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Categorising Salary As Produce
So I have been researching for many past couple of days and have posted twice on this forum too but have never gotten a satisfactory or convincing response. The thing that is troubling me is that I have always been amazed by Ghamidi Sb’s reasoning and critical work whenever he explains a fiqh issue or elaborates on rulings of the Quran and Sunnah and so have been following his work for a long time. But this opinion on salary being a form of produce just doesn’t sound right to me being an economics major, and having researched the law and rulings of Zakat and the majority opinions and Ijtihadi work of most contemporary scholars. Literally no-one has ever correlated the 1/10 or 1/20 on agricultural harvest to salary. The thing is I have watched many videos where Ghamidi Sb discusses his Ijtihad but the most I have gotten is that “Agar aap ghor karein to salaries or incomes bhi production ki qisam hain” but no matter how much I deliberate on this it just doesn’t make sense and I cannot find a detailed reasoning on this from him anywhere. Then I also read his section on Zakat in the comprehensive translation of Meezan by Dr. Shahzad Saleem and that also didn’t give any detailed reasoning for applying the same ruling of agricultural harvest on salary or wages? There too it was just plainly stated that it is a form of produce with no convincing reasoning. I’ll once again mention my contentions if someone can answer them:
1) Salaries or wages have certainly never been a new concept and has always been present in every economy in history but still we do not find the basis for this Ijtihad anywhere. No one ever applied the rulings of harvest on it, and it is essentially the same concept of getting compensation for a service and certainly not analogous to owning land, investing capital and labor and then producing crop or agricultural product. There has always been goods and services in economies throughout history and even if we agree that agriculture was the only form of production of goods in that era but it is not now (and certainly could be applied from the manufacturing to the IT industry) I still can’t see how we can apply it to wages in current times. If anything, it would be akin to the compensation of the labourers on that farm and not the owner of the harvest/produce.
2) If Ijtihad has indeed been done to equate gold and silver to the modern day paper currency then this still isn’t a convincing argument to equate production with wages (which I think I read in an answer by a moderator on this forum). Currency in that era was gold or silver, now it’s paper currency backed by the state with gold reserves (not exactly in modern day times due to the dollar peg and stuff but the concept of banking was issuing of paper documents after having deposited your gold that could be used to buy & sell and hence where the gold standard came from in modern economies) so yes this ijtihad does make perfect sense (so to summarize paper currency obviously falls into the same category as gold and silver but agricultural harvest and/or cattle doesn’t for which different rates have been assigned in Shariah). And this in turn would build a better case for the wages to have the same Zakat of 2.5 percent on gold and silver, as paper currency is literally the gold and silver of today’s era (and certainly not agricultural harvest), and as has been done my majority of scholars. So even if production is to be extended further than agriculture in modern times, it would be extended to other forms of production of tangible or consumable goods of any form (again from the retail/manufacturing to the IT industry as products can be vastly defined) but it certainly can’t be applied to the wages of workers who are paid in simple currency.
3) Lastly, it is evident what an unfair burden this places on the salaried people who, in the majority cases around the world, can’t make vast amount of savings and spend most or all of what they earn, if they are required to just deduct the 10 percent every time they get a paycheque. So indeed, if they are able to save more than the Nisab annually, then normal Zakat would apply and that is what makes sense.
So I would just conclude by saying I love Ghamidi Sahab and he has been a blessing for me in my religious journey (and why I’m having a hard time digesting my disagreement because to me he can never be wrong xD) but please could you provide a detailed response to the specific points I raised (and not the response that taxes can be deducted) as I’m primarily looking for a more comprehensive and logical reasoning to categorise wages paid for services in simple currency as production in light of all the points I raised. And if it is our skill or labor that is producing our compensation hence it is production then I would go to point 1 again as this is not a new concept (If im not wrong even the caliphs were paid a share of the bait ul maal for their expenditures because they were busy in running the state’s affairs and the public servants or Zakat administrators were paid for their skill and labor too but the ushr certainly didn’t apply to them. TIA JazakAllah
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Categorising Salary As Produce
updated 1 week, 4 days ago
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@UmerQureshi @faisalharoon could you please go through my post and shed some light?
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To understand the viewpoint of Ghamidi Sahab in detail, please refer to the videos provided in the following two threads:
The above videos cover all the points, including the wages/salaries at the time of Prophet Muhammad (sws). You can post a follow-up after watching these videos (if some of them you haven’t watched already).
ask.ghamidi.org
Zakat On Produce Other Than Agriculture At The Time Of Prophet Muhammad (Sws) - Ask Ghamidi
My first question is regarding zakat on salary. Working for someone and getting paid has been a norm. Dont we find any cases in the arab period of people
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