Endowment (Waqf): A Misfortune That Has Plagued Iranians for Years
After years of effort, hard work, and considerable expenses to establish a productive agricultural unit, when the bank inquires about the farmer’s land ownership deed with the registration organization, the registration office responds that one quarter of the property deed has been invalidated by the endowment organization and registered in its own name!
It is as if the sky suddenly comes crashing down on him. Bewildered and devastated, he doesn’t know what to do. He is forced to approach the endowment organization to resolve the matter, and there he opens his heart to the director general of endowments, saying: we are several families with a number of young people, and our only hope and means of livelihood has been this productive project that we have been pursuing for more than two years. Now, with the situation that has arisen, we can neither establish facilities on that land nor mortgage it to the bank to obtain a loan.
His words escalate with the director general, who is a cleric, and instead of resolving the problem, he is accused of impiety and branded as counter-revolutionary by the endowment director. The matter doesn’t end there; the director general, in anger, orders his secretary to write a letter to the bank stating that not only part but the entire land in question is endowed property!
He leaves the endowment organization with his tail between his legs and contemplates the uncertain fate that awaits him, and wearily heads home.
Such stories have been abundant in Iran throughout these years, and every day people in cities and villages learn that their ownership deeds have been invalidated due to complaints from the endowment organization and their properties declared as endowed, without having the slightest prior knowledge of this matter!?
A Brief Look at Waqf (Endowment) and Awqaf (Endowments) in the Islamic Republic
Endowment, however and whenever it came into existence, has become a calamity for the Iranian people in these years, seriously threatening their lives. The endowment organization, through invalidating thousands of ownership deeds from various segments of the population across the country under the pretext of waqf and endowment, has increasingly cast its heavy shadow over people’s lives day by day.
This practice entered the implementation phase from Farvardin 1363 (March 1984) after the first session of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis) approved the law on invalidating deeds of sale of endowed properties, water, and lands, and has continued with acceleration since then.
What is Waqf and what is Awqaf (Endowments)?!
Waqf is an arrangement whereby individuals transfer some or all of their property and assets for humanitarian and charitable purposes and express their intention in this gift.
With such an act, the transferred property becomes non-transferable thereafter. This is a brief definition of waqf, while the overall details and nuances concerning waqf and the course of its changes over time constitute a tangled web that no one has ever attempted to unravel, and endowed properties have been managed according to various preferences and different methods throughout the long ages.
The endowment organization, which has today become a large multinational corporation, is an organization that has granted religious legitimacy and sanctity to all these acts of charity and gifts throughout history, and considers itself the absolute owner and proprietor of these properties and assets.
Here too we are compelled to speak of this category and institution, which has a humanitarian origin and is charitable in nature with a long history, by the term waqf.
Endowment, considering its existential philosophy, is a charitable matter and should be the provider of charitable services to the needy and underprivileged in society and should be utilized according to the intention and will of the donors. In these years, with the rise of the Islamic Republic, not only has any charitable need been met by it, but it has transformed into a major problem and a complex predicament for the general public. On the other hand, it has become a suitable ground for misuse by those who know how to manipulate it, to such an extent that these days “endowment profiteering” has become a common expression among the people.
In these years, the performance of waqf has been unpleasant and very harmful to the general population of Iran, as it has caused the invalidation of thousands of people’s ownership deeds, especially deeds for peasants’ lands and urban and rural houses and shops, and has been the source of troubles and perhaps dark days for the owners of these properties. Meanwhile, its benefits have reached the wealthy and powerful in society instead of the needy, and only a select few profit enormously from it through clever schemes and what today is called endowment profiteering.
Endowment, the existence of which is wrongly and unjustly attributed to Islamic philosophy and given religious legitimacy and divine command, has today, because of this and thanks to the unparalleled power of the Islamic Republic in Iran, come to threaten people’s lives and has transformed in its place into an economic giant with very high capacity and organization, possessing billions of billions of tomans in capital and thousands of properties and countless lands and estates, and has become one of the very large economic poles of the Islamic Republic system under the supervision of the Supreme Leader. It increases its confiscations daily by invalidating numerous deeds without giving the slightest right to the owners of deeds that are supposedly invalidated due to being endowed. This is while waqf has no connection with Islamic jurisprudence, no example of it is seen in early Islamic history, and no mention or trace of it appears in the Qur’an and Hadith, which are the main sources of Islamic knowledge.
Clear evidence suggests that waqf has no precedent in Islamic philosophy and texts. Rather, it was later included among religious matters through a kind of historical distortion, theological and propagandistic infiltration, and the Islamic Republic today uses it as the best pretext for acquiring and controlling people’s properties and lands, and with the slightest excuse invalidates others’ deeds and confiscates them under the name of endowment in its favor.
It can be said that the subject of waqf gained legitimacy and expansion particularly during the period of Mongol Ilkhanid rule over Iran. The invading Mongols, who had recently converted to Islam, had learned to declare lands and properties that they had seized through sword and massacre of their owners as endowments so that they would remain under their and their descendants’ control generation after generation, and no one would dare to claim ownership or the right to sell them. However, there is no reliable document as to when an organization called the endowment organization came into existence, because the validity of waqf has never been subject to investigation and research, and it is a confusing matter that needs examination.
What is clear is apparently that during the reign of Nasir al-Din Shah, awqaf were under the supervision of an institution called the Ministry of Knowledge, Awqaf, and Rare Industries, which after that, namely in 1288 AH, was placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice and Awqaf, and is currently nominally under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, while in practice it operates as an independent, separate institution under the supervision and command of the Supreme Leader.
The Course of Evolution and Changes in Land Ownership from a Historical Perspective
With a brief look at the course of evolution and change in land ownership in Iran over past centuries, we will find that truly and fairly it is impossible to precisely determine the real owner of any of the lands, especially the lands that the endowment organization has today taken back from their owners under the pretext of being endowed and continues to control, in order to make a ruling on the actual right to ownership.
It is no secret that the course of ownership over lands throughout past centuries has involved various tragic stories, and there is no doubt that throughout these periods, the ownership of lands has always been determined by force in all its forms.
No one has created the earth so as to be able to claim ownership of it; therefore, throughout history we see that ownership of lands has undergone various evolutionary courses and changes. There was a time when lands were managed by a method called siyurghali. Then the period of tiyuldari began, and afterward feudalism, and ownership of lands always changed with the triumph of one group over another and the rise of a new class. One thing regarding ownership cannot be denied or forgotten, and that is the common saying that “force nullifies the deed.” History tells us clearly that vast lands were always seized by those who prevailed over the vanquished through force, and they became owners, not through right and reason. Can a property acquired by the sword, bloodshed, and injustice or even massacre of its owner or owners be called legitimate property of someone? Does such a person have the right to endow such property? And can his endowment be considered legitimate?
In any case, what emerges from the course of evolution and change in land ownership, especially vast lands, and what history testifies to, is that all these ownerships are subject to doubt and suspicion. If human rights are to be respected in them and we are to rely on justice and reason, we must judge these ownerships with human and just scrutiny and observation, and implement and observe justice in their regard.
For example, when invading Arabs or Mongols seized the soil of Iran through force, bloodshed, and massacre, their leaders took vast lands under their control, and later these lands and properties, unjustly and inhumanely seized through force, passed to their children and descendants generation after generation, and this process has continued for centuries until today when the endowment organization confiscates ownerships for itself. In reality, it forcibly takes from the owners of these properties, most of whom are poor people who have purchased their properties, through force and coercion and without providing them any right of defense, and registers and confiscates them for itself.
Clear and undeniable evidence regarding waqf and donors in general testifies to the reality that most donors who endowed properties had unjustly seized all those properties through force, and from the perspective of Islamic jurisprudence these properties are considered usurped, and moreover, most of them did not act out of compassion or service to the needy but rather to perpetually control these properties with various intentions and deceptive appearances. This is because waqf was given sacred and religious status by religious preachers and clerics, and no one would dare to oppose the sacred and religious property, and through this means over time many landowners endowed their vast properties and lands about whose ownership there is much doubt and suspicion, so that after them their children would possess them generation after generation and remain safe from any violation or harm in the shadow of religion and religious laws.
One of the most extensive endowments is to the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, which was endowed by a person named Hajji Hossein Aqamalek through eight endowment deeds, and this has resulted in more than 95 percent of Khorasan Province being endowed today, and the supervision of these endowments is now in the hands of the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza (the multinational company of Astan Quds, Qudsiyaran). It should be noted that the Holy Shrine operates independently under the supervision of the Supreme Leader and through the Supreme Leader’s representative.
Among other major donors, one can mention Rashid al-Din Watttat of Hamadan, whose endowments are known as the Rabi’ Rashidi in Tabriz. He endowed one third of all of Tabriz which was part of his properties. Rashid al-Din Watttat Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Jalil, whose lineage reaches through eleven intermediaries to the second Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab. It becomes evident that he and other donors who endowed vast properties were mostly descendants of Muslim invaders who seized Iranian territories through force and oppression, and afterward to perpetually preserve these properties they framed the concept of waqf as a religious and sacred ordinance and institutionalized it in post-Arab invasion Iran.
Following the subject of waqf and donors in Iran, we witnessed that during the current reign of the Islamic Republic, when Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani found himself in particular circumstances of his political life and when he might lose ownership of an important institution such as Islamic Azad University, he intended to endow it to secure it and of course to perpetually control Islamic Azad University which possesses unlimited wealth, but Ayatollah Khamenei did not allow him to do so. As a result, the ownership of this university left Rafsanjani’s hands and currently continues its activities as one of the institutions under the Supreme Leader’s supervision.
One of the most famous donors of Kermanshah is Sheikh Ali Khan Zangane, the prime minister of Shah Suleiman Safavid. In 1093 AH, when he was the governor of Kermanshah, he endowed the extensive lands of Chambatan and Nahr Qaragoli in the Bisotun district to the Fatimid Sayyids and for the repairs of the Bisotun caravanserai, and ordered the text of the endowment deed to be carved on the side of Bisotun Mountain and next to the famous statue of Hercules. Unfortunately, this carving was done on a precious stone inscription, as a result of which the carved image completely obliterated the complete image of Bahram II from the Parthian period, and from two other images of this inscription which were located on either side, each suffered damage to half of their full length while half remained intact.
Travelers who have observed this engraving work on that historical monument up close have considered Sheikh Ali Khan’s act as a kind of savagery and a desire to destroy artistic works. Sheikh Ali Khan in this endowment deed appoints himself as the administrator and after himself his sons.
Since endowments have been classified into two categories, namely public waqf and private waqf, Sheikh Ali Khan’s endowment deed is of the type of private waqf, that is, an endowment that most donors have made, placing the endowed property under their and subsequently their children’s control generation after generation in perpetuity. It should be noted that the endowment and pilgrimage organization’s approach to these endowments has its own particular method.
Source: Harana
