| Summary: |
This article explores the origin and development of the ideas and
practice of zakat (Islamic tax) on salary and identifies how it affects
the nature of zakat practice in contemporary Indonesia. The recent
trend suggests that Indonesian Muslims are attempting to translate
and reinterpret the Islamic concept of social justice by utilizing zakat
on salary (zakat profesi) as a discursive center. Despite the fact that
this has been the subject of heated debate among Muslim scholars
since the 1980s, the Indonesian state has attempted to make its payment
mandatory by enacting zakat regulations at both the provincial
and district levels. This new phenomenon is stimulating new debates
among the country’s Islamic scholars over the legality, from
a jurisprudential aspect, of imposing zakat regulations on civil servants.
Some believe that zakat practice has been precisely prescribed
in the Qur’an and Sunnah and thus such an “innovation†is
not necessary; others consider zakat to belong to that part of the Islamic
ethical and economic system that is open to reinterpretation
and innovation. Disagreement among Islamic scholars, competition
between civil society organizations and state agencies, and tension
between the government (political authorities) as a policymaker and
people at the grassroots level are indications of how almsgiving is
contested in democratic Indonesia.
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