2024年3月6日，新加坡社会及家庭发展部长兼卫生部第二部长，主管回教事务部长马善高答复蔡厝港集选区议员周凯年关于瓦合甫（编者注：瓦合甫是伊斯兰法律当中不可剥夺的宗教捐献）资产使用的问题。
以下内容为新加坡眼根据国会英文资料翻译整理：
新加坡瓦合甫的遗产如何处置的？
左图：社会及家庭发展部长兼卫生部第二部长，主管回教事务部长马善高 右图：蔡厝港集选区议员周凯年
周凯年议员：你好，主席。感谢部长。部长，我有个关于瓦合甫的问题。
2021年，新加坡伊斯兰宗教委员会总共发放了约400万新币的瓦合甫收益。大约28%都流向了海外受益人。可能是因为一些历史遗留问题或者的条款，有些设立了超过100多年。在这种情况下，可能会很难找到受益人，也难以找到瓦合甫的合法继承人。所以，我有两个问题。
首先，新加坡伊斯兰宗教委员会是否会持续审查瓦合甫清单，特别是那些涉及海外和外国受益人的清单，以确保它们是最新的？其次，对于那些没有明确受益人的瓦合甫，新加坡伊斯兰宗教委员会是否会审查或考虑一些措施，比如通过法律裁定将更多这些瓦合甫资产转移到本地，让我们本地的穆斯林社区受益？
马善高：谢谢你提出这个问题。
确实，我们推行瓦合甫管理系统（WMS）的一个原因是要摆脱传统的瓦合甫系统，或者为其提供替代方案。虽然瓦合甫的金额已经达到了10亿新币，但其中大部分是固定资产。而固定资产的回报率并不高。此外，一些受益人可能已经过去了100年或200年，要么国家不存在了，要么村庄也不存在了；更别提当时的个人了。这不仅是我们这个社区面临的问题，全世界都面临这样的问题。
同时，为发展瓦合甫而举办的讨论和会议也有声有色。在上次的法律裁定会议上，我和Sano博士进行了深入地交流，他提到如今的瓦合甫的形式已经发生了一些变化。比如，有一种叫做”临时瓦合甫“的东西。你可以把你的宗教基金托管给瓦合甫一年，这段时间你不能动用它，但收益会进入瓦合甫账户—— 在一年合同结束后，宗教基金将会返还给你。
所以这是一个不断发展和创新的瓦合甫模式，关于之前和旧的瓦合甫，我们是否能做些什么。我认为现在让我们继续坚守我们这一代人托付的责任，尽我们所能去实现那些当时把瓦合甫托付给我们的人，以造福他们想要造福的人。
以下是英文内容：
Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim: Thank you, Chairman. I thank the Minister. Minister, I have a question on Wakaf.
In 2021, MUIS disbursed a total of about $4 million as Wakafproceeds. About 28% went to overseas beneficiaries. Maybe this is due to legacy or original terms of the Wakaf, some set more than 100 years ago. In some of these cases, you may find it challenging to find the beneficiaries and locate the rightful heirs to the Wakaf. So, I have two questions.
Firstly, does MUIS continually review the list of Wakaf, especially for those with overseas and foreign beneficiaries, to make sure that they are up to date? Secondly, for such Wakafs with no clear beneficiaries, will MUIS review or consider measures, for instance, to pass fatwas to bring more of these Wakaf assets onshore and benefit our local Muslim community?
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: I thank the Member for asking that clarification.
Indeed, one of the motivations why we instituted the WMS is to move on away from or to provide alternatives to the traditional Wakaf system, which for Singapore, although it has amounted to a billion dollars, most of them are in fixed assets. And when you have a fixed asset, the returns from fixed assets are not very high. In addition to that, the beneficiaries that were named some time 100 or some 200 years ago, either the country does not exist anymore; the village does not exist anymore; let alone the person does not exist anymore. This is not just faced by communities like ourselves, it is faced all over the world.
In the meantime, there are good discussions, conferences to evolve the concept of Wakaf. In the last fatwa conference, I had a good discussion with Dr Sano, for example, who said that today, the instruments of Wakaf has evolved. For example, there is something called a temporary Wakaf. That means you pledge your Corpus Fund for, say, one year and that you cannot use it; but the returns will then go into the Wakaf – the Corpus Fund goes back to you after that one-year contract.
So that is an evolving and a new way of doing Wakaf and whether or not we can do something about the previous and older Wakaf. I think for now let us keep to the trust that has been put to our generation, to try as best as we can to execute the will or the intention of those before us who put this Wakaf in our trust to benefit the people they wanted to.
新加坡国会丨来源
新加坡国会丨图源
