Tom Facchine – Minute with a Muslim #298 – What is a Waqf

			Walk is an Islamic endowment. And it is an extremely important part of the Sharia. Here's how it
works. You take an underlying asset, such as a house or a piece of land, or something that's going
to generate income. And it gets dedicated through an act of intention and declaration that this is
going to be frozen that it can't be sold off, it can't be gifted, it can't be inherited by somebody
else. So it moves from the realm of private property to something that's almost like public
property, I guess, you could say. And then the income that that asset generates is dedicated to a
certain purpose or a certain cause. Let's say that the income that it generates is going to be given
		

			to the poor, or it's going to be go to an orphanage, or it's going to fund the school, or it's going
to fund a mess cheap, right.
		

			So what happens is people keep on putting in their money into the wall. And then the wealth gets
bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're able to do more things. They're able to generate more
income, and then the purpose or the service that they're providing grows. Right. So this was the
model throughout hundreds of years of Islamic civilization, where public goods were funded, we're
talking about hospitals, we're talking about schools, we're talking about messages, we're talking
about roads, streetlights, you name it, it was taken care of primarily through this organizational
system called the wealth, the Islamic endowment. And it's significant for a lot of different
		

			reasons. One of those reasons, if we're to turn our attention to our good deeds in the afterlife is
that your donations go further. If I donate $10, to the poor, let's say something very, like, very
much like a cattle fatal. It is, it's like it's a consumable donation, right? It's consumed $10
given $10 is spent, and then it's gone. So the impact I have is very, very short term. Now, that
means that the deed that I did, even if Allah rewards it very, very generously, multiple times, it's
still just a one time deed. If I take that same, same $10, and I put it into an Islamic endowment,
and that endowment is now serving one population. That means every single time that endowment serves
		

			that population, I'm getting a reward. That mean this is sadaqa jariya, that the prophet Ali so
that's I'm talking about this is something that's going to keep on putting
		

			good deeds in your scale until the day of judgment. And one of the first people to do this was Earth
men. When it came to the well and Medina famous story. He made it into a web and that well and the
land around it, the date trees and everything. It's still producing dates. The money from the sale
is still going to the needy, and he's been collecting good deeds for 1400 years.