maqasid