12th Economics & Finance Conference, Dubrovnik

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN MUSLIM RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

WAN ZURIATI WAN ZAKARIA, NORAZLINA ILIAS, NORLIDAWAHI WAHAB WAHAB, WAN ZALANI@ZANANI WAN ABDULLAH WAN ABDULLAH

Abstract:

Each religion has its own organization to manage all the religion-related matters relating to their community. For Muslim community, mosque or known as “Masjid” in Arabic, is a worship place for performing prayers and any other activities. In carrying out any activities, mosques commonly receive funding from public donations, fundraising, waqaf, government and many more. Managing fund of the mosque is a major trust that should be carried out with the utmost to safeguard the organization's financial resources. Therefore, it is important for each mosque to adopt sound financial management practices in managing the fund in effective and efficient way. Data was collected by questionnaire survey, involving 23 respondents from 14 mosques in order to explore current financial management practices adopted by mosque in the district of Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia. From the descriptive analysis, the result surprisingly shows that 79% of the mosques still using manual system in managing their fund instead of computer-based accounting system. It seems that a customized accounting system should be developed to meet the nature of the organization in order to facilitate the fund management process. With the system, the organization will be able to plan and control all the available resources in a good way.

Keywords: financial management practice, mosque, religious organizations

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