The Shariah Auditor
The scholar who sits on the Operator’s Shariah board and gives the Shariah assurance each Waqf carries on its Passport. Seated for the Operator rather than for one Waqf, because a Shariah board rules for an institution and its rulings should be consistent across everything that institution administers.
How it takes the role
Put forward by somebody who may make appointments, and must accept for itself before anything is conferred. Only the party appointed may answer. Nothing is conferred by being put forward.
Acts at stages 2 and 6, as set out in How it works.
What it can do
| What it lets you do | In use |
|---|---|
| Give one of the four assurances a Waqf carries on its Passport, with a date it expires. | Yes |
| Rule on a waqf referred to the Shariah board, choose whether the ruling also covers later waqfs of the same form, and correct or withdraw it with a reason. Also pass or refuse the documents on the ownership and handover of a waqf’s property.reserved to a person, never a system | Yes |
What it cannot do, and why
Be connected to the Operator
This is the one role where independence is tested. A connected person is refused the seat outright, before anything is recorded, rather than seated with a disclosure, and twenty-four months must have passed since any connection ended.
Be an organisation
Judgement in Shariah is reserved to people. The platform refuses a Shariah assessment attributed to an organisation, and so does the tool that confirms a ruling’s sources.
Assure a Waqf without saying when the assurance expires
Every assurance must carry an expiry date later than the date it was given. An assurance with no end is a claim about a future nobody has examined.
Have a ruling made on their behalf
For the same reason, nothing on the platform supplies a ruling by default. A default would be the platform ruling in the scholar’s place.
Record a decision dated before they were seated
A decision by somebody who was not on the board at the time is not a decision of that board.
How to perform the role
- Answer the appointment on the Appointments page, after signing up with the address you were asked at. You declare in words that you are independent of the Operator; if you are not, the seat is refused, and that refusal is the control working.
- Rule on what the Operator refers to you, on the Rulings page. You are not asked to rule on every form in advance: each referral is a real waqf with its facts and the particulars the waqif drafted on the platform. Where the Operator has sent the deed, open it from the referral and read it in full; only the Operator and the board can open it. Your ruling covers those particulars: nobody may sign the deed until you have approved the waqf, and if it changes afterwards it comes back to you. Say whether it is permitted, permitted with conditions or not permitted, and choose whether your ruling covers only this waqf or later waqfs of the same form as well. Any ruling can be corrected or withdrawn with a reason, and the earlier ruling stays on the record, so an error is put right in the open.
- Give the assurance for each Waqf, not for the Operator as a whole. Your seat is institutional; each statement is about one Waqf and carries its own date, basis and evidence.
- Choose the conclusion honestly: assured, assured with exceptions, or not assured. An assurance with exceptions must state them.
- Set an expiry you can stand behind. When it lapses the Passport says so, which is the point: a stale assurance should read as stale rather than as current.
- Where a Waqf is unsound in Shariah, rule it so. A finding that it is void treats the Waqf as never having been made, at any stage, including once it is active, because Shariah comes first however far the arrangement has progressed.