Zakat System for the Poor in Indonesia

Background
Indonesia is the world largest muslim democratic country in the world, which has 88.2% or consist of 202.9 million muslim population in the country (The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 2009). The growing awareness of religion in Indonesia has been dramatically happened in the late 1990’s or the end period of the New Order regime. Indication of this advance for example, more muslim women wearing hijab, more people going to mosques for prayer and also the raising up awareness among muslim to pay zakat as a religion obligation.
Zakat is very important for muslim as one of “five pilar of islam”, besides profession of faith, prayer five times a day, fasting during the month of Ramadhan, and pilgrimage to Mecca (Clarc, 2001, p.52). Alfitri (2006) argued that zakat system has long root from the beginning of Islam, from the Prophet Muhammad era, his successors and continued functioning in many muslim governments until the fall of Ottoman Empire.

Nikmatnya Ikut Jumatan di ANU

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Cleaner

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Critiques on Sachs’ article: “The Development challenge”*

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