Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and blessings and peace be upon the one after whom no other prophet will come, and upon his family, who have been chosen, his noble Companions, and those who follow them with excellence until the Day of Judgement.
It goes without saying that the contemporary field of Islamic finance continues to look forward to further rigorous scholarly studies that clearly elaborate the general legal foundations of the Sharīʿah and its higher objectives regarding matters of wealth and business. These are continually being renewed with the passage of time and variations of place. Likewise, this field still aspires to sound methodological studies that renew careful and balanced reflection and that employ measured and judicious intellect in examining the opinions and juristic efforts produced by the early scholars about such issues and questions. [We are speaking about] issues that were not addressed in detail by the texts of the Qurʾān and the Sunnah. In doing so, those earlier scholars were influenced— both directly and indirectly—by the prevailing intellectual conditions of their time, the existing
social circumstances, and the economic and political realities that surrounded them. Moreover, the ideas and opinions they reached were grounded in the limits of their scholarly and epistemic horizons. Consequently, those ideas and juristic efforts represented a sincere expression and a faithful response to the temporal and contextual needs that prevailed at the time they formulated those juristic opinions—for which they will be rewarded—about matters of wealth and business, among other issues.
Waqf is one of those classical/contemporary financial issues in which the clear and evident influence of the prevailing intellectual, economic, and social conditions are discernible in the juristic efforts of earlier scholars. They are evident in the issue of waqf in general, and the endowment of benefits and rights in particular. This arises from a matter well known among scholars: that the revealed texts about waqf are flexible as well as limited in number. This prompted scholars of jurisprudence (fiqh) and legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh) to formulate a considerable body of juristic rulings and contextual conditions addressing the various waqf issues by drawing upon the socio-economic circumstances that prevailed in their own time.
On this basis, it goes without saying that such juristic rulings and conditions belong to the category of rulings and conditions known as ijtihādī rulings. These are rulings that should never, under any circumstances, be placed beyond mature reconsideration, continual development, and ongoing refinement whenever the circumstances and conditions that contributed to their formation and emergence undergo change. This is in accordance with the principle agreed upon among scholars of fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh: that change in Sharīʿah rulings (i.e., ijtihādī rulings = fatwas) with changes of time, place, circumstances, customs, conventions, and prevailing conditions is not to be denied. Proceeding from this premise, the present study seeks to contribute to clarification of an important contemporary waqf issue: what has come to be known among those concerned with waqf affairs as the endowment of the rights and benefits associated with contemporary shares and ṣukūk.
In order to approach the sections of this important subject in a coherent methodological manner, I have chosen to examine it in five sections:
We ask Allah to grant us success in that which brings about the well-being of our religion and our worldly life. We seek nothing but reform to the extent of our ability, and our success is only by Allah, the Most High, the Mighty.
