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This study looked into the scope of integrating the aspirations of zakah and corporate social responsibility (CSR) to counter poverty, inequity, illiteracy, malnutrition and environmental pollution to ensure peace, happiness, prosperity and sustainability as envisaged in sustainable development goals (SDGs).

This is a qualitative research study conducted using both primary and secondary data. Primary data were collected from 29 business enterprises in Bangladesh employing a semi-structured interview protocol. The secondary data were collected through content analysis of annual reports, websites and CSR publications of sample organizations. Finally, collected qualitative data have been analyzed thematically following the due procedures to address the research questions.

The findings reveal that integration of the aspirations of zakah and CSR is a convenient and wholehearted approach for entrepreneurs resulting in pursuing SDGs. In addition, business entrepreneurs in Bangladesh consider such practices as killing two birds with one stone because this approach warrants performing both religious and social obligations simultaneously. Interestingly, the study explores that shariah compliance acts as a guiding force for selecting well-being-oriented projects in zakah-funded CSR resulting in pursuing the priority goals – No Poverty (1), Zero Hunger (2) – of SDGs, thereby addressing some of the most critical issues of emerging economies such as Bangladesh.

The findings of this research can be used as a guide to incorporate the spirit and principle of zakah into the CSR programs aimed at pursuing SDGs mainly in Muslim countries representing one-fourth of the world population.

Integration of the aspirations of zakah and CSR is an innovative move and net addition to the literature on sustainability, CSR and zakah because Muslim business entrepreneurs will now conveniently be able to use the entrepreneurs' zakah money – readily available in each financial year – to fund the entrepreneurs' various CSR projects (within shariah framework) relating to poverty alleviation, humanitarian and disaster relief, health and sanitation and environmental conservation which will eventually contribute to pursuing various SDGs.

This study aims to look into the scope of exploring and promoting business zakah for the enhancement of the well-being of the underprivileged in society.

This is mainly a qualitative research conducted using both primary and secondary data. Primary data have been collected from 34 business entrepreneurs in Bangladesh through semi-structured in-depth interviews. The secondary data have been collected from annual reports with a view to calculating business zakah of five business enterprises for providing an indicative picture of prospective volume of business zakah in Bangladesh. Finally, collected qualitative data have been analyzed thematically following the due procedures with a view to addressing the research questions.

The findings reveal that around thirty five percent of sample entrepreneurs have used business zakah fund for fully and partially financing their social projects. It also reveals that on average annual business zakah fund amounts to nearly 144m BDT (around US$1.7m) per business enterprise. These findings bear clear witness that business zakah has extensive scope and promising prospect to be an instrument of financing social projects aimed at ensuring social well-being of the disadvantaged.

The findings of this research can be used as a guide to promote business zakah to finance social programs aimed at ensuring the well-being of the underprivileged of all societies particularly of Muslim countries representing one-fourth of the world population.

Exploring and promoting business zakah as an initiative of broadening the base of zakah is an innovative move and net addition to the literature of Islamic finance. It contributes greatly to the poverty alleviation movement in the sense that Muslim business entrepreneurs will now find their business zakah fund readily available to finance their social projects aimed at ensuring well-being of the impoverished.

The purpose of the paper was to examine factors influencing business zakah compliance behavior.

The theory of reasoned action (TRA) was adopted to investigate whether attitude, subjective norm and intention were the determinants of zakah compliance behavior based on questionnaire survey of 227 active businessmen in one district in Malaysia.

Results indicate intention to be a significant predictor for zakah compliance behavior. Intention is further found to be influenced by both attitude and subjective norm, and it mediates the relationship between both factors with business zakah compliance behavior.

As attitude, subjective norm and intention are found to influence business zakah compliance behavior, zakah institutions should give serious attention on these factors to improve their zakah collection in the future.

The study supports the argument that in a loosely regulated environment like zakah, the TRA can still effectively explain the behavior of zakah compliance.

This paper explores the role of Zakah in social cause marketing. Academic literature on Islamic economics, finance and management mostly deals with the links that exists between Zakah and consumption, neglecting important and strategic links with social cause marketing. This paper emanated from need to outline social cause and the charitable role of Zakah in promoting Halal businesses, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. Most works in the field of Zakah did not foresee the role of marketing. This is a misjudgement, as this work showed that Zakah yields large and measurable social gains to help the society and a firm.

Secondary sources were used in writing this paper. Available literature in the form of journals, books, manuals and reports was referred to. As a conceptual work, the paper does not test hypothesis or pretends to provide empirical evidences. It uses mathematical economics in arriving at some of the conclusions. Findings were derived through deductions and critical discourses, not through crunching of primary data.

The paper shows how Zakah, Halal consumption and corporate social responsibility are connected and highlights the role of Zakah as a social marketing tool. It shows how Zakah affects consumption through marginal propensity of Zakah recipients who spend Zakah money on basic needs.

The paper looks at the broad aspects of Zakah and social marketing. How to make Zakah a pillar of Islamic firms’ social cause programs shall be the focus of future academic works in this area.

The paper is unique in drawing attention of Islamic firms to the effectiveness of Zakah in building a corporate image. It draws the attention of firms, activists, academics and governments to functions of Zakah that have not been studied in depth.

As one of the constituted main pillars of Islam, Zakah compliance (ZC) is mandated upon Muslims from all studies of life. Taking the disappointingly low compliance level in developing countries, including Yemen, as its backdrop, the purpose of this study is to investigate ZC behavior among entrepreneurs, drawing on the economic approach perspective.

The study adopted a cross-sectional design based on a survey of entrepreneurs in Yemen. It used primary data collected via self-administered questionnaires, involving a sample of 500 participants. A variance-based structural modeling equation-partial least squares were used to measure the instruments and assess the hypothesized relationships.

The findings affirmed the suitability of the economic factors approaches in the context of ZC in a developing country. Specifically, the study demonstrated that Zakah law complexity has a significant negative influence on ZC of entrepreneurs. It also found a significant positive relationship between religiosity and ZC among the study sample, whereas the study revealed that law enforcement has no influence on compliance behavior.

Policies and programs focused on Zakah laws and regulations could be formulated to make them less complex and simpler for acceptable levels of ZC. The result is further relevant to policymakers in Muslim communities to strengthen the religious faith of Zakah payers toward compliance with one of the fundamental religious obligations such as Zakah.

This study enriches the limited previous studies on actual ZC from the perspective of developing communities, especially Yemen. Most importantly, the value was added to the limited literature internationally from an economic aspect.

To provide a sound understanding of Zakah compliance behaviour, this paper aims to shed light on the relationships between Zakah system fairness, Zakah morale, peer influence and law enforcement with Zakah compliance behaviour among entrepreneurs.

The underpinning model used in this paper is the socio-economic theory of regulatory compliance for assessing the probable determinants shaping Zakah payers' compliance behaviour. Based on a survey of active entrepreneurs in a typical Islamic situation like Yemen, a total of 500 self-administered instruments were distributed to the respondents. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to estimate the compliance model.

All the variables included in the compliance model are statistically significant, except for law enforcement. Zakah compliance of entrepreneurs is significantly influenced by Zakah system fairness, Zakah morale and peer influence.

Zakah institutions and agencies in Muslim-majority countries may use the results of this work to focus attention on appropriate proactive policies to formulate a fair Zakah system, inculcating moral responsibility among Zakah payers, embarking on sensitisation programmes in society as a whole, and being more proactive in educating Muslims in the importance of paying Zakah to the respective Zakah agencies.

This paper complements the limited literature on Zakah by examining both tangible and intangible motivations affecting Zakah payers' compliance decision.

The increasing number of papers on zakah shows that it has become an important research topic. However, few studies attempt to analyze the evolution of zakah studies which might be helpful as guidance for policymakers in creating zakah management systems and policies, for zakah management organizations administering zakah funds, for future research on related subjects and for academic actors to construct a zakah study curriculum. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the evolution of zakah theme publications from 1964 to 2021.

This study uses bibliometric analysis to analyze the evolution of zakah research. This study compared all Scopus-indexed journal papers to Zakah publications regarding research flow, themes, abstracts and titles. The relationships between researchers, the titles of the papers and keywords associated with “zakah” are analyzed in these publications published between 1964 and 2021. A total of 632 scientific contributions were discovered using RStudio and VOSviewer to analyze the bibliometric metadata.

Based on the results, the theme of zakah has evolved from 1964 to 2021. The author emphasizes the zakah publication theme. Each affiliation and country have its conditions, management method, data sources and characteristics. The theme “zakah institutions and zakah collecting” grew in popularity between 2010 and 2021 and is projected to grow in the following years. Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan can be used as zakah development research models. In spans of zakah publications, the author with the most global citations is Wahab N.A., and the author with the most productive is Saad Raj.

Zakah publications are analyzed using the Scopus database. This study applied only Scopus index data, excluding non-Scopus, and most studies conducted in non-English languages. This conclusion indicates the issue’s importance among academic researchers and practitioners, notably on the subject of zakah. Thus, a comprehensive picture of zakah theme publications assists researchers and zakah fund institutions in making assessments, focusing on the unstudied fraction of the zakah theme.

This research is planned to serve as a reference for future research, particularly examining the theme’s novelty. It is intended to have implications for policymakers, particularly zakah institutions, regarding funding the several zakah research issues and concentrations.

This research can guide future researchers and is expected to include parameters such as author, year and data source while analyzing zakah publications to generate new findings.

This is probably one of few comprehensive studies that examined the evolution of the zakah theme using the Scopus-indexed database. The relevance of this paper is to provide suggestions and projections for future zakah research. Scholars should examine zakah publications by author, year and data source to gain fresh insights. Search for data sources with high-impact factors and objective metrics, then clear out irrelevant documents to improve the analysis’ quality and findings.

Although Zakah is the cornerstone of the social protection system in Muslim societies, providing relief to those in need and collecting funds from those who have access to money and property, many administrative and legal improvements need to be made to ensure that Zakah funds are managed effectively and efficiently in Muslim states. It is therefore important to recognize why some Muslims are not paying their Zakah through Zakah authorities. The purpose of this paper is to propose a viable and comprehensive research model, derived from an economic and socio-psychological perspective, to provide a richer understanding of Zakah payers’ compliance behaviour.

Drawing on extant literature, this study offers a conceptual framework for a better understanding of compliance behaviour by proposing an economic and socio-psychological model based on Fischer’s tax compliance model, which could be applied cautiously in an Islamic setting like Zakah.

The four main categories of the Fischer model are derived from socio-psychological and economic perspectives, namely, attitude and perception (system fairness, ethics and peer influence); Zakah system structure (Zakah law complexity and law enforcement); non-compliance opportunity (education level, wealth source and occupation); and demographic factors (age and gender). Each has much to offer in understanding Zakah payers’ compliance decisions. To suit the nature of Zakah, the influence of Islamic religiosity and the moderating effect of trust in the Zakah institution are incorporated into the model.

Those Muslim communities that strive to have functional Zakah systems to search for solutions to the perennial problem of low Zakah funding and its damning consequences, are offered a compliance model for systematically assessing Muslims’ compliance behaviour with Zakah provisions. This framework is anticipated to offer invaluable input to policymakers in streaming and strategizing the minimization of losses of Zakah revenue to Zakah authorities.

Although behavioural models such as the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behaviour have been extensively used in Zakah compliance studies, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is perhaps the first to apply a socio-psychological and economic framework, emerging from tax literature, in the Zakah environment to develop fully understanding of Zakah payers’ compliance decisions.

This study explores the benefits of business financial inclusion from the Islamic perspective in Nigeria by selecting Kano state as a case study.

Primary data were generated through semi-structured interviews with experts who comprised professional accountants/consultants and experienced traders. Thematic analysis was applied to examine the data collected. In addition, observations were made in some selected stores and shops to complement the interview results.

The study finds that the benefits of business financial inclusion include recordkeeping improvement, reduction of the risks of bad debts, reduction of the risks associated with cash, enhancing business zakāh for poverty alleviation, sales improvement and business growth, getting supports from government and other development organizations and the provision of employment opportunities.

This study is purely qualitative, and, as such, it has some limitations in terms of generalization.

The practical implication of this study is that the use of electronic payment methods, especially point of sales, enhances the business financial inclusion, which consequently maximizes their wealth and contributes to the reduction of poverty to the barest minimum in the society.

The social implication of the findings is that businesses that are financially included are in a better position to discharge religious, philanthropic and other benevolent activities, such as zakāh, qard hasan, waqf and sadaqah, for the welfare of the ummah.

The study points out the benefits of financial inclusion not only to businesses but also to other members of the society at large.

This study aims to examine the influence of Islam on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) in Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) with a focus on an analysis of narrative reporting.

Using content analysis, this study analyzes the narrative disclosures of corporate social responsibility of 21 IFIs operating in the Gulf region.

This study provides evidence of Islamic influence on the CSRD of IFIs. It finds that the largest part of CSRD produced by the IFIs is the disclosure of reports of the Shari'a Supervisory Board. IFIs also disclose other Islamic information (e.g. “Zakah” and charity donation, and free interest loan) and report on their compliance with Islam along with information of philanthropy, employees and community.

This study provides a valuable contribution to researchers and practitioners, as it extends the understanding of how the narrative disclosures on CSR were produced by IFIs and the influence of religion on CSRD.