Favouring the richer landowners

Pakistan’s Constitution opens with a solemn declaration: “Islam shall be the State religion, and no law shall be enacted repugnant to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran and Sunnah”. Article 227 makes this binding on every organ of the state. Article 31 obliges the state to “endeavour to secure the well-being of the people of Pakistan…by making effective provisions for the religious and moral improvement of the people”.

And yet, for decades in Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a levy that is explicitly ordained in Islam—Ushr, one-tenth (or one-twentieth on irrigated land) charge on agricultural produce—has been systematically ignored by the very state that claims to be created in the name of Islam. This is not a minor administrative lapse. It is a glaring, unasked question hitting at the heart of Pakistan’s political economy: Why does a compulsory religious levy fall only on paper, while the wealthiest, most powerful class in the country—absentee landowners— walks away scot-free?

The Zakat and Ushr Ordinance, 1980 established Ushr as a statutory obligation. It was not framed as a voluntary charity. It was a compulsory levy on agricultural produce, administered by the state, with designated collection machinery.

For a brief period, the federal government maintained a Zakat and Ushr Ministry. The intent was unambiguous: the state would collect what Islam commanded. Then came the Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010 [18th Amendment], signed on April 9, 2010, and brought into force on April 19, 2010. In one sweeping act of devolution, the subject of Zakat & Ushr was transferred to the provinces. The federal ministry was abolished. The provinces were now responsible for legislation, assessment, and collection.

What followed was not a new dawn of provincial accountability. It was institutional abandonment dressed up as federalism.

Sixteen Years of Silence

The record since 2010 is damning: Punjab, the country’s largest agricultural province, saw the rich landowners openly refusing to pay Ushr opting for waiver! A 2012 report noted that they argued they already paid agricultural income tax and that Ushr was a “religious obligation”, not a state tax. Rather than enforcing the law already in force, the provincial government sought refuge in fresh legislation to overcome an impasse of its own making. No significant collection was reported.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa took seven years — until 2017 — to frame its Ushr (Assessment and Collection) Rules. Until then, there was no operational framework at all. A 2013 report confirmed the province was still “planning to introduce Ushr”. Sindh and Balochistan have produced no publicly available collection figures whatsoever.

The Auditor General of Pakistan had already flagged, in its 2009-10 report, that Ushr was not being collected by provincial revenue departments across the country since 1990. The Eighteenth Amendment did not cure the problem; it merely buried it deeper within an already fragmented administrative structure.

There is no consolidated, province-wise table of Ushr collection in the public domain. That absence is itself the story: a state that claims to enforce divine law cannot produce a single credible receipt.

The Constitutional Contradiction

There is one pivotal question no one in Parliament, the Council of Islamic Ideology, or the Federal Shariat Court seems willing to ask loudly enough: If the Constitution mandates that all laws conform to the Quran and Sunnah, and if Ushr is a religious obligation, then how can the state’s failure to collect it be anything other than a constitutional violation?

Article 227 of the Constitution does not say “where convenient”. It does not exempt agricultural elites. It does not defer to provincial indifference. It says no law shall be repugnant to Islam. A legal framework that renders an Islamic levy uncollectable in practice is repugnant in effect, whatever its text says giving it an optional character.

The Federal Shariat Court has jurisdiction to examine laws for repugnancy to Islam. The Council of Islamic Ideology exists to advise on exactly this. Yet neither has moved decisively to compel enforcement. The silence is deafening—and revealing.

Who Benefits? The Absentee Rich Landowners

The answer to “why no question is raised” is not mysterious. It is class power. Pakistan’s agricultural economy is dominated by large landowners, many of them absentee, many of them sitting in provincial assemblies and the National Assembly. Ushr properly collected, would hit them hardest. A one-tenth levy on produce is not trivial. For a feudal master, having political power as well, with thousands of acres, it is a real cost.

These are the same elites who dominate provincial legislatures that would have to pass enforcement rules. They sit on standing committees on agriculture and religious affairs and the same people exercise outsized influence over revenue departments that would have to assess and collect. They are to frame the national narrative on “Islamic welfare” while personally evading a religious obligation.

When landowners argued in Punjab that Ushr was a “religious obligation” rather than a state tax, they were doing something politically sophisticated: privatizing a public duty into a private conscience, where it could be quietly ignored. The state accepted this framing. No enforcement followed.

The Zakat Contrast

The hypocrisy is sharpened by comparison. Zakat—also Islamic obligation — is deducted at source from bank accounts under the same 1980 Ordinance. It is collected by Centre and disbursed/distributed among provinces. Whatever its flaws, the state enforces it because it is administratively easy and hits urban savers, not rural rich landowners — who even otherwise opt out of it declaring that it is not payable according to their faith and fiqh.

Ushr, which hits the landed class, has been left to rot. The state did not lack the machinery in 1980. It lacked the will to use it against the powerful. Devolution in 2010 provided the perfect cover: responsibility was shifted to provinces that had neither the rules nor the inclination to act.

The Questions That Must Be Asked

1. To the Federal Shariat Court: Is non-collection of Sharia-based levy not itself a matter of repugnancy in effect? Why has no suo motu notice been taken?

2. To the Council of Islamic Ideology: You advise on Islamic conformity. Where is your report on sixteen years of Ushr evasion?

3. To provincial assemblies: You pass resolutions on Islamic symbolism. Why have you not passed enforceable Ushr rules — and why has Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan produced no credible collection data?

4. To the Auditor General: Why has the 2009-10 finding of non-collection since 1990 not been followed by a single public enforcement audit?

5. To the landowning legislators: You invoke Islam in every chamber. Where is your Ushr?

Conclusion: An Islamic Republic in Name

A state that cannot collect a levy explicitly commanded under Sharia, from the class that can most afford it, while claiming constitutional fidelity to Islam, has exposed the gap between symbolic Islam and substantive Islam. The 18th Amendment did not create this problem. It concealed it. Devolution without enforcement is abandonment. Provincial autonomy without accountability is impunity.

Ushr is compulsory in Islam. It is voluntary in practice in an Islamic Republic. And the reason is not legal ambiguity—it is raw and crude class interest, protected by a political system that raises questions about Islamic conformity only when it is convenient and inexpensive, and falls silent when it is troubling and costly. The absentee landed class pays neither Ushr (Islamic levy) nor agricultural income tax (Anglo-Saxon tax)—only the Constitution and the poor masses pay the price.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026