J&K Waqf Board is a vast organization that handles, maintains, and generates revenue from scores of buildings falling under its control; it also owns the huge donations collected from the shrines and other mosques across J&K. But all that remains unutilized, un-invested, may be due to the lack of willingness to use the same for the greater good of the society—because there are matters which the Waqf Board can easily address because they have what the people are looking for, the capital.
The money which the Waqf has belongs to people and lately, there have been allegations of bungling in the donations collected from shrines across Srinagar, too, which is a heinous crime and calls for immediate action. At the same time, the Waqf officials have been underlining that they are going to come up with infrastructure related to healthcare and education, which needs to be appreciated and facilitated, but there is more that the Waqf can do and should do: starting with offering ‘Qarz-e Hasna’ (Good Loan) to the youngsters who are unemployed, facing a wide range of vulnerabilities, developing mental health issues and finally falling into various dangerous traps, eating them up as a result of the exploitation of their vulnerabilities.
Islam indeed prohibits interest, but what Waqf could do is offer loans to the unemployed, skilled, and qualified youth—who could do something on their own—having goodwill as its basic element, aimed at their welfare and the welfare of the society as a whole. Once the beneficiaries of such loans gain the foothold, the Waqf could easily get back its loaned money: which is way better than stashing the money away in lockers or bank accounts. This much can be expected from an organization such as that of Waqf which is deeply rooted and can really make a difference if at all it happens to start a program having the basis of ‘Qarz-e Hasna’. On top of it, it also has a religious as well as social obligation of coming to the rescue of those who are in need, because it can, and if it can, it cannot and should not run away from discharging such an important duty which could usher a new era of progress and prosperity in J&K.
