#yapeim

So recently there were some mish-mash in Malaysia about YaPeim. YaPeim- Yayasan Pembangunan Ekonomi Islam Malaysia, is a charitable foundation established by Malaysia’s federal government in the 1970′s to empower Islamic economy in Malaysia. It is run by a board of trustees.

Recently, it was alleged that money contributed to YaPeim has been mismanaged. I won’t get into the whole matter here, but I guess you can google it up and find out.

What I want to talk about in this post is about the role of zakat (Islamic taxation) and how with zakat, problems arisen from the YaPeim alleged mismanagement can be solved.

Zakat is an Islamic taxation system since the days of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). It is based on 2.5% income and the value of all one’s possession. That’s it, 2.5%. Very fair and very simple.

Out of the 2.5%- a percentage will be given to the collector of zakat, while the rest will be distributed to the needy and the poor. This is very clear in the Quran and in most Islamic hadiths. 

In Malaysia, from my understanding, it was made very clear that out of the 2.5%- 0.5% will go to the Zakat collectors. So there is no dispute as to what the zakat collectors are going to be doing, since they are being paid 0.5% out of the collection for their activities. You don’t see people jumping up and pointing fingers and shouting ‘mismanagement!’ at the Zakat collection bodies, because it is clear cut what is rightfully belong to the zakat collectors and what will be paid and who deserves of zakat money.

And did I mention that the Zakat system has been in place since the days of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)?