Alhamdulillah we have great news to share! Diwan Collective has secured a permanent home as part of the MCGP Foundation in Princeton! The MCGP Foundation, a waqf of its own has been working with us for months to provide a permanent home for Diwan in it's waqf at 379 Princeton Hightstown Road, Building 2, East Windsor NJ. 

As we grow we hope to offer more courses, more lectures and talks and a collection of books to form a library on-site. Your support will help us to expand and sustain operations! This is why we have added a new Giving Level - The Living Shelf. A $400 donation will allow us to procure about 30-40 books, or a shelf's worth of books for our library. We are very grateful for your continued support and the community is benefiting a lot from our offerings Alhamdulillah. 

Since our launch we've hosted a few events with great success including Reading Majlis sessions and Guest Talk on community building rooted in Islamic tradition! See images attached from our first Reading Majlis and feel free to join us for our next sessions :)
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As Diwan Collective, we are launching a new project to open a unique community space and waqf (pious endowment). This waqf will be the first of its kind in our area. Our project seeks to create a space that fills a gap in our community. While mosques are plentiful and increasing, and Muslim-owned coffee shops are on the rise, Muslims in our community still lack an intellectual and spiritual space wherein they can reconnect with their Islamic intellectual and spiritual tradition at the same time. The goal of this waqf is to provide space where Muslims and other like-minded individuals can gather for the purpose of intellectual and spiritual engagement in the way of our Islamic tradition. 

Our space seeks to add another aspect completely missing from our community altogether - that is a space that fosters knowledge production by Muslims, providing literature and art made by Muslims, for Muslims and the broader community. In addition to fostering a space for Muslims to gather and learn, we also want this to be a space where Muslims are able to produce knowledge and art as well as to be able to consume knowledge produced by other Muslims both within our history and from contemporary scholarship. 

This is neither a unique model nor is it new. Throughout Islamic history, awqaf vastly operated outside the mosque framework and were often well integrated into the cityscape. From the commonly known awqaf like schools, hospitals, and soup kitchens to the lesser known kinds like animal welfare, urban beautification, and funds for marriage to the obscure such as awqaf to replace broken dishes, paying fines for prisoners, and providing ice for Hajj pilgrims to cool off. The waqf institution was integral in providing all kinds of services to the Muslim community and oftentimes served as the backbone of Muslim society. At its peak, lands owned by the awqaf in cities like Istanbul comprised 50% of all property in the city - in places like Sarajevo and Cairo between 30-40% of all property in the city was owned by awqaf. 

While many mosques across the Islamic world historically operated expansive awqaf on their campuses, many still doing so until today, this is not the case with the vast majority of American communities today. Issues from funding, to a lack of understanding or interest in the significance of establishing awqaf has left out such an integral aspect of the community's well-being and support - that is the waqf. Because of this, Muslim communities are often struggling to provide the necessary services needed for the community and are often left nearly begging the community to fund basic operational costs. 

What Are We Fundraising For?

The fundraising goal we have set will cover all startup costs plus operational costs for 1-2 years. These costs cover the physical space which will include a large collection of books, a space to gather for seminars, halaqahs, study, discussion, book clubs, and many other kinds of gatherings. It will also include all other related costs such as drinks and food items, art works, operational expenses of the space and anything else related to this. 

Our goal is to become truly self-sufficient during the period of the first couple of years through the sale of books, drinks and food items, art work and other revenue streams. In becoming self-sufficient we hope to become a space that can provide generously for the community. 

Donating to this waqf will be a sadaqah jariyah in your name so long as this space continues to run. Many people will benefit from this space in countless ways and your donation will secure for you the rewards for every single benefit from every individual who interacts with our space - even long after you are gone. 

May Allah reward you in multitudes for your generous donation!

The Space

The funds raised will curate a space that will contain a large selection of books, starting with about 3,000-5,000 books with the goal of expanding much further over the years. The books will range in topics including History & Geography, Religion, Politics, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Travelogues, Islamic Arts, Architecture, Fiction/Fantasy, and much more. These books will be available for use within the space or for purchase both in person and online (with shipping anywhere in the US). 

In addition to our literary collection we will also have a seating area where students, families, and anyone else can come and use the space to study, work, read, play board games, socialize, and meet with others. Our space removes the pressures of spending money to be in a space, and will be open to the public to enjoy without needing to purchase anything. 

We will also be curating all kinds of events multiple times throughout the week. We will be hosting academic seminars, books clubs, art workshops, history courses, and much more for the benefit of the community. Our goal is to try to offer as many of these events and gatherings for free as best as possible. 

Of course, we will also be providing beverages, desserts, and snacks for the enjoyment of the attendees for purchase. Our space is one where attendees can enrich themselves spiritually, intellectually, and nutritionally. As such, we will take great care to maintain a menu that is enjoyable and tasty, but also healthy and nutritious. 

Lastly, we will provide a prayer space for attendees to be able to pray throughout the day. We understand that there are those who will spend extended periods of time working, reading, or studying and as such, they should have a space where they can easily pray without needing to pack everything up and leave to pray somewhere far. Therefore we hope to accommodate all the needs of our attendees including prayer. 

Location

Diwan Collective's founding members are also lifelong members of the central New Jersey community having attended Noor-Ul-Iman School, and are active members of mosques like ISCJ, NBIC, ICMC and others in the area. We plan to open our collective in the South Brunswick/Franklin Park/New Brunswick areas in order to be accessible to Muslim families and to the nearby universities where young students can benefit greatly from the space. 

Purpose

This 'Waqf' وقف seeks to revive the Islamic intellectual spirit within the community by cultivating conscious, critically engaged, and morally grounded minds who understand their historical position, their contemporary challenges, and their civilizational responsibility.

It is a 'Waqf' وقف to:

• Revive the spirit of the Islamic intellectual tradition — From history and politics to literature and the arts, to philosophy and sociology, we aim to reconnect members with the adab, depth, richness, and seriousness that historically defined Muslim scholarship and intellectual leadership.
• Instill greater appreciation for classic and contemporary Islamic thought and knowledge production — We want to make accessible the works and texts of major thinkers, movements, debates, and intellectual trajectories that shaped/are shaping Islamic discourse.
• Cultivate knowledge production within Islamic ethos — Encourage Muslims not just to consume knowledge but also to engage in Islamic knowledge production within the ethos of Islamic framework.
• Awaken political consciousness of the Muslim condition globally — Enabling members to have better conceptualizations of power, understand colonial legacies, Muslim struggles, liberation movements, and the political economy shaping the Ummah today.
• Create a 'Waqf' وقف that is not just intellectually enriching, but aesthetically true to Islamic ethos  — Our 'Waqf' وقف will foster an aesthetic that follows the Islamic ethos of physical spaces, encouraging closeness rather than isolation, shared spaces rather than separation, shared resources and exchange of knowledge, engagement in the Islamic arts, and ethical consumption over excess

This 'Waqf' وقف exists not merely to consume books, engage in discussion, or for social gathering, but to form thinkers, conscious Muslims, and future intellectual leaders of the Ummah.

Vision

We envision a 'Waqf' وقف that cultivates the emergence of a new generation of Muslims who are:

• Intellectually confident and courageous
• Politically conscious
• Spiritually grounded
• Historically literate
• Morally responsible
• Capable of meaningful thought, not only opinion
• Artistically inclined and creative

A generation that understands that we carry Islam not only as a personal belief, but that we bear civilizational responsibility. Our minds, voices, and practices are part of honouring this inheritance and working towards its revival.

We envision a 'Waqf' وقف that exists outside of the confines of the traditional American mosque structure, and revives the spirit of the waqf system upon which Muslims all throughout history depended on as the backbone of community. 

Goals

Open a Space for Intellectual Gatherings

• To revive the tradition of halaqah-based intellectual formation
• To provide a 'Waqf' وقف where people can gather without the worry of cost or lack of space
• Provide a space with carefully curated literature that enriches the mind of the civilizationally, Islamically conscious inclined individual
• To revive the tradition of Islamic arts and provide a space where these arts can be displayed, curated, and taught

Create a Waqf (Endowment)

• Develop the first true independent waqf in New Jersey, to its purest meaning - a space that is non-exclusive and accessible to the community at large for the purpose of serving the community at affordable rates

Book Shop

• Create a 'Waqf' وقف where Muslim knowledge consumption and Muslim knowledge production are in the same space - this means having a 'Waqf' وقف where a Muslim owned space (this waqf) becomes the source of all kinds of literature that Muslims and others can benefit from, as well as be a 'Waqf' وقف where books produced by Muslims and others are readily available. It should also be a place where people can have a space to read and contemplate.
• To have a 'Waqf' وقف where books are available for public use and with the eventual goal of developing a large library for Muslims, by Muslims. We aim to curate an highly selective, yet vast library of texts that will be accessible both in person and online.

The Name ‘Diwan’

We see the first use of the term ‘diwan’ or ‘ديوان’ by the second Rightly Guided Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab to refer to the Islamic administrative space. We believe the term perfectly encapsulates all three major elements of our space: literature, social gatherings, and service to the community. 

Over the course of Islamic history the term has developed as one of the richest terms culturally, politically and poetically. It’s also a term that has transcended various languages including Turkish, Persian, and Arabic showing its multicultural appeal and usage. 

Administrative

In its earliest usage by Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab it was used to systematically structure an ever expanding state. His creation of Diwan al-Jund (The Military Register) allowed his government to record the names of soldiers and citizens, keep track of the distribution of stipends and pensions, as well as to maintain a proper record of zakat distribution. 

His model was later developed further by Umayyads and Abbasids who developed Ministries/Departments, or diwans, of finance, State, and other necessary state institutions.

Literary

In Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish, a Diwan is the collection of a single poet's life's work. It is considered one of the highest indicators of personal achievement in the literary genre. The term Diwan is used here as it defines a treasury, archive, or sanctuary or poetry or wisdom. As such, our 'Waqf' وقف will be a place that honors this tradition. 

The Majlis

Over the centuries, the room where administrative scribes and court advisers sat itself became known as the Diwan.

The Imperial Council: In Istanbul, the Divan-ı Hümayun (Imperial Council of the Ottoman Empire) was the grand hall where the Grand Vizier and state ministers met to discuss law, justice, and community welfare.

The Social & Domestic Space: In the Levant, Iraq, and the Gulf, a Diwan (or Diwanyiah) evolved into a dedicated guest house or reception hall attached to a family home.

It is traditionally lined with low-profile floor cushions (majlis). It serves as a democratic, warm space where neighbors, scholars, and travelers gather to drink coffee or tea, discuss politics, resolve disputes, recite poetry, and build community bonds.