Purpose Zakat during the COVID-19 outbreak has played a vital role and has been significantly discussed in the virtual environment. Such information about zakat in the virtual world creates unstructured data, which contains important information and knowledge. This paper aims to discover knowledge related to zakat administration during the pandemic from the information in a virtual environment. Furthermore, the discussion is contextualised to the socio-economic debates. Design/methodology/approach This is a qualitative study operated via text mining to discover knowledge of zakat administration during the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Board of Zakat Republic of Indonesia (BAZNAS RI) is selected for a single case study. This paper samples BAZNAS RI’s situation report on COVID-19 from its virtual website. The data consists of 40 digital pages containing 19,812 characters, 3,004 words and 3,003 white spaces. The text mining analytical steps are performed via RStudio. The following R packages, networkD3, igraph, ggraph and ggplot2 are used to run the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for topic modelling. Findings The machine learning analysis via RStudio results in the 16 topics associated with the 3 primary topics (i.e. Education, Sadaqah and Health Services). The topic modelling discovers knowledge about BAZNAS RI’s assistance for COVID-19 relief, which may help the readers understand zakat administration in times of the pandemic from BAZNAS RI’s virtual website. This finding may draw the theory of socio-economic zakat, which explains that zakat as a religious obligation plays a critical role in shaping a Muslim community's social and economic processes, notably during the unprecedented times of COVID-19. Research limitations/implications This study uses data from a single zakat institution. Thus, the generalisation of the finding is limited to the sampled institution. Practical implications This research is both theoretically and practically important for academics and industry professionals. This paper contributes to the novelty in performing text mining via R in gaining knowledge about the recent zakat administration from a virtual website. The finding of this study (i.e. the topic modelling) is practically essential for zakat stakeholders to understand the contribution of zakat in managing the COVID-19 impacts. Social implications This work derives a theory of “socio-economic zakat” that explains the importance of a zakat institution in activating zakat for managing socio-economic issues during the pandemic. Thus, paying zakat to an authorised institution may actualise more maslahah (public interest) compared to paying it directly to the asnaf (zakat beneficiaries) without any measurement Originality/value This study is among the pioneers in gaining knowledge from Indonesia’s zakat management during the COVID-19 outbreak via text mining. The authors’ way of analysing data from the virtual website using RStudio can advance Islamic economics literature.

Asian journal of Accounting and governance 3: 71-83 (2012) issn melokalisasikan urus tadbir Pengagihan Zakat:Peranan institusi masjid di malaysia

This study conveys the importance of the skills element in wakalah contract of zakat distribution practiced in Malaysia to ensure the sustainability of continuous zakat distribution. Skillful representatives will manifest good wakalah and simultaneously increase the quality of zakat distribution. This study employed qualitative methodology which was a semi-structured interview method with the Pelaburan Hartanah Berhad (PHB) Company. The skills element becoming the factor for PHB chosen as a research sample is from the entrepreneurial aspect. PHB distributes zakat in a productive form which is in work capital provision. This can facilitate sustainable economic agenda from the aspect of withdrawing asnaf from poverty and ensuring the zakat payment cycle to continue. The informant of interview is a zakat committee member of PHB directly managing the implementation of wakalah in zakat distribution. The results of the study indicated that the wakalah executed by PHB poses several positive impacts such as wider locality of distribution, positive effect from aspect of communal perception on zakat distribution, and positive impact towards the representatives, which is PHB itself. This study imparts several potential suggestions to improve wakalah system of zakat distribution. This study faced several constraints such as research sample and limited types of zakat wakalah. Future studies are suggested to involve more research samples and investigate wakalah from various types of zakat payment.

No abstract

Kajian perbandingan pengukuran kecekapan pengurusan kewangan institusi Majlis Agama Islam Negeri (MAIN) denganprestasi agihan kewangan dan bukan kewangan di antara institusi zakat boleh membuka ruang untuk meningkatkan mutu agihan institusi zakat. Pengurusan kewangan sesebuah organisasi adalah penting untuk memastikan institusi tersebut dapat mencapai matlamat yang telah ditentukan. Hal ini kerana masih wujud tanggapan negatif ketidakcekapan agihan institusi zakat dan ia merupakan antara salah satu punca yang telah menjejaskan tahap keyakinan masyarakat Islam untuk menjalankan kewajipan membayar zakat kepada institusi zakat. Ketidakcekapan agihan tersebut boleh dilihat melalui lebihan zakat yang tidak diagihkan dan kegagalan institusi zakat mengagihkan zakat kepada kelapan-lapan golongan asnaf dan tidak mengikut keutamaan asnaf. Persoalannya adakah wujud hubungan antara prestasi pengurusan kewangan dan prestasi pengagihan zakat. Kajian telah mengkategorikan prestasi pengurusan kewangan kepada tiga (3) bahagian iaitu kecairan, kesolvenan dan keuntungan; manakala aspek prestasi kecekapan agihan institusi zakat pula terbahagi kepada dua (2) bahagian iaitu kecekapan agihan berbentuk kewangan (lebihan zakat tahunan) dan bukan kewangan (keutamaan asnaf). Kajian ini juga mengkaji corak agihan zakat kepada setiap asnaf sebagai satu tambahan pengukuran prestasi agihan zakat. Data sekunder terdiri daripada laporan tahunan MAIN telah dianalisis