Ruling on taking the Mushaf out of the mosque or replacing it with another
Question I am the imam of a mosque and in the mosque there are more than 250 copies of the Qur’aan, as in all mosques. As you know, most of them are not read and have stayed on the bookshelf for perhaps 20 years. Of course some of them have been put there by the…
Question
Praise be to Allah.
Firstly:
If a Mushaf
has been given as a waqf to a specific mosque, it is not permissible to take
it out of the mosque to read it at home or replace it with another one.
The scholars
of the Standing Committee (16/19) were asked: Is it permissible to take the
Mushaf out of the Haram to read it at home?
They
replied:
If Mushafs
and books have been given as a waqf for people to benefit from in a specific
place, it is not permissible to take them elsewhere, whether a Haram or
somewhere else, unless the place where they were put is no longer in
operation, in which case they should be moved to somewhere where they may be
as beneficial or more so. End quote.
Standing
Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
Shaykh ‘Abd
al-‘Azeez ibn ‘Abdullah ibn Baaz, Shaykh ‘Abdullah ibn Ghadyaan, Shaykh
‘Abdullah ibn Qa‘ood
Shaykh Ibn
‘Uthaymeen (may Allah have mercy on him) was asked: Is it permissible to
take a Mushaf from the mosque then return it?
He replied:
It is not
permissible to take a Mushaf from the mosque then return it, because the
Mushafs that are found in mosques are awqaaf donated for the public benefit,
for everyone who enters the mosque to benefit from. If someone takes them,
then this implies that he is keeping them for himself and depriving others
of it, which is haraam and is not permissible even if he replaces it with
another Mushaf. The Mushafs in the mosques should be left as they are, and
anyone who wants to read them may do so, in the mosque itself.
End quote
from Fataawa ash-Shaykh Ibn ‘Uthaymeen, Noor ‘ala ad-Darb.
Secondly:
If there are
many Mushafs in the mosque and they are not being made use of, there is
nothing wrong with transferring the extras to another mosque that needs
Mushafs.
Shaykh Ibn
Baaz (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
If this
small mosque does not need some of the Mushafs that are in it, there is
nothing wrong with transferring those that are not needed in this mosque to
another mosque that needs them, because the aim is that the worshippers
benefit from these Mushafs. But to be on the safe side, it is better to ask
the imam for permission to do that, because he knows best what the mosque
needs.
End quote
from Majmoo‘ al-Fataawa, 20/15.
For more
information please see the answer to question no.
49886
To sum up:
it is not permissible to take the Mushaf from the mosque or to replace it
with another.
If the
Mushafs in the mosque are more than is needed, the extra copies may be
transferred to another mosque.
And Allah knows best.
