Waqf, perpetual charity, in a general system theory of tawhidi metascience

• Author: Ari Pratiwi,Muhammad N. Hoque,Masudul A. Choudhury
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/tie.22039

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Waqf, perpetual charity, in a general system theory of tawhidi

metascience

Masudul A. Choudhury

1

| Ari Pratiwi

2

| Muhammad N. Hoque

3

1

Postgraduate Program in Islamic Economics &

Finance, Faculty of Economics, Trisakti

University, Jakarta, Indonesia

2

Paramadina University & IBM Indonesia,

Jakarta, Indonesia

3

Department of Shari'ah & Economics,

Academy of Islamic Studies, University of

Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Correspondence

Ari Pratiwi, Paramadina University & IBM

Indonesia, Jl. Taman Sari IV no

21, Penggilingan Cakung Jakarta Timur, Jakarta

13940, Indonesia.

Email: ari.pratiwi@yahoo.com

This article is premised on the intercausal socioeconomic embedded model of ethical design of

perpetual charity in Islam called waqf. Such a model is formalized according to the theory of

unity of knowledge in the light of the Primal Ontology of Divine Oneness called Tawhid in the

Qur'an. Tawhid is argued to be the only foundational Law of Islam respecting “everything.”The

implications of such an epistemic treatment in respect of waqf as an example of the whole class

of charities in Islam is shown to be unlike the dissociative and human opinionated nature of

what has now come to be known as “shari'ah-compliance.”The Islamic shortfall of “shari'ah-

compliance”and its segmentation as opposed to organically unified synergy between the socio-

economic and moral/ethical variables of the objective criterion called the Well-being Function

have deprived the entire study of the present days' Islamic economics, finance, and banking

from its true epistemological core of Tawhid as Law. To restore this true foundation in Islamic

thought, a theory of metascience of Tawhid is presented. Waqf in Malaysia is studied as an

example from the perspective of Tawhidi unity of knowledge, contrary to its existing dissocia-

tive presence in the ethically exogenous socioeconomic treatment under “shari'ah-compliance.”

KEYWORDS

epistemology, ethical endogeneity, ontology, shari'ah, Tawhid, unity of knowledge, waqf in

development ethics

1|PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 |Executive summary

Structural problems of shari'ah in addressing system-oriented methodo-

logical worldview

Shari'ah in none of its forms is the commencement of the essen-

tial of what ontologically and epistemologically grounds the Tawhidi

law and its universe of everything to which it applies. This is where we

connect Tawhid as Law with the symbiotic metascience study of waqf,

treated as perpetual charity with reference to how its meaning is

derived from the saying of Prophet Muhammad, and in reference to

the verses on charity in the Qur'an.

1

1

An example in respect of this questionable nature of shari'ah-compliance is the

altogether absence of reference to the Tawhidi ontological origin, which though

shari'ah claims. But the history of shari'ah and shari'ah compliance now has

shown is subservience to the human concocted innovations caused by the dif-

ferentiated role of multahids and the presence of ra'y, maslaha, istihsan, and ijti-

had (Kamali, 2003). There is no clear attention to Tawhid as law and

methodology with the emergent phenomenological method applying to world-

system studies in generality and details, and the consequential applications to

Tawhid. The most significant controversy at the level of academic debate is that

shari'ah has no clear analytical formalism as methodology to truly apply the

Tawhidi worldview of unity of knowledge in the generality and details of

“everything”. Shari'ah as it has evolved is a bundle of dissociated rules (ahkam)

on various issues as developed by the mujtahids in reference to exegesis of cer-

tain verses of the Qur'an, which they claim are limited in number in the area of

Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh). Hence, usul al-fiqh was augmented by

human rulings (ahkam). Shari'ah does not comprehend the unity of the Tawhidi

law of the heavens (cosmology) and earth (muamalat). This debility is found in

respect of the absence of a robust analytical methodology with its formalism

and methods that could have been derived from the Qur'an and sunnah through

discourse for the purpose of conceptualization and applications to the academic

field of economics within its transdisciplinary holism. There is a dire lack of

methodological origination in the field of shari'ah and economics as an inte-

grated academic discipline to develop the wellbeing function of maslaha as a

multidimensional empirico-conceptual field derived from the Qur'anic praxis.

This state of intellection is contrary to the greatest emphasis that remains indis-

pensable for the Tawhidi ontological methodological worldview that is uniquely

and universally applied to all fields, and to economics as a transdisciplinary field

(Choudhury, 2017a). An example in this regard of establishing an analytical

approach to the transdisciplinary field of so-called shari'ah economics can be

inferred from its subservience to mainstream economics. For the significance of

the analytical methodological origination of intellection, see Posner's methodo-

logical field of law and economics (Posner, 1975). Tawhid is universal and

unique in conceptualizing and applying its singular methodological worldview of

unity of knowledge across all the human intellection. This unification methodol-

ogy arising from the Qur'anic (36:36) meaning of organic unity of being and

becoming is the outstanding quest for the monotheistic worldview that has not

emanated from the shari'ah approach in relation to the multiverse world-

DOI: 10.1002/tie.22039

Thunderbird Int. Bus. Rev. 2019;61:777–792. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tie © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 777

Thus, three coterminous ideas are weaved together in under-

standing the role and place of waqf as metascience in the light of

Tawhid as the Ontological Law of everything, contrary to the idea of

shari'ah commonly understood as law: Thus, Tawhid as the exclusive

Ontological Law of everything gives the understanding of

metascience. The nature of waqf in such ontological and epistemologi-

cal foundations as cogent themes forms the centrepiece of this article.

The Qur'an is the supplication to Allah in His supercardinal attri-

bute of divine oneness, which is the law of theprecept of monotheistic

unity of knowledge. Upon this attribute as law rests the entire essen-

tials and functioningof the universe in everything as a relational symbi-

osis (Qur'an,36:36).

2

Thus, entersthe metascience study of waqf.

This compounded area of intellection explains the idea of Tawhidi

methodological worldview as a consilience of systemic symbiosis; and

places the study of waqf within this symbiotic and systemic worldview.

Morality and ethics assume their substantive meaning within such unity

of knowledge by abstracto-empirical relational symbiosis (universal pair-

ing, Qur'an 36:36). The substantive theory of metascience of Tawhid with

waqf as a substantive example in it is thus born.

1.1.1 |Tawhid contra shari'ah as Ontological Law

Shari'ah does not commence the law of monotheistic unity of knowl-

edge, which in the Qur'an and further explained by the sunnah, forms

the core of Tawhid as law.

3

The logical argument in this regard is, if

shari'ah is the core of the law of Tawhid, then what is the relevance of

Tawhid as the supercardinal law of everything in the mode of symbi-

otic unity of knowledge that the Qur'an masterfully explains?

4

Allah has not created two gods, and, therefore, not two laws—

Tawhid and shari'ah. At best, the shari'ah in all its forms is a sublaw of

codification in the purity of maqasid al-shari'ah.

5

Yet, maqasid al-sha-

ri'ah is not the primal ontological and epistemological origin of the law

of unity of the universal being and becoming. It is no problem in any

of the Islamic ways to critically investigate the new dimensions of

Islamic law as is being recommended today contra shari'ah (Al-Kha-

mees, 2017). Yet, it is a moment of great Islamic cleavage, Tawhid has

been forgotten from the core of the Islamic law with no mention in

the reports of the Islamic Supreme Council of America (internet ver-

sion, last visited 6 Mar., 2018). Asad (1987), p. 23) refers to the out-

moded contents of shari'ah as an old clothes shop.

6

Ashur (2013) and

Attia (2008) have not even mentioned Tawhid in depth in their books

on maqasid al-shari'ah. The controversy between the natural law in

the Qur'an (sunnat Allah) conforming with Tawhid and contrary to

shari'ah forms an erudite study by Amanat and Griffel (2007).

Imam Ghazali as the great mujtahid and originator of the philoso-

phy underlyingmaqasid al-shari'ah wrote and emphasizedin his master-

piece, Ihy

a’‘Ul

um al-Dīn or The Revival of the Religious Sciences

(Ghazali trans. Karim, (n.d.)) the consciousness of taqwa and tawakkul,

which is of ikhlas as the Tawhid of Allah as the law-giver. To Ibn Al-

Arabi (Chittick, 1989), anything other than reference to the primal

ontology of Tawhid is bound to lead into obfuscation of truth. In

subsequent times, the maqasid al-shari'ah went into degradation of

madhabs (jurisprudential schools). Its derivations, such as “shari'ah-

compliance,”descended into intriguing intricacies, being unable to

answer fundamental issues of economics, finance, society,and science.

This problemis manifest in the present stateof Shari'ah Advisory Coun-

cil report (SAC,2016) of the Government of Malaysia. Shari'ahAdvisory

Council (SAC)report is a codification as is true of allagencies of shari'ah.

This state of shari'ah is authoritarianof rulers since time immemorial in

Islamic history.The problem of legal hegemony and its juristic interpre-

tation was noticed by IbnKhaldun (Mahdi, 1964) despite his categoriz-

ing of shari'ahas the science of culture.

7

As a further example today, the SAC report of Bank Negara

Malaysia presents an impasse in the intertemporal pricing of assets by

any such formula- financing to establish how such pricing is deter-

mined and applied is ignored in SAC. Yet, a cogent formula financing

exists in respect of the intergenerational models of asset valuation in

scholarly works (Choudhury, 2011). Consequently, the ijara-type

2

Qur'an (36:36): “Exalted is He who created all pairs - from what the earth

grows and from themselves and from that which they do not know.”

3

Only if the inedible origin of Tawhid as the core of explaining all things was the

way of all the mujtahids, but this precept was ignored and forgotten by the

schools of Muslim thought. See the unequivocal words of Ibn al-Arabi, who con-

tributed significantly to the development of shari'ah from his Tawhidi perspec-

tive (trans. Chittick (1989): “The first way is by way of unveiling. It is an

incontrovertible knowledge which is actualized through unveiling and which

man finds in himself. He receives no obfuscation along with it and is not able to

repel it.....The second way is the way of reflection and reasoning (istidlal)

through rational demonstration (burhan `aqli). This way is lower than the first

way, since he who bases his consideration upon proof can be visited by obfus-

cations which detract from his proof, and only with difficulty can he remove

them.”In fact, this forgotten way was also that of Imam Ghazali (Karim, 1982) in

his treatment of Tawhid and tawakkul precepts.

4

Qur'an (2:255): “Allah - there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sus-

tainer of [all] existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him

belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that

can intercede with Him except by His permission? He knows what is [presently]

before them and what will be after them, and they encompass not a thing of

His knowledge except for what He wills. His Kursi extends over the heavens

and the earth, and their preservation tires Him not. And He is the Most High,

the Most Great.”

5

This is an inference derived from reading the system-oriented study of Auda

(2008) on the nature of maqasid al-shari'ah. Yet, maqasid does not precede and

supplant Tawhid as the ontological law. This is a socioscientific truism across all

fields of knowledge (Dampier, 1961).

6

“In consequence, our current theology (kalam) and canonical jurisprudence

(fiqh) now resemble nothing so much as a vast old-clothes shop where ancient

thought-garments, almost unrecognizable as to their original purport, are

mechanically bought and sold, patched up and re-sold, and where the buyer's

own delight consists in praising the old tailors' skill.”

7

Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah (trans. Rozenthal, 1958) points out the importance

of religion (Islam) on human belief and possibility for unity as was always so

much needed of the Arabs. If by any argument shari'ah is to be religious law,

which though it is not in super-encompassing Tawhid as law then Muqaddimah

is found to argue as follows: According to Ibn Khaldun religion is central in uni-

fying the Arabs and bringing progress and development to their society. He

pointed out that injustice, despotism, and tyranny are clear signs of the downfall

of the state. This was how religion (shari'ah) would control the culture of Arabs

of his time. Ibn Khaldun pointed out that metaphysical philosophy has the

advantage. It is to sharpen one's knowledge of the metaphysical world particu-

larly in matters of belief (cultural dynamics as science of culture).

system. See Barrow (1991a, 1991b) on the idea of socioscientific becoming by

the quest for the theories of “everything”. The plenitude of charity within which

waqf as perpetual charity can be immersed is as follows: Qur'an (2:251): “The

example of those who spend their wealth in the way of Allah is like a seed [of

grain] which grows seven spikes; in each spike is a hundred grains. And Allah

multiplies [His reward] for whom He wills. And Allah is all-Encompassing and

Knowing.”

778 CHOUDHURY ET AL.