500 appendix 2
about it. There is nothing in the arguments [of Ebussuud] supporting anything
of irrevocability, absolutely nothing ...
Thus has the invalidity of the cash waqf been exposed. In it there are the
sources of many evils. One is the nonpayment of the ordained zakat. A second is
the interruption of the regular course of inheritance, an adjudging and execu-
tion of testaments involving cash waqf despite suspicions as to its validity, thus
withholding truth from the truthful, an ugly oppression. A third, the seizing of
the substance of the waqf by its administrators; they carouse, and when they are
asked to surrender the waqf the judge prevents this. Or when someone dies and
the inheritance is damaged. Verily, there among them children and madmen. As
He has said, ‘Those who eat the property of orphans, oppressing, will eat and
find fire in their stomachs; they will pray burning’. A fourth, the man who makes
a cash waqf will become poor, despite what he thinks. Moreover, he believes that
he no longer is obliged to celebrate the Day of Sacrifice, or the Breaking of the
Fast, or charity to the poor, or the Pilgrimage, or any of those things. He thinks he
has the right to take zakat and other things forbidden the rich. He is a great of-
fender in this. A fifth, that cash waqf is in little-esteemed books wherein joint
partnership, commerce, and the like is mentioned. Now in our day they profit
from usury in the very fashion that the Prophet of God censured. The scholars
also censured it, made clear its sinfulness. A sixth, that most of the waqf admin-
istrators are ignorant and don’t recognize the pictures of usury in the Book; they
make profit with loans and sale. Any loan from which profit is made is usurious.
Some of them lead a dissolute life, taking interest without even going through
the motions of using legally permissible devices to do so. They make waqf of
usury and the forbidden, pure and simple, giving it to the administrators who
consume the usury. They are in the same position as someone struck mad and
frenzied by the devil ...19 Abdülmecid Sivasi (See Chapter 6)
From Letâ’ifü’l-ezhâr (“Smart blossoms and delightful conversations”):22
The sultan of the Muslims must abolish the filth that produces immorality, avoid-
ing wealth that comes from things whose unlawfulness has been proven through
Quranic verses and the Prophetic tradition. Because, according to the verse “Oh
faithful! Really, the polytheists are filthy”, this dirty thing [wine] is peculiar to the
dirty infidels, so those of a devilish nature who accept the import [of wine] to
Muslim lands and argue that they care for the treasury, spending [revenue from22 From the Turkish translation in Gündoğdu 2000, 77 and 99.