Cash Waqf in Bangladesh and the Need for Innovative Approach towards Awqaf: Lessons from Selected Countries

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to respond to the pressing needs to revive and explore the prospects of awqāf in Bangladesh. Awqāf in Bangladesh represents a sector with huge potentials for welfare oriented developments and the benefits of unprivileged section of the population. The institution of waqf in Bangladesh faces a stagnant situation due to which many waqf properties remained unutilized or even idle generating no yield. This paper finds that there is a pressing need to work on reforming and developing the waqf establishment in Bangladesh from legal and regulatory framework as well as the administrative set up of the waqf administration, which is expected to contribute as stepping stones for further research and stimulate future researchers to come up with innovative ideas for the developments of awqāf in Bangladesh. INTRODUCTION This paper is an attempt to introduce cash waqf and its practice in Bangladesh. Brief sketch of cash waqf practices in some selected countries; namely Bahrain, Indonesia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Singapore and Turkey, have also been included so as to induce learning from them and encourage similar initiatives in Bangladesh so as to make awqāf more relevant and thereby more beneficial in the social context of the country. Today, cash waqf is recognised in the whole Muslim world as one of the most effective mechanisms in realising the socio economic and welfare objectives of the institution of waqf. In the Muslim world, it was Imam Zufar who had approved of the cash waqfs for the first time in the eighth century, on condition that the cash endowed should be invested through mudaraba and the returns generated be spent for charity (Cizakca, 2009). Cash waqfs practice can also be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and the Roman Empire (Cizakca, 2009). During the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman courts approved the practice of cash waqf as early as in the beginning of fifteenth century and by the end of sixteenth century it gained huge popularity all over Anatolia and as far as the European provinces of the empire (Cizakca, 2004) and by then