Islamic Ethical Wealth and Its Strategic Solutions to ‘Zero Hunger’ Scheme

The menace of hunger has become a global concern as number of people going hungry in the world increases for various reasons including climate, epidemic, conflicts and economic downturn. The advent of zero hunger scheme through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 specifically represents purposive efforts to pursue a global agenda to address this menace. From Islamic perspective, the goal coincides with a basic tenet and objective of Shariah for societal welfare to be pursued using Islamic ethical wealth and its solution against this contemporary socio-economic issue. As a library-based study, this chapter adopts a qualitative method whereby provisions of primary sources of Shariah are explored vis-à-vis their application towards pursuing, keeping up and sustaining zero hunger initiative. In the same line, content analysis of relevant secondary data from published works was made while exploring pertinent issues and presenting discussions thereon. It is discovered that hunger is a societal and developmental issue in the contemporary world against which a cooperation among national governments is led by the UN to tackle its scourge on affected world population. In Islam, such a cooperation is considered a collective responsibility of public authorities and of rich individuals through Shariah rules governing ethical wealth including charitable and religious obligation of zakat, sadaqat philanthropy and waqf endowments as well as agriculture-oriented Islamic financing technics which provide avenues to pursue and promote zero hunger initiative. Islamic wealth altogether provides cheap and sustainable mechanism that supports and promotes zero hunger. Accordingly, recommendations were offered for the deployment of Islamic ethical wealth management/operation alongside suitable regulation and governance that propel Shariah complaint sustainable zero hunger activities.