Window on Eurasia

Russia’s Muslims Urge Legalizing Waqf System to Support Islamic Activities

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 13, 2006 – Muslims in the Russian Federation are pressing for
new laws that will allow for the extensive development in their country
of “waqfs,” the Arabic term for properties Muslims turn over to
their parishes to support mosques, religious education and other
community needs.

Prior to 1917, the Amal Muslim Analytic Center in Nizhniy Novgorod
noted, Russian laws allowed for such foundations just as it permitted
the Russian Orthodox Church to own income-producing properties of
various kinds. As an example, the Amal analysts said, all 17 mosques in
the city of Kazan were supported by waqfs.

During much of the 19th century, wealthy Muslims who “gave” such
properties to the community often exercised inordinate control over how
the money was spent. But by the beginning of the 20th, a far broader
group of parishioners had a say, they report
[http://www.islamnn.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=articlesid=1179].

Under tsarist regulations, the waqfs belonged to specific congregations
even if the properties they included were not located near the mosque
at its center. In no case did they belong to the Orenburg Mohammadan
Spiritual Assembly, the predecessor of the Soviet and post-Soviet
Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs).

Until 1929, many waqfs continued to operate in support of mosques in
the Soviet Union. But in that year, the Soviet government banned them, not
only allowing the regime to confiscate the properties involved but
severely limiting the ability of mosques to operate independently of
the whims of Soviet officials.

After the collapse of Soviet power, many Muslim communities began to
discuss the possibility of creating a new system of waqfs. In the
Middle Volga, the first waqf was created in 1998, and a deputy head of the
Tatarstan MSD was charged with promoting its development and overseeing
its operation.

Over the last eight years, waqfs have spread across the Middle Volga
region as well as in other Muslim portions of the Russian Federaiton,
the Amal Center reports. But while they exist “de facto,” there is
no legal definition of either waqf or waqf property in either federal
or republic level legislation.

The absence of such definitions not only makes many Muslim reluctant to
contribute to such foundations, the Amal Center continues, but it also
means that Muslims are not in a good position to seek the return of
waqf properties confiscated by the Soviet regime.

Given that “contemporary legislation gives the chance for the
irrevocable transfer of real property to religious organizations,”
something that the Russian Orthodox Church has already been able to
make use of, it should not be difficult, the Amal analysts say, for the
Russian state to have Muslim waqfs put in the same category.

Of course, the Amal Center continues, the new waqfs should be very
different than those that existed a century ago. They should be
transparent, with oversight councils that regularly report to the
community on the income and expenditures of all assets held in the
waqf.

Included in these councils, the center said, should be representatives
of the mosque, Muslim religious organizations, and the local MSD, as
well as those who have made significant donations to the waqf. And if
waqf property is a historical monument, representatives of institutions
responsible for their care should be included as well.

In support of its argument, the Amal Center not only points to the
classical Muslim belief that such foundations are the proper basis of
support for all Islamic communities but also to two other factors that
may have resonance beyond the Muslim community itself.

On the one hand, the center says, given the radical decentralization of
the MSDs in post-Soviet Russia, these institutions will tie the local
mosque even more closely to the local community. And on the other, the
new waqfs can contribute to the resolution of Russia’s demographic
difficulties by helping Muslim immigrants to adapt to Russian life.

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