Buying a Funeral Bier from the Mosque’s Income

Question

By custom, a bed (sarir) and a rope bed used as a bier are provided in the mosque for washing the dead and carrying them to the graveyard. Is it permissible to make these out of the income of the mosques’ endowed property or not? It is evident that a waqf is made for the expenditures of mosques, whereas these things are for the convenience of the people of the neighbourhood and of Muslims in general, so they can have no connection with the mosques.

Answer

It is impermissible: [ar]لَيْسَ لِقَيِّمِ الْمَسْجِدِ أَنْ يَشْتَرِيَ جِنَازَةً وَإِنْ ذَكَرَ الْوَاقِفُ أَنْ يَشْتَرِيَ جِنَازَةً، كَذَا فِي السِّرَاجِيَّةِ[/ar] “The custodian (qayyim) of the mosque may not buy a funeral bier, even if the waqif stated that he should buy a bier; so it is in al-Sirajiyya” (“Fatawa ‘Alamgiri”, vol. 2, p. 462).

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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