Foreword
There are millions of awgaf scattered throughout this world in both Muslim majority and minority countries. A majority of these awqaf are in the form of mosques and graveyards. But there are also a significant number of such awgaf which have been created for poverty alleviation, gender justice, general philanthropic objectives and above all for education and development. However, unfortunately, the vast potential that awgaf possess to boost the socio-economic and educational betterment of Ummah has remained either underutilized or never-utilized. Poor management has become synomyous with waqf administration.
It is however heartening to note that in recent years the condition of awqaf is generally heading towards betterment. A consciousness of the urgent need to utilize the latent potential of awgaf as instruments of progress, self-reliance and social welfare is becoming more and more discernable in the way the Muslim community and Muslim governments are looking at awqaf The establishment of JAWHAR (Department of Awgaf, Zakat and Hajj) by the Government of Malaysia may be cited as an example of such an initiative and realization.
There are many problems which hinder the proper utilization of waqf resources in improving the quality of life in the Muslim societies. A few of these owe their origin to the colonial occupation of Muslim lands and the dismantling of the simple but effective infrastructure of waqf administration. The imposition of English notions of charity on waqf greatly weakened the institution of waqf khas (or family waqf) which was either declared void or denied of exemption from various taxes. An era of indifference towards waqf administration began and lasted upto the end of the colonial period. The newly independent States which replaced the colonial powers were too pre-occupied with other bigger problems of self preservation and consolidation and therefore could not give the required attention to matters of waqf.
Reformatory efforts in matters of waqf law and management attempted by the newly independent States were generally of ad hoc nature. Not many enquires into the affairs of waqf were made at public or private levels. In Malaysia, for example, it is only in 2004 that a frail young Malay lady Siti Mashitoh Mahmood volunteered to shoulder the heavy responsibility of conducting a systematic research on "Waqf in Malaysia: Legal and Administrative Perspectives", which is published by University of Malaya Press in 2006.
The present book Waqf Laws and Management: With Special Reference to Malaysia edited by Prof. Dr. Syed Khalid Rashid who is Professor of Law at the International Islamic University Malaysia and Prof. Arif Hasan, who is Professor of Management in the same university, gives a comprehensive picture of two of the most important aspects of waqf, namely, waqf laws and waqf management. It need hardly be emphasized how important legal regulation is for any effective management scheme of awqaf. An international conference on awqaf was organized by the International Islamic University Malaysia that concentrated on the legal and management aspects of awqaf. This book consists of selected papers presented in this conference. There are in this book incisive papers written by waqf bankers (Hisham Daftardar), waqf researchers (Prof. Dr. Syed Khalid Rashid), an authority on awgaf in Malaysia (Dato' Syed Othman Al-Habshi), a teacher lawyer (Sharifah Zubaidah), a Bangladeshi researcher on waqf (Muhammad Fazlul Karim), a Bosnian lawyer and academician (Adnan Trakic), and many others. These authors have turned this book into a treasure trove of knowledge on waqf. The waqf statutes of Selangor, Malacca and Negeri Sembilan, which are given in the appendix, are published together in a book for the first time, to make things easy for researchers on waqf.
I congratulate Professor Syed Khalid Rashid and Prof. Arif Hassan, the editors of this book, for doing a wonderful job in selecting and editing the papers, and the publisher for printing and publishing the book so nicely and beautifully. I will look forward seeing more of such books in future.
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