Vice President Ma'ruf Amin Opened Up The Question Of Cash Waqf, Not Taken By The Government, Only Directed

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin. (ANTARA / HO / Assistant Secretary of the Presidential Secretariat KIP)

JAKARTA - Vice President Ma'ruf Amin emphasized that the National Movement for Cash Waqf (GNWU) is purely used for the benefit of the people. The government has no intention of taking the waqf funds.

"The government directs that the waqf is collected to be large, then invested in a safe place, and the proceeds are returned to the community," said Vice President Ma'ruf when opening a web seminar, Money Waqf Literacy: Clearing Up the Conflict of Public Talk, reported by Antara, Thursday, February 11.

Cash waqf is actually not a new movement among Muslims. Since 2002 when he served as Chairman of the Fatwa Commission of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), Ma'ruf Amin has initiated the cash waqf movement as outlined in the MUI fatwa.

However, he continued, the cash waqf activity was still running slowly until finally the government got involved by making the National Movement for the Money Waqf Movement (GNWU) which was officially launched by President Joko Widodo, last January.

"We want the government to take the initiative to facilitate the money waqf movement to become large, so GNWU is carried out. So, actually the government is only helping. We, the people, ask the government to participate in encouraging this money waqf to be collected and become the ummah's endowment fund," Ma'ruf explained.

The government also has its own financial mechanism for development, including through state debt securities (SUN), government securities (SBN) and state sharia securities (SBSN).

So, the funds collected from cash waqf will not be used by the government to finance development, said the Vice President.

"This government only wants to direct. Later, the results will be distributed according to the request of the wakif (the party who donated his property). So, the wakif has mentioned at the beginning that the results are for this purpose, for example," he said.