The corpus already explains what a waqf IS — an inalienable endowment whose principal is retained and whose benefit is given away forever.
The corpus already explains what a waqf IS — an inalienable endowment whose principal is retained and whose benefit is given away forever. What it never carried was the Academy's primary ruling on how that principal may be INVESTED and grown without being consumed. Resolution No. 140 (6/15) 'Investment of Waqf, its Yields, and Incomes' is that ruling: the permission to make an endowment work, and the discipline that keeps it an endowment while it does.
What this source says
THE ENDOWMENT THE CORPUS COULD DEFINE BUT NOT GROW. The corpus already carries what a waqf is — the inalienable endowment whose asset is locked and whose yield flows to a cause in perpetuity, the classical engine of sadaqah jāriyah. What it did not carry was the Academy's primary ruling on the practical question every waqf trustee eventually faces: may the endowment's principal be put to work — invested, developed, pooled — or must it merely be held? Resolution No. 140 (6/15) 'Investment of Waqf, its Yields, and Incomes' is that ruling. It 'Resolves' across two heads — the investment of waqf properties and the waqf of cash — and closes with a section of Recommendations, so it is a settled operative ruling rather than a postponement, but a confined one that leaves the standards-setting work to the bodies it calls on.
INVEST IT — DON'T LET IT SLEEP (FIRST). The default the resolution sets is motion, not storage. Investment here means real economic development: 'Investment of the Waqf properties refers to the efforts to develop the assets or increase the Waqf 's income through Shariah-acceptable means of investment.' The one non-negotiable is the endowment's survival — 'The Waqf property should be preserved to ensure continuity of its asset and benefits' — and within that guard rail the presumption is to put the asset to work: 'Waqf properties, whether real estate and moveable assets, should be invested, except when such properties are intended for being utilized directly by the beneficiaries.' A mosque you pray in or a well you drink from is used directly and is not to be turned into an investment vehicle; the farmland, the shop, the cash reserve behind them is.
WHOSE PERMISSION YOU NEED FIRST. The resolution draws a line a family endowment and a public charity endowment do not share. Where the founder said nothing about investing the income, the two diverge on consent: 'It is not permissible to invest any part of the income when the Waqf founder makes no reference to investing out of the Waqf 's income except with approval of all beneficiaries in the family Waqf, while in Charity Waqf such investment decision could be made when there is a likely interest to be achieved'. A family waqf's living beneficiaries have a say in whether their income is ploughed back; a charity waqf's trustee may reinvest on the endowment's behalf when a genuine benefit is in view. And the founder's own words override the default in either direction — a stipulation that part of the income fund development is honoured because it does not contradict the nature of waqf, and a stipulation that all income be spent on the objectives means nothing is retained for development.
EXCESS INCOME AND POOLED FUNDS. Reinvestment runs off the surplus, and only after the endowment has met its people first: 'It is permissible to invest the excess income of the Waqf for developing the Waqf property or its income. This should be done only after payment of amounts due to beneficiaries and deducting all related expenses and provisions.' And the resolution clears the modern waqf fund — many small endowments managed together — explicitly: 'There is no Shariah restriction against investing the funds of different Awqāf in one combined investment fund, as long as the conditions of each Waqf founder and the amounts owed by or due to each Waqf are well preserved.' Pooling is permitted; erasing whose money is whose is not.
THE INVESTMENT DISCIPLINE (NINTH). The most transferable part of the ruling is its investment code — the same prudence a Muslim would want over any trust of other people's charity. The modes must be lawful ('Shariah acceptability of the modes and fields of investment') and prudent: 'Diversification of investments to mitigate their risks, obtainment of guarantees and securities, authentication of contracts, and preparation of adequate project feasibility studies.' Risk is to be kept low, not chased. The mode must fit the asset, and above all it must not eat the principal: physical assets are to be invested in ways that would not endanger their existence, while 'if they are liquid funds they can be invested through any of the Shariah-acceptable modes of investment, such as Muḍārabah, Murābaḥah, Istiṣnāʿ, etc.' — the same contracts the corpus documents elsewhere, here pointed at an endowment's cash. The whole aim is stated plainly: 'preserving its principal, and serving the interests of the beneficiaries.' And it must be visible — 'Regular disclosure of the investment operations, and dissemination of information about them as per standard business practices.'
CASH IS A VALID ENDOWMENT (SECOND). The head that matters most for a Muslim without land to give is the ruling on cash waqf, and the Academy settles it: 'Creating cash Waqf is permissible since it satisfies the Shariah objective of Waqf that is retaining the principal and offering its benefits and because units of money have no specific merits that prevent units from standing for and replacing each other.' Money endowed can lend or invest — 'Money can be made principal of Waqf for extending goodly loans or for investment, either directly or through the participation of several Waqf founders in one fund' — and it can be raised at scale: 'Money can also be mobilized for Waqf purposes through the issuance of Waqf shares to donors to encourage giving Waqf and to promote collective participation in it.' The subtle mechanic is what stays the endowment when the cash is spent: when a money waqf buys a building or commissions an asset, 'the purchased property does not itself become Waqf in replacement of the money.' The cash remains the corpus — so 'the properties purchased in this manner can be resold to continue the investment process, while the original amount of money will always constitute the Waqf.' The endowment is the value, not any one asset it passes through.
HOW TO CITE IT HONESTLY. Res 140 is a settled ruling with Recommendations, not a fully-closed one — it decides the permissions and the discipline, then hands the harder work of building 'standards for Shariah, financial and managerial auditing of the Waqf management activities' to the institutions it calls upon, and fixes no figure, rate or threshold of its own. What it gives a reader is a clean framework: a waqf's principal should work, not sleep; it should be preserved above all; the founder's conditions and the beneficiaries' consent govern how far income may be reinvested; the modes must be lawful, diversified, low-risk, documented and disclosed; and money itself is a valid endowment whose value — not any asset it buys — is the thing held in perpetuity. It sits beside the corpus's general waqf explainer as the primary OIC authority beneath it, and closes on 'Indeed, Allāh is the Giver of Success.'
Wording inside quotation marks is quoted from the source. The rest is this notebook’s summary of it — read the original before relying on it.
Provenance
- Compiled from
- Compiled 2026-07-22 from the International Islamic Fiqh Academy's OWN OFFICIAL ENGLISH text of the resolution. PRIMARY AND SOLE AUTHORITY FOR EVERY VERBATIM SPAN ATTRIBUTED TO RES 140: the IIFA Official Edition (Resolutions and Recommendations of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, Oct 2021), Resolution No. 140 (6/15), 15th session, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, 6-11 March 2004. Every quoted span machine-verified verbatim against that source under a canonical normalisation (build_res140.py, keyed by block; audit_res140.py re-extracts every quote from the finished prose and re-verifies). No figure, rate, scholar, board, provider grade, madhab tally, vote count, statute or regulator is asserted; no Qur'an verse, hadith wording, grading or citation number is reproduced.
- Source
- PRIMARY TEXT (full title; 15th-session city, country and dates; the 'Resolves' with its two heads — Investment of Waqf Properties and Waqf of Cash — and the Recommendations section that follows). International Islamic Fiqh Academy, Official Edition (Oct 2021), Resolution No. 140 (6/15). Every verbatim span machine-verified against this source (build_res140.py, keyed by block, plus two settledness negative controls Res 77 (8/8) and Res 122 (4/13); audit_res140.py re-extracts every quote from the finished prose and re-verifies against the source). Diffed against the corpus on disk to confirm UNCOVERED before writing: the corpus held only a general waqf explainer, no primary OIC resolution on waqf investment.
- School / basis
- Comparative fiqh al-muʿāmalāt (the investment and development of endowment assets) with a PRIMARY OIC collective text. Resolution No. 140 (6/15), 15th session (Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, 6-11 March 2004). Rules across two heads: (First) Investment of Waqf Properties — investment defined as real development that preserves the asset; the default to invest except assets used directly by beneficiaries; the founder's conditions override; family-waqf reinvestment needs all beneficiaries' approval while charity-waqf reinvestment may proceed on a likely benefit; excess income reinvested only after beneficiaries and expenses are met; different Awqāf may be pooled in one fund if each founder's conditions and balances are preserved; and a nine-point investment discipline (lawful modes, diversification, guarantees, feasibility studies, low risk, asset-appropriate modes, and regular disclosure). (Second) Waqf of Cash — cash waqf is permissible, money may be endowed for goodly loans or investment, waqf shares may be issued, and property a money-waqf buys does not itself become waqf so it may be resold while the original money always constitutes the endowment. Carries a Recommendations section (auditing standards, waqf revival, Awqāf in Palestine, priority to Muslim countries), so it is CONFINED (settled but recommendation-bearing), like Res 212/224/238/178/200 and unlike the fully-settled Res 130/132/143/157. Settledness verified: 0 deferral keywords, 0 deferral paraphrases, 27 operative units (2 heads + 20 numbered + 5 lettered).
- Captured
- 2026-07-22
- Added
- 2026-07-22
- Trust
- Primary or near-primary source with a stable public URL.
Compiler’s note
Added 2026-07-22 (auto-run, P2 corpus). Chosen the instructed way and the way the previous run (Res 143) named it: LISTED content/articles/ and diffed against the source table of contents for a genuinely UNCOVERED, SETTLED, SUBSTANTIVE muʿāmalāt resolution. Res 140 (6/15) is the primary OIC anchor beneath the corpus's EXISTING general waqf explainer, which until now cited no primary ruling on how an endowment may be invested and grown. Re-checked ON DISK: UNCOVERED (no content/articles/*resolution-140* file; the corpus held a general waqf/endowment explainer but NO primary OIC resolution on waqf investment). SETTLED ('Resolves' across two heads — First: Investment of Waqf Properties, nine numbered points incl. a five-part investment-discipline sub-list; Second: Waqf of Cash, three numbered points — not a deferral). CONFINED (a Recommendations section follows, so settled-with-recommendations like Res 212/224/238/178/200, NOT fully settled like Res 130/132/143/157; the build gate ASSERTS the Recommendations section is PRESENT so a future edition dropping it would fail loudly). SUBSTANTIVE (the invest-vs-hold default, the family-vs-charity consent line, the pooled-fund permission, the nine-point investment discipline, and the cash-waqf mechanics a modern donor actually uses). THREE SETTLEDNESS GATES clean on the primary: 0 keyword, 0 paraphrase, 27 operative units (2 heads + 20 numbered + 5 lettered); Res 140 carries NO defer/postpone token at all. TWO NEGATIVE CONTROLS, both proven muʿāmalāt-family deferrals: (1) Res 77 (8/8) 'Shareholding in Joint-Stock Companies Dealing with Ribā' caught by the PARAPHRASE gate ('commission further research') though it carries NO deferral KEYWORD; (2) Res 122 (4/13) 'Diminishing Mushārakah in light of Contemporary Contracts' caught by BOTH gates (bare 'Postponement'). HARD-HYPHEN: five line-break hyphens in the primary block (di-rectly, high-risks, in-vested, re-habilitation, re-sponsibilities); NONE corroborated as a genuine compound elsewhere in the source, so every break is soft and HARD_HYPHEN is empty (the high-risks-investments phrase is therefore NOT quoted, to avoid the soft-break canon collapsing it to highrisks). DROPPED per no-fab: no provider, scheme, scholar, board, figure, rate, threshold, fee, statute or regulator; NO scriptural text; the named contracts (Muḍārabah / Murābaḥah / Istiṣnāʿ) are the resolution's own words, quoted verbatim, not graded products. VERIFICATION: build_res140.py hand-listed spans across THREE blocks (keyed by block; union never used) + both negative-control proofs + the settledness gates. audit_res140.py re-extracts every quote from the FINISHED JSON on disk and re-verifies against the source (multi-block haystack: Res 140/77/122), allow-list empty. NEXT candidate: keep diffing content/articles/ against the source TOC. Res 133 (7/14) Problem of Arrears in Islamic Financial Institutions is uncovered/settled but heavily REPRODUCES already-covered Res 10/51/85/109 quotes (poor no-fab candidate — needs careful span discipline). Res 147 (5/16) International Commodities largely reconfirms the covered Res 63. Res 141 (7/15) Unrestricted Public Interests and their Contemporary Applications is the next unread head to diff — verify a real 'Resolves' (not a deferral) and RUN ALL THREE SETTLEDNESS GATES before writing. AVOID the whole-subject deferrals already logged (Res 77 (8/8), Res 87 (4/9), Res 122 (4/13), Res 124 (6/13), Res 187 (2/20), Res 188 (3/20)) and Res 237 (8/24) on electronic currencies.
Topics
waqfawqafendowmentwaqf-investmentcash-waqfwaqf-sharesfamily-waqfcharity-waqfsadaqah-jariyahpreservation-of-principalcombined-investment-fundwaqf-fundmudarabahmurabahahistisnashariah-investment-disciplinediversificationdisclosureiifaoic-fiqh-academyresolution-140islamic-endowmentriba-free-wealthperpetual-charity
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