WAQF FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: MAPPING THE INTELLECTUAL STRUCTURE OF ISLAMIC SOCIAL FINANCE SCHOLARSHIP

Abstract

Waqf has re-emerged in the scholarly literature as an instrument for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet the intellectual architecture of this growing body of research remains only partially mapped. This study aims to identify the intellectual structure of waqf-related sustainable development scholarship by synthesizing peer-reviewed articles indexed in Scopus. Following a systematic literature review protocol, a search string combining waqf-related terms (waqf, awqaf, wakaf, cash waqf, corporate waqf) with sustainability-related terms (sustainable development, SDGs, poverty alleviation, social welfare, sustainability) was applied to the Scopus database, restricted to journal articles in English, yielding 255 records; after removing one duplicate, 254 unique articles published between 1999 and 2026 were retained. An intra-corpus co-citation network was constructed in Python (NetworkX) to trace citation linkages among the retrieved documents, and community detection (greedy modularity) was applied to identify thematic clusters. The analysis reveals six interconnected clusters, the largest centering on waqf-based poverty alleviation grounded in maqasid al-shariah, followed by clusters on innovative sector-specific financing models, institutional sustainability and legal-regulatory frameworks, cross-country cash waqf practice, and the comparatively emerging themes of integrated Islamic social finance ecosystems and waqf governance. The findings suggest that waqf scholarship on sustainable development has evolved from classical, poverty-focused conceptualizations toward increasingly diversified, sector-specific, and cross-jurisdictional inquiry, while institutional governance and ecosystem-level integration remain comparatively underexplored. These insights may inform future research agendas and policy discussions on strengthening waqf's contribution to sustainable development.