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Despite the establishment of the Zakat, its role has been argued by the new Muslim (Muallaf) community. This research attempts to examine the role played by the Zakat institution in Selangor in distributing funds and supporting Muallaf.

A qualitative approach through a series of interview sessions with management of the Zakat institution was carried out.

The results show that the department has supported Muallaf, particularly in terms of education, finance and monitoring the Muallaf through various programmes starting from the first day they convert to Islam.

This chapter has its limitations in terms of the data collection from the Islamic religious centre. Future research should collect information from all rightful recipients, particularly the Muallaf community in order to measure the efficiency of the institution of Zakat. Future studies are important to understand how efficient the Islamic institution plays its role in managing and ensuring social economic justice among the other Muslim community.

This chapter indicates that the management of the Zakat institution should provide more systematic guidelines in managing Zakat fund for the efficient promotion, collection and distribution. Managing the institution of Zakat efficiently and effectively will help to enhance the image of religion, particularly Islam.

This chapter confirms that the Islamic Religious Department of Selangor has managed to successfully administer the Zakat fund. On top of that, the department has organized several programmes for Muallaf in order to support them to be a new Muslim in a majority Muslim country.

This chapter also clarifies the issues raised by the Muallaf community concerning the unfair treatment in distributing the Zakat fund and supporting them. This chapter contributes towards an understanding of the Zakat institution with regards to its concepts, role, issues and challenges.

‘Stans’ is an ancient Persian word meaning land, country or nation. This chapter begins with a review of the historical basis of zakat management in Islamic practice and provides a brief historical account and status of zakat practices in select countries in Central Asia. The section thereafter focuses on benchmark international zakat management models before providing recommendations for the development of an effective zakat management model within Central Asia. The economic shocks resulting from the pandemic have forced many in the region into situational poverty. If left unchecked, this may easily regress into chronic poverty, undoing the significant growth that these countries have experienced over the last decade. Existing social programmes have limited the impact of economic loss. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they have an opportunity to revive this history and once again empower their nations with Islamic social finance instruments. Effective zakat management models in Indonesia and Kuwait, for example, provide different dimensions to social impact. The Indonesian model of BAZNAS provides the most comprehensive methodology for governance, risk management and replication. BAZNAS′ strategy for digitalization and collaboration suggests a strong model for development within Central Asia. Through an effective zakat model, it is expected that Central Asian nations will be better protected against economic disruptions and provide a safety net for vulnerable communities in the region. These conclusions and recommendations in this chapter are limited to the information available in the literature. Further study is required through primary research to understand better what the challenges are in zakat modelling. Locals may also be surveyed to determine their levels of zakat knowledge and their concerns for institutional zakat collection and disbursement.

This chapter explores the impact of the pandemic on Islamic commercial finance and Islamic social finance in a comprehensive manner. The chapter reveals that COVID-19 has provided more opportunities to Islamic social finance than Islamic commercial finance. The beauty of Islamic finance in this regard is reflected as the perception that Islamic finance does not achieve its objective as being a social finance is proved to be false as Islamic finance not only promotes profit maximization, but it has also the potential to achieve social objectives. Islamic commercial finance developments could be slower, but it is anticipated that Islamic social modes of financing will be used widely even by multilateral agencies to assist the communities who need help in this pandemic. The most important lesson one could learn from this pandemic in relation to Islamic finance is that Islamic finance is truly different from conventional finance and as such, it needs a unique legal, regulatory and governance framework to display the true potential of it.

This study examines the volatility of inflation in Indonesia before and during COVID-19, focusing on people’s purchasing power. The high inflation variability makes future price expectations uncertain, creating risks in the long run and uncertainty in wealth redistribution. The ARIMA model was used from January 2005 to June 2020. The results show that the ARMA (0.1) model is suitable for testing inflation volatility in Indonesia. Forecasting results show that inflation for the next six months will still be under pressure due to COVID-19.

COVID-19 pandemic has impacted global human lives, killing millions and attacking the real economy to its core. United Nations has called for global solidarity to overcome this unprecedented disaster. Having said that, zakat has been utilized to respond to this ongoing suffering in Muslim countries. This chapter explore zakat utilization for COVID-19 under the shariah perspective and discuss the role of zakat to respond to the pandemic in Muslim countries. A qualitative methodology including conceptual and content analysis is applied to conduct this study. The findings show that most sharia scholars agreed to utilize zakat for the COVID-19 pandemic and endorse advance zakat payment. Moreover, zakat has been disbursed mainly to fulfil basic needs, support emergency health services, sustain education activities, recover economic impact and maintain dakwah programme. The global zakat institutions have also started up the international initiative to respond to this pandemic. This study contributes to the academia on showing how zakat is a conceivable and reliable instrument to give immediate response to this pandemic in Muslim countries. The best practices found in this study are worthy for zakat institutions to continue their programme under this pandemic and be resilient for the next global scale of disasters.

Zakat is an effective Islamic social financial tool that could be used to eliminate global poverty. The pandemic has turned back the world's poverty clock and as such, more work is required to bring equitable and shared prosperity to the world. International organizations that serve humanity could be used as intermediaries of zakat to reach out to those categories of legal recipients of zakat who are most deserved of such assistance, but who are unidentified and unreachable by the zakat organizations. This is with the ultimate objective of enhancing the effectivity of zakat as a social finance tool. However, using international organizations as zakat intermediaries is not a straightforward issue and limited literature are available on the matter to understand the contemporary practice and challenges in this regard. As such, using a qualitative research approach, this chapter sheds light on the issues revolving around the internationalization of zakat by looking at the existing practice of it by identifying the challenges in doing so. This chapter proposes a way to resolve the existing issues in internationalization of zakat by leveraging on blockchain technology where a proposition is made to introduce a crypto zakat platform. This chapter also reveals that in contemporary times, there are three ways in which international organizations have been involved as zakat intermediaries: by creating a zakat fund for specific purpose; by receiving zakat money to be distributed to transform the societies in countries other than where the zakat was collected; and by creating partnership with zakat organizations to use zakat money in the respective country in which zakat was collected. It is anticipated that soon the stakeholders of zakat would join hands with international organizations to effectively manage zakat to alleviate poverty in the world exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to find out the attributes that belong to the Kano category, which should be applied in the service quality of Baitul Mal Kota Lhokseumawe. In its service Baitul Mal must be prosecuted to prioritize satisfaction of mustahiq, so that the progress will be in the quality of service and able to improve the mustahiq economy and also give a positive impact on the survival of Baitul Mal.

Design/Methodology/Approach – This method is used in order to know the attributes that should be upgraded in accordance with the wishes of mustahiq. Finding the result shows that these methods allow us to know the priority attributes that must be improved its performance by the Baitul Mal. It is the Amil of Baitul Mal Kota Lhokseumawe act based on Islamic morality. Amil Baitul Mal Kota Lhokseumawe solve the mustahiq problem related to Zakat program on time. Baitul Mal Kota Lhokseumawe always serve mustahiq effectively. Amil Baitul Mal Kota Lhokseumawe has knowledge about Zakat and the Zakat given by Baitul Mal can improve the prosperity of mustahiq, and Amil Baitul Mal Kota Lhokseumawe does not distinguish between mustahiq one and others.

Research Limitations/Implication – Baitul Mal is a social institution, which is engaged in the charity of Zakat fund raising for the sake of socially patterned and sustainable economy.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to study the concept of infaq in Islam, investigate its practice in Malaysia, analyse its role in public universities (PUs), investigate the issues and constraints of infaq for financing of higher education in Malaysia and suggest recommendations for improvement.

Methodology/approach – This study used a qualitative methodology and was conducted to obtain information on the practice of infaq in financing tertiary-level education in Malaysia, to learn about the recommended practice of infaq in Islam, to analyse its implementation and to explore the constraints faced in the financing of higher education in Malaysia.

Findings – This study indicated that the practice of infaq helps to ease the burden of rising fees and the cost of living for university students.

Research limitations/implications – The study only focused on the role of infaq in financing higher education in Malaysia. The sample for this study involved four PUs in the Klang Valley.

Originality/value – This study provides new contributions to the field of education infaq in Malaysia.