Zakah from Salary and EPF: Issues and Challenges
Magda Ismail A. Mohsin, Ahcene Lahsasna, Ezamshah Ismail

Abstract
The beginning of the 1980's witness a new approach of collecting zakah on monthly bases in some of the Muslim countries such as Sudan, Pakistan and Malaysia. At first, this creates an ambiguous situation amongst Muslim scholars as to its legitimacy, since the payment of zakah is known to be given on annual bases and once it reaches the nisab (the minimum assigned). Recently, a consensus has been given amongst contemporary Muslim scholars that it is lawful to pay the zakah on monthly basis. Malaysia is one of the countries that start implementing zakah deduction on monthly basis through participating in a scheme called the Salary Deduction Scheme. This raises the question on some of the conventional created funds, such as the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), and whether zakah is applicable on them or not. The main objective of this paper is to study the Shariah aspect not only on the validity of the payment of zakah on monthly salaries in Malaysia but the validity of the payment of zakah on other funds such as the EP.

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