Altruism, Religiosity and Happiness among Zakat Payers

in Surabaya, Indonesia

Dwi Hidayatul Firdaus

, Aji Purba Trapsila

, and Ramadhita

Fakultas Syariah, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim, Jl. Gajayana No. 50, Malang, Indonesia

Fakultas Ekonomi dan Bisnis, Universitas Brawijaya Malang, Jl. Veteran, Malang, Indonesia

Keywords: zakat, altruism, religiosity, happiness, smart PLS SEM

Abstract: This research aimed to study the relationship of altruistic behaviour, religiosity, and happiness

among zakat payer in Surabaya, the theoretical framework of this study based on QS At-Taubah

103. This research was a survey, cross sectional and correlational study. Hence, a total of 100

Surabaya residence were selected through accidental sampling. The respondent filled out the

research tools including altruism, religiosity questionnaires and Oxford happiness questionnaire.

The obtained data were analyzed using Smart PLS SEM. Results showed a significant

relationship between happiness, altruistic behaviour, and religiosity where the statistc shows

(P<0.05) and T above 1.96. Altruistic behaviour, and the level of religiosity can boost happiness

among the zakat payers in Surabaya.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Qur'an describes human desire at three levels,

first, nafs al-amarah: human lust that has not been

controlled. According Al-Qur’an surah Yusuf verse

53. Second nafs al-lawwamah: a desire that try to be

controlled according to God's command. According

Al-Quran surah Al-Qiyamah verse 1-2. Ali ibn Abu

Talhah has narrated from Ibn Abbas regarding Al-

lawamah, that the meaning in question is a

disgraceful soul. Third nafs al-muthmainah a human

spirit that has been controlled according to God's

command. According Al-Quran surah Al-Fajr verse

27-30. Muntasir Alwi argues about this verse that

nafs al-muthmainnah is the soul that can make the

activities of qolb (heart) safe and submissive, his

reasoning activities are able to defeat his lust hence

he becomes a holy soul, additionally. Hamka in his

interpretation argues that this soul has two wings.

The first wing is gratitude when you get wealth, not

to beat your chest. And patience when sustenance is

just a matter of eating, not complaining, thus the

estuary of nafs al-muthmainnah is happiness in the

world and the hereafter.

Ibn Qoyim in Athib al-Qolb defines happiness

to be blissed and have a peaceful soul, because the

heart is healthy and properly functioning, meaning

that the heart can relate to God the owner of the

heart, while al-Ghazaly divides happiness into two

meanings intrinsic and figurative meaning, intrinsic

meaning related to the afterlife and the meaning of

figurative are related to the life in the mortal world,

thus Al-Ghazaly views the happiness of wealth as

not inherent in it but attached to its benefits. That is

why the prophet said "The best treasure is the wealth

that is in a good man (righteous)" HR. Ibn Hibban.

From the descriptions above, it can be

concluded that in order to reach happiness of the

world and the hereafter or the soul that is

muthahnah, humans are not only required to

improve relations with God (bablum minallah) but

also by improving relations with other humans

(hablum minannas). Hablum minallah in Ibn

Kathir's commentary is perceived as carrying out the

rights of Allah, namely realizing it and carrying out

its Shari'a, so that the meaning of this hablum can

mean that every aspect of religion that is lived by

individuals or in other languages is known as

religiosity (El-Menouar, 2014), while hablum

minannas can be realized with good character

towards fellow human beings or in sociology known

as altruism, the word altruism in the big dictionary

of Indonesian language means understanding

(nature) likes to pay attention and prioritize the

interests of others. Thus the principle of religiosity

1204

Firdaus, D., Trapsila, A. and Ramadhita, .

Altruism, Religiosity and Happiness among Zakat Payers in Surabaya, Indonesia.

DOI: 10.5220/0009924912041209

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations (ICRI 2018), pages 1204-1209

ISBN: 978-989-758-458-9

and altruism can be an individual intermediary in

reaching happiness in the world and the hereafter.

Research related to this concept has developed

since the last two decades (Blanchflower, 2008)

states that even economic success is no longer

merely measured by economic growth (Easterlin,

2005), (Easterlin and Plagnol, 2008), (Easterlin and

Sawangfa, 2010), (Easterlin et al., 2012) calls it

Gross National Happiness, Ben Beachy calls it

National Indicators for a New Era.

Historically, economists have stated that welfare

is a simple function of income. However, subsequent

research found that when the level of opinion

reaches the subsistence level, its ability as a welfare

generator decreases. Here is the happiness index

with the GDP of 2016 (Layard and Sachs, 2016).

Figure: 1 Correlation between GDP and Happiness

(Layard and Sachs, 2016)

It can be seen form the picture that happiness is

not always in tandem with the amount of income,

this is in line with Kahneman's finding that high

income does not necessarily make a person happy

(Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). On the other hand,

Allah guarantees peace of mind for those who do

good to their fellow human beings according Al-

Quran surah At-Taubah verse 103. In 1972, Isen and

Levin experimented with whether charity can

increase happiness, this study shows that people feel

happy after helping others.

Indonesia is a country with the largest Muslim

population in the world about 12.7% of the world's

population, the largest Muslim population is

concentrated on the island of Jawa (Indrawan, 2015).

However, in the 2016 World Happiness Report

Indonesia ranked 79

out of 157 countries and even

in the BPS report Java was not included in the 10

provinces with the highest level of happiness in

Indonesia.

On the basis of the above facts, this study will

analyze altruism, religiosity on the happiness of

Surabaya zakat payer study, Surabaya was chosen as

a research location because it is considered to

represent East Java as a miniature of Java because

the population is most widely known as a good

religious’ culture.

2 METHOD

This research was a survey, cross sectional and

correlational study. Hence, a total of 100 Surabaya

residence were selected through accidental

sampling. The respondent filled out the research

tools including altruism, religiosity questionnaires

and Oxford happiness questionnaire. The obtained

data were analyzed using Smart Partial Least Square

(PLS), where PLS itself is part of Structural

Equation Model (SEM) based on Variance Based

SEM. Even both can be categorized as SEM, PLS

and CBSEM have clear differences. The main thing

that distinguishes between PLS and CBSEM is the

purpose of using the method. The purpose of using

PLS is to predict. This prediction that publishes is a

prediction of the relationship between constructs.

Unlike PLS that do predictions, the use of CBSEM

is more recommended as a method to confirm the

theory.

3 FINDING AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Happiness in Any Context

Happiness in Islam is attributed to the word as-

sa'adah which is the foundation of the word sa'ada.

In the book Al-Mufrodat Fi Ghoribil Al-Qur'an Ar-

Roghib Al-Ashfahani states that the meaning of the

word As-Sa'adah (happiness) is God's help to

someone to do good (al-Isfahani, 2013) this is based

on the word of God in Al-Quran Surah Huud verse

105, where Allah in describing that word uses mabni

lil majhul (passive sentence) thus human happiness

will never be obtained by humans except close to

him.

While Al-Ghazaly in al-kimiya as-saadah

requires that to reach true happiness man must know

himself and his God, meaning that knowing who you

are is the key to knowing God by knowing God then

the heart (qolb) as part of the soul burdened by law

taklifi to obey Allah, who will receive merits and

sins, who can feel happy and miserable. Qalb is the

one who can ma'rifat Allah Almighty (Al-Ghazaly,

2001). Thus the key to happiness in Islam is

gratitude for what God gives him and uses the gift

for obedience.

When viewed from the various explanations of

the above scholars it is clear that Islam links

Altruism, Religiosity and Happiness among Zakat Payers in Surabaya, Indonesia

1205

happiness not only to the fulfilment of material but

also to spiritual fulfilment, this is reinforced by

research conducted by Elison (Peacock and Poloma,

1999), (Greene and Yoon, 2004) who found that in

addition to income that affects happiness is

religiosity in their study, it is known that religiosity

influences happiness where a positive relationship is

found between religiosity and happiness.

In the Indonesian dictionary the meaning of the

word religiosity is devotion to religion; piety (Tim

Penyusun Kamus Pusat Bahasa, 2008). In Arabic,

religion is taken from the word Al-Diinu to master,

subjugate, obey, and habit. Thus the foundation of

religion according to Islam is Faith, Islam and Ihsan

or also called the pillars of religion.

According to Uyun (1998) religion strongly

encourages its adherents to behave well and be

responsible for all their actions and actively strive to

improve themselves to be better. Based on the terms

religion and religion the term religiosity appears. In

psychology this concept is often referred to as

religiosity. Historically sociologists have disagreed

about the approach to measuring religiosity, as

(Glock, 1962) proposed 5 dimensions of later

religiosity reduction Verbit, M. F, 1970 in

(Kucukan, 2005) proposed six measuring instrument

namely 'ritual', 'doctrine', 'emotion', 'knowledge ','

ethics 'and' community.

Peacock and Poloma show that religiosity

increases with age and therefore tends to improve

reported health (Peacock and Poloma, 1999). Along

this line, Greene and Yoon assert that subjective

well-being increases with religious attachments

measured by the willingness to tend to be religious

regularly (Greene and Yoon, 2004). Christian

Zwingmann then divided the size of religiosity into

several dimensions of Compliance with God, Belief

or Faith, Religious Orientation and Compliance with

religious teachings (Zwingmann, Klein, & Büssing,

2011).

So far there is no definite definition of altruism

when it viewed from the group that benefits from

this attitude by how the size of altruism values is

measured (Kerr, Godfrey-Smith, & Feldman, 2004).

Actually the concept of altruism was first introduced

by Aguste Comte who stated that altruism is a

person's attitude and behaviour that always benefits

others (Feigin, Owens, & Goodyear-Smith, 2014).

From the above understanding it can be concluded

that the key words that must exist in this concept are

the benefits or goodness of someone towards others.

In Islam the principle of usefulness gets more

emphasis in relations between people (hablun

minannas) therefore the Prophet said: "The best

humans are those that benefit others". (HR. Ahmad)

Furthermore Allah said: and they prioritize (the

Muhajirin) for themselves, even though they are in

distress." According Al-Quran Surah al-Hashr verse

Prioritizing the interests of others is what is then

referred to as itsar, even explicitly Allah says in Al-

Quran Surah Al-Imran verse 92, that there will not

be perfect goodness of someone before giving infaq

(charity) form the treasures loved by humans. One of

the replies that God promised to his servant who

always did good to others.

3.2 Altruisms, Religiosity and

Happiness among Zakat Payers

In the specification stage the model of the model

formation is done by drawing a path diagram that

combines the indicator variables and latent variables

in accordance with the theory that has been explored

in the previous chapter, the following are the models

proposed in this study:

Model specifications are done by converting the

diagram above into the following structural model:

The external model and the loading factor of the

new model are as follows:

From the table above loading factor after the

second test is at> 0.6, the model specification test

can be continued with reliability, validity and AVE,

ICRI 2018 - International Conference Recent Innovation

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where for cornbach alfa is above 07 it means that the

model escapes un-dimensionality and passes

reliability and validity, even though religiosity is

below 0.7 but because this is the initial model, 0.6

results can still be used. The following are the

details of the test results of un-dimensionality.

To test the inner model of this study using the

latter is to find the Goodness of Fit (GoF) value.

Unlike CBSEM, for the GoF value in PLS-SEM it

must be searched manually.

According to Tenenhau (2004), GoF small = 0.1,

GoF medium = 0.25 and GoF = 0.38. From the test

results using smart PLS obtained the value of AVE =

0.56 and R ^ 2 = 0.54 then:

Thus the model in this research is robust and can

be continued.

For testing the hypothesis is done by looking at

the probability value and the statistics. For

probability values, the p-value with alpha 5% is less

than 0.05. The t-table value for alpha 5% is 1.96. So

the hypothesis acceptance criteria is when t-

statistics> t-table. Following is the path diagram and

path coefficients of this study:

From the diagram it can be seen that all the p-

values both from the manivest variables to the latent

variables and the influence of religiosity and

altruism variables on happiness are above 0,05

meaning that all variables studied are significantly

influential. Then the coefficient path is obtained by

the following results:

The table shows that P - Value is given 0.05 and

T above 1.96 thus altruism and religiosity

significantly affect happiness, with a positive

direction of relationship, so that the higher the

religiosity and altruism, the higher the happiness

gained. Referring to the path coefficient that shows

that there is a positive influence between religiosity

and happiness, in other words the higher the level of

zakat payer religiosity in the city of Surabaya, the

higher the happiness gained, this is consistent with

research (Sahraian et al., 2013) which examined

happiness in Muslim communities in the study found

that the higher the level of religiosity the higher the

quality of life and happiness.

In Javanese society since civilized, Religiosity

has become an entity that cannot be separated from

national identity. This ingrained characteristic is

then actualized in the first principle of the state

constitution, namely Pancasila (Tamney, 1979), as

well as the people of Surabaya where religion or

religion has become a cultural characteristic.

Characteristics like this give birth to patterns, traits,

and tendencies that are unique to Javanese society.

thus religiosities can give clues about how people

live their lives.

The number of verses that call for virtue to

fellow human beings is more or less in 200 verses in

the Koran, of these 200 verses Allah promises those

who do good in the world and in the hereafter. In Al-

Quran Surah At-Taubah Allah Said: “Take, [O,

Muhammad], from their wealth a charity by which

you purify them and cause them increase, and

invoke [Allah's blessings] upon them. Indeed, your

invocations are reassurance for them. And Allah is

Hearing and Knowing”.

In that verse there is a word "Verily your prayer

(to be) the peace of the soul for them" in this regard

Ibn Abbas argued that the word "sakanul lahum" or

the tranquillity of the soul is a mercy for them,

whereas according to Qatadah, it becomes a peace of

mind for them (al-Dimasqy, 2000) while

understanding peaceful soul according to the big

Indonesian dictionary can be associated with

happiness (Tim Penyusun Kamus Pusat Bahasa,

2008).

In line with the above Al-Quran in this study it

was found that altruism has a positive relationship

Altruism, Religiosity and Happiness among Zakat Payers in Surabaya, Indonesia

1207

with happiness so that if someone wants his life to

be happier, let him do more good to others, this is in

line with Raziyeh Meyzari Ali's research which

states that altruism can improve one's mood, thus

good deeds to someone can increase feelings of

happiness (Straten, 2016). In psychology, altruism

and happiness are related to human nature that wants

to form social and environmental bonds that will

ultimately have a positive impact on themselves

(Biswas-diener et al., 2011).

4 CONCLUSIONS

For Muslims the happiness (as-sa’adah) of the world

and the hereafter is inseparable, and the condition of

achieving happiness is by caring for and cultivating

the relationship with Allah (hablum-minallah) and

the relationship with humans (hablum-minannaas).

Both of these aspects in daily life can be interpreted

as religiosity and altruism. The practice of the two

aspects above can be observed through the muzaki

(zakat payers) in this case is muzaki in the city of

Surabaya, and it was found that there was a positive

influence between religiosity and altruism on

happiness. In the context of religiosity, it was found

that this concept had long been attached to Javanese

society which later formed certain characteristics for

them in looking at life. In Islam human behaviour is

determined by Faith, Islam and Ihsan, in this case

spirituality encourages gratitude for what is given to

him which in the end will bring peace of mind or

happiness. On the other hand Altruism is a form of

hablum-minannaas (good deeds for humans), in

Islam the act of getting guarantees from Allah is

assukuun qolbi fil or peace of mind, it is also

supported by research in the field of psychology

where good deeds are the nature of human beings

who want to form emotional bond to other humans.

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