Zakat and Fasting in the Maliki School

The Maliki school's treatment of zakah and sawm demonstrates its characteristic blend of textual fidelity, attention to Madinan practice, and practical orientation. Several Maliki positions on these topics are distinctive and important for students comparing the four schools.

On zakah, the Maliki school covers the same five categories as the other schools, with some important distinctions. For agricultural produce, the Maliki school applies zakah broadly to all crops and fruits that are intentionally cultivated and harvested for food or sale, and that can be dried and stored. This includes wheat, barley, dates, raisins, olives (through their oil), and other major staple crops of the Maliki regions (North Africa and West Africa). Vegetables are generally exempt. The rate is ten percent for rain-watered crops and five percent for irrigated crops — consistent with the prophetic hadith.

A distinctive Maliki ruling is on the nisab for agricultural produce: the school follows the hadith of five awsuq (approximately 653 kilograms), applying this as a minimum weight threshold below which no zakah is due. The assessment is made at the time of harvest, not at the end of a lunar year — meaning agricultural zakah has no hawl requirement, unlike monetary zakah.

On the distribution of zakah, the Maliki school holds that it is permissible — and often preferable — to give all the zakah to a single category of recipients, particularly the poor and needy. The school does not require distribution among all eight categories as in the Shafi'i school. The preference is for giving zakah locally, within the community where the wealth was generated, following the practice documented in Imam Malik's time.

For the fast of Ramadan, the Maliki school holds that the intention may be made during the day of Ramadan if a person forgot to make it the night before — specifically for the obligatory Ramadan fast, not for voluntary fasts or make-up fasts. This is a distinctively permissive Maliki position (other schools generally require the nighttime intention for the obligatory Ramadan fast) based on Imam Malik's understanding of the Quranic command to fast Ramadan as an ongoing obligation that does not depend on a nightly renewed intention.

The Maliki school's list of fast-breaking acts focuses primarily on intentional entry of anything into the body cavity (stomach, intestines) and sexual intercourse. The school is somewhat more lenient than the Shafi'i school in defining what constitutes 'reaching the body cavity' — for instance, water entering the nose involuntarily during wudu does not break the fast according to the Maliki school, while the Shafi'i school treats this with more caution.

On the expiation for breaking the Ramadan fast through sexual intercourse, the Maliki school follows the standard kaffarah (freeing a slave, sixty-day fast, or feeding sixty poor people) and holds that this kaffarah applies to both the husband and wife if both were willing participants — a position that differs from some other schools which assign the kaffarah only to the husband.

The Maliki school places particular emphasis on the spiritual dimension of fasting — the Prophet's saying 'Many a faster gains nothing from his fast except hunger and thirst' (Ahmad, Ibn Majah) — and Maliki scholars have written extensively on the inner dimensions of the fast: controlling the tongue, the eyes, and all limbs during the month of Ramadan as an expression of the fast's true purpose.