‘Giving back is a universal form of faith.’ Can Tunisia revive unused trusts?

Mohammed Bennani carefully balances a platter of steaming couscous in his hands, carrying it to a table in the courtyard of his family home in Tunis’ old Medina on a brisk January Wednesday.

The guests? Whoever shows up.

The free weekly meal is open to all, but Mr. Bennani is not running a charity kitchen. This is his inheritance.

“My grandfather donated a portion of his fortune to help others, and it is up to us to continue this tradition until the end of time,” Mr. Bennani says. “This is how we were raised: You respect the waqf.”

In Tunisia, as the country’s economy continues to falter, unemployment soars, and the ranks of vulnerable people swell, activists are seeking to breathe new life into a centuries-old Islamic social safety net.

Seven decades after the country cast off the last vestiges of the traditional social welfare system, advocates’ message to Tunisians and the debt-riddled government alike is the same: Give waqf a chance.

Not just the wealthy

Although only a handful of individual Tunisians carry on the tradition today, the creation of charitable trusts – the word waqf refers to an endowment – was once a widespread practice in Tunisia. Under this Islamic system, citizens would donate a portion of their salary, profit, or agricultural production to a trust, which would be managed in perpetuity to support poor people and the community.  

While elsewhere in the Islamic world waqf saw wealthy individuals bequeath lands or establish trust funds to support mosques and schools, in Tunisia the practice, known colloquially also as habous, relied on a much broader base.

Between the 10th and 19th centuries, donations from middle-class and working-class Tunisians, artisans, business owners, bakers, and baristas were used to fund public works as Tunisia grew into a center of learning, trade, and culture.

“Waqf was designed to support the community,” says Mohsen Ettamimi, an imam and former member of Parliament who has researched and documented hundreds of waqf charitable trusts in the holy city of Kairouan. “It was a social support network that was derived from the people but organized, audited, and managed by the authorities.”

Cafes, hammam baths, hotels, and even grocery shops were donated, and then run by trusts, their profits used to build and support hospitals, schools, and housing. By the 19th century, one-third of all land in Tunisia was reserved as waqf trusts.

In his efforts to build a modern state in the 1950s, Tunisia’s post-independence leader President Habib Bourguiba did away with the waqf system, which by then had become entangled in inheritance disputes.

In his new, socialist state, the government would provide for the people and citizens would pay their taxes directly to the state.

Government struggles

Yet today, with unemployment at 14.9%, the national debt at 94% of gross domestic product, and inflation and poverty on the rise, that socialist system too is outdated. The Tunisian government is struggling to provide basic services, pay public sector workers, and provide health care to a population reliant on public services.

Social entrepreneur Leila Ben Gacem, whose Blue Fish organization helps create opportunities for dozens of struggling Tunisian artisans, is championing habous as a solution, both conceptually and as an untapped resource.

“Social entrepreneurship is not an American or European concept; it is a Tunisian concept developed right here several centuries ago in the form of habous,” says Ms. Ben Gacem. “And unlike other forms of charity or government safety nets, it is self-generating and sustainable.”

Ms. Ben Gacem promotes waqf as a solution that would break down the rigid separation between the private sector and charities in modern Tunisia that many believe has placed the social support burden too heavily on the shoulders of government.

“When it comes to capitalism and charity, it is not ‘either/or.’ Waqf proves you can both have a profitable business and help others,” says Ms. Ben Gacem. “We need to educate Tunisians that there is a third way developed from our own culture and experience.”

A resource in limbo

Today, Tunisia’s cities and countryside are scarred by crumbling shops, disused and overgrown farmland, and decrepit buildings – all unclaimed waqf properties left in limbo by the Bourguiba government’s 1957 decree ending the system.

Families with historical claims but no documentation cannot reclaim or utilize their ancestors’ habous properties.  

Historic schools and student housing under the government’s control alternate between being shuttered for vague, decadelong renovation projects and lying empty.

Religious sites, too, are just scraping by.

Today, shrines and historic mosques rely on the modern, 21st-century concept of waqf: donation boxes placed at the entrance.

Curators say this “spare-change charity” is no substitute for self-generating endowments.

At Kairouan’s Sidi Sahib Zawiya and Madrassa, the brilliant-tiled 17th-century shrine and tomb of Abu Zama al Balawi, a companion to the Prophet Muhammad, staff walk around literally with their palms opened, hoping visitors can spare a few dinars to help pay for upkeep and staff salaries.

“Habous used to pay for the schooling of students across the Islamic world from as far away as Pakistan who would come here to Kairouan to study,” Zuhair Haddad, keeper of the shrine, says as he leads a tour through its vibrant turquoise ceramic-tiled courtyard. “Now the occasional donations barely pay for cleaning supplies.”

Political hurdle

Since their 2011 democratic revolution, Tunisia’s leaders have tried their hand at reviving the system.

Less than a year after shaking off the yoke of dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a review of the habous system was atop their agenda in 2012. A government-formed committee examined hundreds of frozen or unclaimed waqf properties and concluded they were an untapped resource that could help fund the country’s post-revolution transition.

But the committee’s recommendation to reform the system was met with liberal and secular opposition amid suspicions that waqf advocates were scheming to use the proceeds from the trusts to support the powerful Islamist Ennahda Party.

“Anybody who spoke of religious affairs was seen as Islamist or part of Ennahda. Waqf became a polarizing issue and unfortunately remains so until today,” says Mounir Tilil, a former religious affairs minister and chair of the waqf committee. “When in fact this is a legal, socioeconomic issue, not a religious one.”

“We have closed one important door for our society rather than fix it. It has become a nonstarter.”

Yet individual Tunisians continue to carry on the tradition themselves, insisting that waqf is above the dividing lines of politics and religion.  

Mr. Bennani, a historian and archivist, continues the weekly lunches as part of the habous his grandfather started in 1909 that placed three shops and a piece of farmland in waqf.

Mr. Bennani has made his own alterations along the way, moving the meal from post-Friday noon prayers to Wednesday to make it “less religious and more inclusive.” He has replaced lamb with vegetables on the couscous.

Most weeks his guests are university students, researchers, writers, artists, and poets – the hearty home-cooked meal a balm for those far away from home, much like the waqfs in Kairouan that supported students from far-flung towns a millennium ago.

On this rainy and cold Wednesday, only two people show up.

But Mr. Bennani vows to carry on the tradition no matter the turnout to honor his grandfather’s will – and to pass on the spirit of giving.

“Systems of governance and laws may change, but the need to support one another is timeless,” he says. “Giving back is a universal form of faith.”