Agricultural Zakat

The word Zakat is the root word from Zaka meaning blessings, prosper and good. As far as the ‘Shara’ term is concerned, Ibn Qudamah defines Zakat as‚ ‘An amount of asset made obligatory by Almighty Allah and granted to the rightful people’. Meanwhile, the definition of Zakat by Imam Nawawi is‚ ‘A term used to describe taking something specific from an asset from specific persons and to be given to specific persons’. Some fuqaha (Islamic scholars) look at it in terms of the aim of performing the Zakat‚ ‘To add the good deeds and purify assets of wealth and the souls of the people doing the Zakat’ as dictated by Almighty Allah in Surah Taubah verse 103 and serves as the authority of Zakat according to the pronounced order of ‘Take it’ which means ‘an obligation’: ‘Take (O, Muhammad) from their wealth a charity (Zakat), by which you purify them (from sins) and also purify them (from poor morality)’. Agriculture is one of the assets of which Zakat is to be made compulsory in Islam and it serves as a wealth distribution mechanism collected from excess wealth in the Islamic economic system. Agricultural Zakat is defined as multiple definitions based on the principle of a given sect. The sect of Hanafiyyah is popular for the utterance of ‘Usyr’ whereas the sects of Shafi’e and Maliki are better known with the term ‘al-Zuru wa al- Thimar’, and there are also other terms used by the fuqaha such as the term of ‘al-Mu’asshirat’ or ‘al-Nabat’. There is a certain trait that distinguishes the agricultural Zakat with other types of asset Zakat comprising of gold and silver, mineral, trading and livestock whereby the former is only imposed on the yield, while Zakat on other assets is imposed on both the outcome and the capital. The agricultural Zakat is only imposed post-harvesting and it is not confined to haul (certain period of time).

Agriculture is one of the assets of which Zakat is to be made compulsory in Islam and it serves as a wealth distribution mechanism collected from excess wealth in the Islamic economic system.

The obligation to do agricultural Zakat had been implemented during the Mecca era. The evidence is based on the dictation of Almighty Allah in the Quran from Surah al-Baqarah verse 267: ‘O you who have believed! Spend from the good things which you have earned, and from that which we have produced from you from the earth. And do not aim toward the defective there from; spending (from that) while you would not take it (yourself) except with closed eyes’. Almighty Allah in the Surah al-An’am (6:141) ‘And give its due (Zakat) on the day of its harvest’ and the valid Hadith which makes it obligatory to pay as much as 10% or 5%?, are they really ‘opposing’ or are they forming a relationship between mujmal (the concise injunction) and mufassal (the detailed injunctions) or mubham (the chain in which there is an obscure narrator) and mufassar (explained)?. Ibn Kathir neutralized the dispute concerning this nasakh by stating that the issue of nasakh is only logical, because, fundamentally speaking, returning the rights of others is obligatory. As for the evidence from Al-Sunnah, there is a compilation of more detailed Hadiths as compared to the generalization of the text of al-Quran above which leads to different interpretations and opinions among the Ulama and Mufassireen. However, most Hadiths do well specifically into irrigation related rates imposed on the farmers as had been narrated by Ibn Umar on the dictation of Rasulullah (SAW): ‘As sprayed by the sky or the springs or container ten percent, and sprayed by energy five percent’ (al-Bukhari, 1993, Hadith 1483). From Jabir, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) dictates: ‘Watered by the river or rain the Zakat is ten percent, while watered by irrigation five percent’ (Muslim, 2006, Hadith 981). At the third stage of evidencing namely ‘Ijma’ (consensus of Islamic scholars), Ulama had collectively agreed about the obligation of Zakat with the rates of 10% or 5% from the overall yield of agriculture.