Ministry of Endowments (Egypt)
Egyptian ministry of religious affairs
The Ministry of Endowments of Egypt (Arabic: وزارة الأوقاف المصرية, lit. 'Ministry of Awqaf of Egypt') is one of ministries in the Egyptian government and is in charge of religious endowments. Religious endowments, awqaf, are similar to common law trusts where the trustee is the mosque or individual in charge of the waqf and the beneficiary is usually the community as a whole. Examples of waqfs are of a plot of land, a market, a hospital, or any other building that would aid the community.
History
Before the nationalization of awqaf
Before the nationalization of the awqaf, the mosques helped in lending the poorer citizens a voice. For example, Al-Azhar mosque would aid the community through the endowments and remained economically separate via the revenue they earned from the awqaf. This enabled the mosque to maintain a state of independence from the dictates of the government and rulers. Mosques could use the endowments to help the community as needed. Also, because mosques were economically independent, imams could preach what they felt was important, with little to no government intervention. However, when the government effectively took over the endowments program, the people suffered greatly. They no longer had their only means of political representation and Al-Azhar's religious influence was manipulated into producing propaganda by the state.
“Ministry of Endowments (Egypt)” enters the record as egyptian ministry of religious affairs. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ministry, Endowments and Egypt can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ministry of Endowments (Egypt)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.