Deputy Minister Marhamah Rosli says the RM15,000 savings requirement has significantly reduced the number of people declining Tabung Haji’s haj offers.
SEREMBAN: The requirement for prospective pilgrims to have at least RM15,000 in savings before accepting an offer to perform the haj has helped Lembaga Tabung Haji (TH) reduce the number of those turning down the offer, said Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Religious Affairs) Marhamah Rosli.
She said the requirement was a positive step towards ensuring that prospective pilgrims were financially prepared before undertaking the pilgrimage.
“With this requirement in place, the number of people who decline their haj offers has dropped significantly. It also prevents TH from having to repeat the same process of making an offer, only for it to be turned down before another offer is made.
“We should therefore view this positively. It is also a reminder to everyone, including myself, to work towards achieving istito’ah, as performing the haj requires commitment from all of us,” she told reporters after closing the National Convention on AI and Islamic Judiciary 2026 here today.
She said TH had long been running the haj affordability campaign, known as the Seruan Istito’ah initiative, to raise public awareness of the importance of being financially prepared before answering the call to perform the haj.
She said istito’ah encompassed not only financial capability but also good health and other necessary preparations to ensure that prospective pilgrims were ready to perform the haj.
Marhamah added that TH was taking the necessary measures to safeguard depositors’ savings following claims on social media that a depositor’s savings had gone missing.
She said the matter should be referred to TH for further clarification and reminded the public to verify such claims before drawing any conclusions.
Meanwhile, she said the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the syariah judicial system should be strengthened to help expedite work processes and address the backlog of cases, but it must also be balanced with human judgement.
She said AI technology could be used to help syariah legal practitioners manage documentation and summarise information from large volumes of case-related documents, thereby facilitating the review and consideration process.
However, Marhamah said AI-generated recommendations should not be accepted uncritically or treated as the final basis for decision-making, particularly when the fate and welfare of parties involved in a case were at stake.
The two-day convention also put forward 10 resolutions, including the need to develop guidelines and policies on the use of AI that could be adopted by syariah courts and legal practitioners.