Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

178 t CHAPTER SEVEN
exclusive form of Jewish higher education, and the same is almost
as true of Islam. But whereas the yeshiva was a financially marginal
institution in Christian and Muslim societies where Jews themselves
were politically marginalized, in Islam, where religion and
empire were two sides of the same community, the madrasa, its
faculty, and students generally enjoyed adequate to lavish financial
support. This came, however, not from the state but from private
individuals through the institution of waqf (endowment). Almost
every Muslim intellectual from the eleventh to the nineteenth century
received his higher (and increasingly standardized) education
in the Quran, hadith, and jurisprudence in the all-male classrooms
and courtyards of the madrasa.
Note: As an institution waqf falls under the general heading of charity
(sadaqa), in this instance a voluntary one, in contrast to the alms-tithe
(zakat) obligation of all Muslims. The Muslim jurist al-Kasani (d.
1189) defined it as “a continuous or closed charity for the sake of
God and his religion.” From the legal point of view, waqf was a complex
contractual institution. By his public and witnessed declaration
the owner of a property or of an object with value surrendered his
right to proprietorship of that same property or object: he deeded its
ownership and, more important, its income, to God, inalienably and
forever. But before the transaction was completed, the donor exercised
his right to specify the disposition of its continued income, after
expenses, which included the upkeep or continued operation of the
property and the fees of the waqf executors.
The difference between the rabbis and the Sunni ulama rests
finally in the latters’ conviction that they are the interpreters of the
sharia, whereas the rabbis regard themselves as the custodians of a
Torah that is “no longer in heaven” but rests instead in the hands
of the rabbinate. As a result the rabbis have through the centuries
practiced ijtihad with far less hesitation and far fewer qualms than
their Muslim counterparts. Although both groups think of themselves
as competent to render responsa on specific questions of
law, the rabbis’ ready issuance of both gezerot, or decrees, to pro-