The Students' Awareness Towards Zakat Role Among University Students In Selangor, Malaysia

Abstract

Higher education is one of the important assets in developing a country. In enabling the citizens the opportunity to continue study in tertiary education, the government and private sectors have jointly contributed to the financial assistance in funding the students to pursue their education. Furthermore, most Malaysian higher education institutions have a dedicated department that is responsible for the collection and distribution of zakat. However, many students are still unaware of the zakat unit function. This study will examine the contribution of the zakat distribution by the zakat unit among the students in a university in Selangor, Malaysia. A set of questionnaires has been distributed to 201 respondents by using Google Form. Then, responses of the questionnaire are analysed descriptively by using IBM SPSS Statistics software. The finding shows that 92.5 percent of students are aware of the presence of Zakat Unit activities, where they can seek assistance if needed. Moreover, students are mostly happy with the aids they received from the zakat fund. In terms of student perceptions towards zakat distribution, 90.1 percent felt that the university Zakat Unit had done a good job in fulfilling its responsibilities of assisting needy students. The role of zakat in redistributing the Islamic wealth can be seen among the major contributors in ensuring the students to continue their study without any hindrance. Hence, it is assumed that the role of zakat management should further improve mainly on zakat collection to expand their role in helping more students to complete their higher education.