Asaduddin Owaisi warns of RSS exploiting Waqf legislation

The Hindu

23-05-2025

Hyderabad parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi alleged that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) would exploit provisions of the proposed waqf legislation to initiate disputes over mosques, claiming they belong to other religions.
Mr. Owaisi was addressing a women's public meeting organised by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) at the Hockey Ground where AIMPLB president Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, parliamentarians Maulana Mohibbullah Nadvi and Fouzia Khan, and the convener of AIMPLB's Women's Wing, Jaleesa Yaseen, among many others were in attendance.
Warning of the potential consequences of the proposed law, Mr. Owaisi said, 'If this law remains, remember that the RSS has a list of places which they claim are not masjids but sites belonging to other faiths. They want to approach the collector with representations asserting this. Until the collector completes the inquiry, the place will cease to be treated as a masjid.'
He contended that waqf boards are inherently religious in nature and accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of misleading the public. 'There is no secular work that takes place there. The BJP is lying when it calls waqf boards secular institutions. These boards perform purely religious functions. The fifth pillar of Islam is charity through zakaat. Waqf is connected to this obligation,' Mr Owaisi stated.
Rajya Sabha MP Fouzia Khan described the Union government's submission in the Supreme Court, that waqf is not an essential religious practice of Islam, as a 'cruel joke'.
'Waqf properties were endowed for religious purposes by our ancestors in the name of Allah. To claim that this is not a fundamental religious practice — what kind of joke is this?' she asked. 'Did our ancestors not donate land to masjids as waqf? And when we die, is not the land in which we are buried considered waqf? Charity is a fundamental to our faith, and it is connected to sharia,' she said.
Later, Ms. Yaseen, the convener of the Women's Wing, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using the rhetoric of Muslim women's empowerment as a pretext to undermine Muslim personal law and the sharia.
'During the triple talaq issue, he said the same thing: that the status of women would improve. Look at the statistics. Since 2019, has their status improved? They remain where they were,' she said. She added that none of the amendments to the Waqf Act were aimed at protecting Muslim endowments. 'If they do not protect waqf, how can they claim to empower women?' she asked.
Maulana Nadwi, Lok Sabha MP from Rampur, also criticised the proposed waqf law. He stressed the obligatory nature of charity in Islam and described waqf as an extension of zakaat. 'Zakaat is the superlative degree of waqf,' he remarked.