How to Spend Income Endowed in the Name of Shrines and the Offerings Made at Them

Question

Question: If a free kitchen is run from the income of estates that kings made waqf in the name of spiritual guides, what is the status of that food? And what is the status of eating what is offered to the guides? And what of a person who follows the Shari‘a, yet, quarrelling and fighting, keeps taking a share of these offerings, regarding them as though they were an ancestral inheritance?

Answer

If the waqif had given permission to run a free kitchen from the income of the waqf, then it is permissible for one who is entitled (mustahiqq) to eat its food. If those offerings are in the name of the guides and shrines, then offering them and eating them is impermissible; and if they are for the poor of that place, then it is proper for the poor to eat them.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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