Attitude towards Cash Waqf Contribution among Malaysians

Abstract

This research paper aimed to investigate Malaysians' attitudes towards cash waqf contributions. This paper employed structured questionnaires for all Malaysians, regardless of their gender, age, marital status, racial background, and study field, to reinforce the scant previous literature in this area of research. The questionnaires were developed and adapted based on Ahmad Tarusan (2020) and digitally circulated using convenience sampling techniques. The sample consisted of 107 Malaysians, and the findings indicated that most of the respondents were unmarried Malay women majoring in Islamic Studies and under 30 years old. Mann-Whitney U showed that single Malay men under 30 years old who majored in Islamic studies had a favorable attitude toward cash waqf. However, the p-value is more than the significance level. Therefore, this study concluded that the attitude towards cash waqf could not be generalized to the population of Malaysia. This study attempted to capture all Malaysians, particularly Indigenous People, Chinese and Indian in Malaysia, about their cash waqf attitude. Unfortunately, this study cannot capture the interest of non-Malays in answering these survey questions. While most Indigenous People in Malaysia were categorized as the waqf beneficiaries, Malaysian Chinese and Indians may think that cash waqf is solely for the Islamic agenda. Non-Malays may be more attracted to Islamic corporate finance, offering more economic returns. There is ample scope to attract the non-Malays for cash waqf by converging it into Islamic investment instruments. Offering an attractive tax incentive is another way to attract non-Malays to contribute cash waqf. The lack of study in this area of research has often been overshadowed by research on the attitude of cash waqf contribution among Muslims only. It may have led to an absence of proper strategies linking cash waqf to the Islamic financial instruments to attract non-Malays' cash waqf contributors.