Temporary waqf and perpetual benefit: a mathematical proof

Temporary waqf (Islamic pious foundation) possesses great unrealised potential of preserving maslahah (public interest) but to date, has not been given the attention it deserves. Temporary waqf is mostly accepted by the Maliki madhab (Islamic school of law) while in Malaysia, only Terengganu and the Federal Territories recognise it. Using mathematical representations, a first in the waqf literature, this paper seeks to prove that temporary waqf can still provide perpetual benefit similar to that of permanent waqf. It is shown that so long as large enough number of similar mawqufs (corpus of waqf) are endowed at different periods in time for similar purpose, the benefit derived from these mawqufs can reach infinity, ceteris paribus. The existence of this possibility for temporary waqf to provide perpetual benefit, just like permanent waqf, may convince regulators, practitioners, and Islamic scholars to consider its wider implementation. Furthermore, the mathematical representations used in this study may motivate quantitative models to include temporary waqf and study its impact on real financial and economic settings. The overall hope of this paper is to reemphasize the importance of focus on perpetual nature of benefits (substance) rather than on perpetual nature of mawquf (form). This important shift in perspective has huge potential to tap into a vast amount of idle assets that could be used to advance social finance and social economy while ensuring the protection of maslahah as well as make the use of existing waqf assets more effective and productive