A fund management venture set up in Dubai this month is taking aim at one of the great backwaters of the Middle Eastern economy: Islamic endowments, which control tens of billions of dollars of assets around the region.
The endowments, known as awqaf, receive donations from Muslims to operate specific social projects, such as mosques, schools and welfare schemes. The system goes back more than a thousand years, to soon after the birth of Islam. Over the past few decades, as Middle Eastern populations have grown and the Gulf’s oil industry has boomed, awqaf have amassed a vast array of assets, from real estate to cash holdings, equities and even valuable books………………………………………..Full Article: Source