Waqf: An Alternative to the Modern Social Policy

Welfare systems in developed countries, after passing their evolution phases, are now in a fresh phase which called postmodern era of welfare systems. This era, with special elements that emerged from deficiencies of modern welfare systems, present a new vision of social welfare to governments. Postmodern welfare system engages in formulating principles that provide for the principle of commitment to emancipation, the difference principle, and the unity principle and reject essentialism and structuralism in social policymaking. From the other side, in the Islam school, we witness the existence of the good tradition of Waqf which, in the view of the authors of this paper, possesses unique features that in addition to the provision of consequences and goals expected from postmodern welfare systems, are also free of deficiencies and ambiguities of these principles. Thus this paper, employing a comparative method, examines the principles of postmodern social policy, which emerged from the rejection and critique of the principles of modern social policy and compares these postmodernist principles with features and capacities of waqf. Accordingly, it will be proved that waqf can be an alternative to postmodern social policy and can be above theoretical dilemmas and ambiguities of a postmodern welfare system.