Is There an Alternative Opinion on Exploited and Fixed Assets?
Yes. The opinion is somewhat involved, but it can be summarized as follows. A quartet of withholds will end up modern fiqh luminaries (including Shaykh Yusuf Qardawi from our own time) endorses analogizing the Zakât of exploited assets to agricultural land (with some modifications). But they also add to this the fixed assets of industrial equipment, plants and machinery, on the grounds that they are not tools of a craftsman, but productive and growing capital (see Fiqh az-Zakât, 304). Shaykh Yusuf makes a further distinction between these productive assets by categorizing them as “fixed” (the industrial plants, etc.) or mobile (like vehicles or honey producing bees). The analogy with agriculture is that its land is Zakât exempt, but the growth of the land (i.e., the crop) is zakatable at the rate of 10 percent of the net harvest value, if naturally watered, and 5 percent of the harvest profit, if irrigated. So Shaykh Yusuf likens productive exploited assets that are fixed, and fixed in
