KUALA LUMPUR: Financial tools and instruments alone cannot be our moral compass, says Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah.
His Royal Highness said having the ability to establish a cash waqf sukuk is insufficient, as society must think deeply about its intended purpose.
"Here our own moral tradition offers something no financial engineering can supply on its own.
"We must be honest about the present as our honesty is itself a form of respect for this institution.
"Too much of our waqf today lies dormant.
"Its lands sit idle, its records are incomplete, its titles are disputed and its potential goes unrealised," he said when opening the 2026 International Waqf Dakwah Convention at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre on Monday (July 27).
Sultan Nazrin said that in some places, the endowments of the faithful have been lost through neglect or mismanagement.
"Where an endowment is poorly governed, barakah is not multiplied but diminished, and the trust of the donor is quietly betrayed.
"It is not enough to romanticise waqf as a glory of our past while we permit it to decay in our present.
"We are here today, in some sense, because of the benefits it has bestowed over the centuries and we therefore have a duty to make it a working instrument of our future," he said.
His Royal Highness said this is where governance enters the picture, not as a bureaucratic burden but as a duty given in trust.
"The one who administers an endowment is not its owner but holds it in trust for the poor, the students, the sick and the generations to come who do not yet have a voice at our tables.
"It is to keep clear records, to account honestly for every ringgit, to invest wisely and guard against loss.
"These are not secular intrusions upon a sacred institution, they are the substance of faithfulness to it.
"A well-kept ledger, in the service of a waqf, is an act of worship," he said.
Sultan Nazrin said the blessings of waqf cannot flourish under weak governance, warning that mismanagement amounts to a betrayal of donors' trust.
He said the one who gives to a waqf is not merely parting with wealth as they are sustaining a civilisation that measures success by what one leaves behind for others rather than by what one gathers for oneself.
"That is a lesson our age desperately needs, surrounded as we are by every invitation to accumulate and very few to endow.
"The instruments available to us today would have astonished those who built the endowments of old.
"Cash waqf allows the believer of modest means to give a little each month and see it pooled into something substantial.
"Waqf linked to Islamic finance can fund schools, clinics and affordable housing at a scale that earlier generations could hardly have imagined," he said.
He said framework for the management and governance of waqf already exists.
"We do not need to start from scratch but rather join the dots and open the doors for the genuinely inclusive development of international waqf guidance.
The Perak Ruler proposed establishing an international consultative working group to develop global waqf governance principles by building on Indonesia's Waqf Core Principles, the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions' (AAOIFI) waqf standards, and Kazakhstan’s waqf governance framework.
He suggested that INCEIF University, which helped develop Indonesia's Waqf Core Principles, serve as the secretariat for the initiative.
"There are many innovative solutions available to us, and many paths forward like in South-East Asia, where Indonesia has pioneered micro-waqf, inspired by microfinance, enabling individuals to make small, regular, digital donations that are aggregated into large waqf funds.
"They have also launched several eco-waqf initiatives, including waqf to fund solar panels and waqf to protect land from exploitation," be said.
Sultan Nazrin then called for the accelerated adoption of digital cash waqf platforms equipped with transparent, real-time public dashboards, enabling donors to track their contributions from pledge to project completion.
He then proposed the launch of a Waqf for Peace and Planetary Resilience pilot project involving mosques, madrasah and community centres in Malaysia, Indonesia and other Asean countries.
"This pilot would fund solar retrofits and climate-resilient water infrastructure, modelled on Indonesia’s eco-pesantren (Islamic boarding schools that integrate conservation and sustainability practices) experience.
"It would also embed a shared curriculum, so that the installation of these solar panels goes hand-in-hand with the training of young people, not only in sustainability, but in the trust-building work of living harmoniously with neighbours of every faith," he said.
He also urged waqf institutions to formally embed the principles of balance, justice, mercy and trusteeship into their governing charters so that trustees could be held accountable against clear ethical standards.
"The time for action is now and this conference is our golden opportunity for us to do the vital work that will propel the noble institution of waqf into the future, so that it may continue to benefit those who inherit our world," His Royal Highness said.
