The Waqf Institution and Social Welfare between the Past and the Present

My research wants to investigate the public discourse about waqf in contemporary Morocco. The main questions I seek to answer are: how is the waqf system perceived by Moroccans today? Does it represent a holistic welfare system? Is there a rupture between the waqf conceptualization as a welfare system before and after its institutionalization? The waqf system has played a pivotal role in the Moroccan understanding of what a welfare system consists of and how it takes its point of departure religion to subsequently encompass other spheres such as the economy, for example. Based on fieldwork in the city of Fez, I am interested in the theory of decentralization discussed by the author Janine Clark (2018) who undertook fieldwork both in Morocco and Jordan to look at processes of centralization and decentralization. Departing from her argument that Morocco has had the highest political decentralization process in the MENA region so far (Clark, 2018, p. 33)., I look at how the waqf system is often approached as belonging to civil society organizations and NGOs instead of a state institution. For Clark, political decentralization is “promoted as a means of increasing the capacity of local governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations to extend services to a larger number of people (Clark, 2018, p. 16). Because of this decentralization policy, waqf administration is often looked at as an independent entity from the state, a conceptualization that is reminiscent of pre-colonial Moroccan management of waqfs. How can one blur the boundaries between a non-secular institution whose main role is to carry social work in the society, a secular charitable organization, or a non-governmental association is one of the main questions I seek to reflect on in this research.