The Benefits of Waqf Once, during a visit to Medina, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf picked up a copy of the Saudi Gazette, an English- language daily, and saw a picture of the American golfer Tiger Woods playing golf on a course that featured an architecturally gorgeous clubhouse that reminded him of Muslim Spain.
It turned out that the course was at the Medinah Country Club in Medinah, Illinois, and that its architecture was indeed influenced by Andalusia; more specifically, it was based on the Alhambra Palace. I contemplated that fact, says Shaykh Hamza. Here is a place that was built solely for playing golf. And they put all of this energy and effort and time to make it beautiful, and in choosing to make it beautiful, they designed it based upon some of the most stunning architecture in the world, which is from the Islamic civilization. So here I am thinking: Why is it that these people can build a golf course that looks like thatand we cant build a Muslim university that looks like that? Thats my question. The scholars at the Zaytuna Institute have long been speaking and writing about the importance of endowments to support Muslim institutions, especially Muslim academic institutions. Past Muslim institutions and centers of learning, such as the Qarawiyyin in Fes, Morocco (see page 16), were always supportedand still are supportedthrough what is known as a waqf, the idea of endowing property from private ownership in a way that the property becomes the wealth of God. Needless to say, those who give a waqf have always been held in the highest esteem in Islams sacred tradition; for instance, Shaykh Hamza has noted that the ten sahaba who are promised Paradise are all said to have given endowments from their property. In a 1999 speech in Santa Clara, California, Shaykh Hamza listed several creative ways that Muslim endowments could be used in the United States. One was his suggestion that an endowment be created so American lawyers and Muslim jurists could jointly study the U.S. Constitution. Those people who are intellectuals and know what their Constitution says should be shown that in fact many of the ideas of the Constitution were derived from Islamic law, he said at the time. While nobody has taken up that challenge yet, Zaytuna is now directing its efforts to build an endowment that will support the indigenization of Islam in America. Thats what we want, says Shaykh Hamza. Thats my visionto see beautiful, thriving, intellectual, spiritual institutions to revive our traditionour scholastic tradition, our intellectual tradition. Harvard University began as a seminary; it now has an endowment of [several] billion dollars; Yale University began as a seminary; it now has an endowment of more than [several] billion dollars; Princeton University began as a theological seminary. Zaytunas seminary project, the Tabari College, will, Shaykh Hamza hopes, follow a path of intellectual accomplishment that mirrors its theological precursors in America. All of the great universities that are called the Ivy League universities were all built as theological seminaries, he says. Thats how they began, because thats how things beginthey begin with God. And so thats our hope, that one day people will look back and they will say [Tabari College], that amazing university, began as a theological seminary. And one day we want to see it playing a role, a powerful role, in the intellectual history of twenty-first century America, and the world. saiyed shahbazi www.shahbazcenter.org