“Is the Family Waqf a Religious Institution?” Charity, Religion, and Economy in French Mandate Lebanon
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This essay analyzes a debate among Muslim jurists in French Mandate Syria and Lebanon around whether the family waqf, a form of charitable endowment dedicated to the founder’s family, is a legitimate form of the waqf and whether it should be abolished. I argue that the new categorization of the family waqf as a deviation from real charitable giving was informed by new conceptions of the economy, religion, and charity. Because the debate was among Muslim legal scholars, it also allows us to examine modern changes in the Islamic legal tradition. I show how the debate displays the use of new scientific styles of reasoning among Muslim jurists in the derivation of rules, thereby transforming the legal tradition without rupturing it.
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30
Ana Vinea (2015) makes a similar argument in her analysis of Salafi Qur’anic healers in contemporary Egypt, a practice usually associated with more ‘heterodox’ forms of Islam.
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Powers (1989) places orientalist scholarship on waqf in the colonial context of 19th-century Algeria. He thus highlights the colonial genealogy of the discipline of Islamic legal studies (in the particular case of what is known as the French-Algerian Islamic legal school), the concrete effects of these studies on the colonization of Algeria (by allowing French colons to acquire land in Algeria) and on Islamic legal studies relating to waqf and inheritance.
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Baer (1969) makes this point about Egypt. “All those who took part in it [viz., the debate on family waqf], whatever opinion they held on the waqf as such [the opinions he defines are: opposition to any change in the waqf system, reform, and abolition], unanimously agreed that the institution of private nāẓirs had to be reformed” (1969:86). That is why the question of the difference of opinions on the validity of the family waqf among Muslim scholars does not pivot around the question of reform, as all scholars involved in the debate argued that reforms were necessary.
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Gleave (2012) argues that all classical Islamic legal theory is literalist in the sense that it accepts the notion that a word or a sentence has an inherent meaning (there exists something called literal meaning), a position one might call ‘weak literalism.’ However, jurists disagree as to whether this literal meaning should be privileged and precludes any search for intent, a position one might call ‘strong literalism.’ I use ‘literalism’ here in the strong sense.
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“Is the Family Waqf a Religious Institution?” Charity, Religion, and Economy in French Mandate Lebanon
In: Islamic Law and SocietySearch for other papers by Nada Moumtaz in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
This essay analyzes a debate among Muslim jurists in French Mandate Syria and Lebanon around whether the family waqf, a form of charitable endowment dedicated to the founder’s family, is a legitimate form of the waqf and whether it should be abolished. I argue that the new categorization of the family waqf as a deviation from real charitable giving was informed by new conceptions of the economy, religion, and charity. Because the debate was among Muslim legal scholars, it also allows us to examine modern changes in the Islamic legal tradition. I show how the debate displays the use of new scientific styles of reasoning among Muslim jurists in the derivation of rules, thereby transforming the legal tradition without rupturing it.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 1065 | 150 | 27 |
| Full Text Views | 253 | 21 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 337 | 41 | 3 |