Waqfs in East Africa

Abstract

There can be no doubt that British courts have, in general, built up a most impressive record by, and today enjoy a well-deserved reputation for, their sympathetic and intelligent application of those religious or customary laws, evolved by peoples of a culture and background very different from their own, which they have so often been called upon to administer. But there can be no branch of the law in which Muslim peoples who are subject to the jurisdiction of British courts, or courts trained in English traditions, have been made to suffer so many frustrations—by the judicial infusion of alien ideas, by misinterpretation or basic ignorance of the Islamic doctrines, and even by what can only be termed a rigidity of mind which ill-accords with this illustrious tradition—as in the law of waqf.