In the past few decades, in Indonesia as well as elsewhere in the Muslim world, the practice of zakat has been repositioned from an annual, obligatory ritual of worship to a fundamental instrument for achieving socio-economic justice. This article explores key discourses relating to this reconceptualisation and the alternatives to both capitalist accumulation and socialist utopia they point towards. It also seeks to problematise the very grounds this repositioning has been conducted on, arguing that the recent conception of zakat as philanthropic giving sidelines and downplays other, alternative understandings of it as a right. It argues that this reconceptualisation ultimately rests on a political perspective which privileges the transcendental character of obligations and supports zakat payers at the expense of the immanent presence of others to whom zakat is owed as a due.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 52 citations exist upstream.