Canadian Awqaf Foundationالمؤسسة الوقفية الكندية

Registered Canadian charity · Alberta · Waqf

Hold the root.Give the fruit.

Canadian Awqaf Foundation (CAF) is a registered Canadian charity for waqf, the Islamic practice of endowment: the capital is kept, and what it earns goes to charitable work in Canada. Our first research question comes from Canadian agriculture.

Verify our registration Read the research question

تحبيس الأصل وتسبيل الثمرة

“Hold the root, give the fruit” is a classical description of waqf, drawn from the hadith of ʿUmar’s land at Khaybar.

How a waqf works A cross-section of a prairie field. Above the ground line, wheat stalks stand for the income, which is given away each year. Below it, roots in the soil stand for the capital, which is kept. Above ground · the fruit Income, given each year to qualified donees Below ground · the root Capital, held and invested, never spent
Registered charity · Canada Revenue Agency

75994 7120 RR0001

Legal name
Canadian Awqaf Foundation
Designation
Public foundation
Registered since
1 January 2017
Constituted under
Societies Act (Alberta)

A registration number makes no claim. Check it yourself on the CRA List of charities.

Open the CRA list

About CAF

What CAF is

A charity registered in Canada, working on waqf: gifts set aside so that their capital is preserved and their income goes to charitable purposes, year after year.

Canadian Awqaf Foundation was incorporated as a society under Alberta’s Societies Act on 15 January 2016. The Canada Revenue Agency registered it as a charity effective 1 January 2017 and designated it a public foundation.

Its objects, as amended on 9 June 2016, are:

  1. to solicit and receive gifts, bequests, trusts, funds and property and beneficially, or as a trustee or agent, to hold, invest, develop, manage, accumulate, administer and disburse funds and property, pursuant to the provisions of the Income Tax Act, to registered charities as well as other “qualified donees”; and
  2. to undertake activities ancillary and incidental to the attainment of the aforementioned charitable purposes.

CAF is an Organizational Affiliate with Al Rashid Foundation of Canada. Its Chairman and President is Imad Kaddoura, MBA.

How an endowment works

Four layers, from the gift down to the good it does

Waqf (plural awqaf) is the Islamic practice of endowment. An asset is set aside, its capital is kept intact, and what it earns goes to a charitable purpose named when it was given. In Canada, that idea sits comfortably inside charity law.

  1. 01

    A gift is endowed

    A donor gives an asset to CAF as a lasting gift.

  2. 02

    The capital is kept

    CAF holds and manages it. The capital itself is not spent.

  3. 03

    The capital earns

    It is invested prudently, in line with Canadian law and Islamic principles.

  4. 04

    The return does good

    Income is given to qualified donees for charitable work in Canada.

Each year CAF must also meet CRA’s minimum spending requirement (the disbursement quota), so endowment income is planned to cover at least that amount.

Islamic law also recognizes endowments for a fixed term. How, or whether, a Canadian public foundation can hold one is a question we are taking to professional advice: under Canadian tax law, a gift that must be returned to the giver is a loan, not a gift, and cannot be receipted.

One entity, one set of dates

Two organizations have used the name “Awqaf Canada”

On this site, every date and activity is labelled with the entity it belongs to, and CAF’s dates are counted from its own registration.

This site

Canadian Awqaf Foundation

  • Society under Alberta’s Societies Act, incorporated 15 January 2016
  • Registered charity, public foundation, effective 1 January 2017
  • CRA registration 75994 7120 RR0001
A different entity

National Awqaf Foundation of Canada

  • Federal not-for-profit corporation, incorporated in 2014
  • Not a registered charity
  • Appears on this site only where the public record belongs to it

In Canada

What CAF can do, in plain terms

A public foundation’s role is set by its registration. Here is what that means for CAF, and what it does not do.

CAF can

  • Receive gifts, and issue official donation receipts for them as the Income Tax Act allows.
  • Hold and manage endowed funds and property, in its own right or as a trustee or agent for other charities, preserving the capital and using the income.
  • Make gifts to qualified donees, such as other registered charities. Many Canadian universities are registered charities.
  • Carry out charitable activities of its own, such as a research project or a community survey, directly or through a university as a qualified donee.

CAF does not

  • Issue a donation receipt for any payment that buys goods or services, or for any money that has to be returned.
  • Run a public fundraising appeal at present. Before it does, it will check whether it must register under Alberta’s Charitable Fund-raising Act.
  • Give legal, tax or religious rulings. We take professional advice and say where it came from.

What our registration allows: the advice we took

CRA’s 2017 registration letter records that CAF was registered to receive and manage funds for the purpose of making gifts to qualified donees. We asked whether CAF may do more than that. The advice we received from a Canadian charity lawyer, in September 2026, is:

May CAF carry out its own charitable activities, such as a research project or a community survey?
Yes.
May it do so through a university as a qualified donee?
Yes.
Must it first notify CRA, or seek CRA’s approval?
No.

Principles

How we make claims

Claims, then evidence, then metrics, then external verification. The higher the claim, the higher the evidence it needs.

If a researcher, a government officer or an AI assistant checked a sentence on this site in thirty seconds, what would they find?

  1. No unsourced superlatives

    We do not call ourselves first, oldest, largest or pioneering. If a claim cannot be sourced, we attribute it or drop it.

  2. Photographs are records, not endorsements

    A photograph shows that a meeting took place, on a date, with a named body. It never shows that anyone endorsed anything. Our captions say what happened, when and where.

  3. Partners are named after success

    Where a partner enables a project, its name goes on after the project succeeds, never at the start, and only with its consent.

  4. We correct in public

    When we get something wrong, we say so in our corrections log and show what changed.

  5. We are open about our tools

    This website was drafted with the help of Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, and reviewed by CAF volunteers, who are responsible for every statement on it.

  6. Volunteers, not staff

    CAF is run by volunteers. We may be slow to reply, and we would rather be slow than inaccurate. We have nothing to sell.