The Benefits of Waqf Once, during a visit to
Medina, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf picked up a copy of the Saudi Gazette, an English-
language daily, and saw a picture of the American golfer Tiger Woods playing
golf on a course that featured an architecturally gorgeous clubhouse that
reminded him of Muslim Spain.
It turned out that the course was at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah,
Illinois, and that its architecture was indeed influenced by Andalusia; more
specifically, it was based on the Alhambra Palace.
I contemplated that fact, says Shaykh Hamza. Here is a place that was
built solely for playing golf. And they put all of this energy and effort and
time to make it beautiful, and in choosing to make it beautiful, they designed
it based upon some of the most stunning architecture in the world, which is
from the Islamic civilization. So here
I am thinking: Why is it that these people can build a golf course that looks
like thatand we cant build a Muslim university that looks like that? Thats
my question.
The scholars at the Zaytuna Institute have long been speaking and writing
about the importance of endowments to support Muslim institutions, especially
Muslim academic institutions. Past Muslim institutions and centers of learning,
such as the Qarawiyyin in Fes, Morocco (see page 16), were always supportedand
still are supportedthrough what is known as a waqf, the idea of endowing
property from private ownership in a way that the property becomes the wealth
of God.
Needless to say, those who give a waqf have always been held in the highest
esteem in Islams sacred tradition; for instance, Shaykh Hamza has noted that
the ten sahaba who are promised Paradise are all said to have given endowments
from their property.
In a 1999 speech in Santa Clara, California, Shaykh Hamza listed several
creative ways that Muslim endowments could be used in the United States. One
was his suggestion that an endowment be created so American lawyers and Muslim
jurists could jointly study the U.S. Constitution. Those people who are
intellectuals and know what their Constitution says should be shown that in
fact many of the ideas of the Constitution were derived from Islamic law, he
said at the time.
While nobody has taken up that challenge yet, Zaytuna is now directing its
efforts to build an endowment that will support the indigenization of Islam in
America.
Thats what we want, says Shaykh Hamza. Thats my visionto see beautiful,
thriving, intellectual, spiritual institutions to revive our traditionour
scholastic tradition, our intellectual tradition. Harvard University began as a
seminary; it now has an endowment of [several] billion dollars; Yale University
began as a seminary; it now has an endowment of more than [several] billion
dollars; Princeton University began as a theological seminary.
Zaytunas seminary project, the Tabari College, will, Shaykh Hamza hopes,
follow a path of intellectual accomplishment that mirrors its theological
precursors in America.
All of the great universities that are called the Ivy League universities were
all built as theological seminaries, he says. Thats how they began, because
thats how things beginthey begin with God. And so thats our hope, that one
day people will look back and they will say [Tabari College], that amazing
university, began as a theological seminary. And one day we want to see it
playing a role, a powerful role, in the intellectual history of twenty-first
century America, and the world.
saiyed shahbazi
www.shahbazcenter.org
