Cash Waqf in Islamic Jurisprudence and its Applicability to Support Health Care in the Muslim Community in Ghana: الوقف النقدي في الفقه الإسلامي وإمكانية تطبيقه لدعم الرعاية الصحية في المجتمع الإسلامي الغاني

Abstract

This study explores the cash waqf and health care issues within the Muslim community in Ghana. The community encounters numerous health challenges due to the Ghanaian national health insurance's limited coverage of all health services, particularly high-cost treatment operations. As a result, many impoverished Muslims are unable to afford the cost of these operations. The aim of this study is to develop a model for a cash waqf fund that will support healthcare projects. The researchers used an inductive approach to extrapolate and derive rules related to the cash waqf; in addition, an analytical-descriptive approach was used to discover the challenges in the field of healthcare in Muslim communities in Ghana and the possibility of applying the cash waqf fund in Ghana to address the challenges by conducting personal interviews with some experts and stakeholders. The researchers also used thematic analysis to analyze the data. The study concluded with a variety of findings, such as contemporary jurists have adopted the perspective of those who argue that cash waqf is permissible, since it satisfies the Sharῑ‘ah objective of waqf, which is retaining the principal and offering its benefits, and because units of money have no specific merits that prevent units from standing for and replacing each other. Likewise, in this era, the cash waqf also plays an important role in improving the health sector in countries with a Muslim majority or a Muslim minority. Additionally, Muslim doctors in Ghana established an association to address the challenges they faced in the health sector and to provide health care services to the Muslim community in Ghana. However, the association's ability to carry out its work was hampered by a lack of funding. Therefore, the proposed cash waqf model offers potential benefits for financing projects in the health care sector of society