I would just like to expand on point 3 and Abu Bakr’s point about real estate. This is already underway in a mosque/centre in West London, whereby adjacent land was bought by them to build flats and offices for rent. That way, the mosque/centre has a steady monthly income.

Aside from that, many of the rooms/halls are often used for lectures, workshops and business meetings (even weddings) from Muslims around London.

This mosque/centre has a library, canteen, counselling services and provides Islamic, Arabic, English and computer courses. They also have a range of cultural, social and educational projects like exhibitions, homework clubs etc. Alhamidulillah.

I think its very important for a mosque to also be a centre. Aside from the revenue aspect, as a mosque alone, non-Muslims can find it intimidating but as a centre aswell, it will/has encouraged more involvement and better community relations, from what I can see.

#2 – Singapore uses a variation on this theme wherein MUIS, which is part of the Singapore government, provides for the salaries of the imams (my understanding is that the imams are government employees). Maintenance of the masajid, I believe, are funded in part by MUIS and by individual contributions. MUIS also helps to fund the construction of the masajid. Every month, I have several dollars deducted from my paycheck, which is forwarded to MUIS for the masajid construction fund. Waqf is also used here, but I believe that is primarily used to fund the various madrassahs.

#3 – The masjid in Tempe, Arizona (which is where I first made shahadah) has a similar development. When that masjid was constructed back in the early 80s, a primary school building and a restaurant/grocery store was also built at the same time on the property.

#5 – This suggestion was made here in S’pore several years ago by then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.

Again, as Umm Yasmin mentions, there are a lot of problems with some of the mosque boards and the intra/inter-ethnic squabbling and bickering. There are also the usual allegations of corruption, mishandling of funds and so on that seems to characterise many community projects, so it is not surprising that the more affluent members of our community may be reluctant to hand over the necessary wads of cash to these people.

Part of the problem is therefore how do we make sure the people running our mosques and community organisations are decent, trustworthy and well-adjusted people who are there because they want to help the community and not because of some pecuniary benefit such as bolstering their status within their particular racial/ethnic group or the like. Difficult question but hopefully one that will solve itself once the Australian Muslim community develops.

One exception (and there are several) to the above are the Turkish mosques. I don’t know how they fund their upkeep (I know Diyanet looks after their imams) but, almost without exception, the Turkish mosques are well looked after and clean.

Something like this seems like a great idea in order to get revenue, if you ask me.

This is *such* a vital topic. One of the problems even in the Muslim world, since the introduction of Western education has been an attitude among some that the best and brightest kids are sent to study medicine, engineering, law etc. whilst the dunce of the family goes off to become the imam, because the former are valued whilst the latter simply isn’t. Now, I am certainly not having a go at all our imams, many of whom are wonderfully intelligent, spiritual and altruistically-motivated people (and I have met some who like this masha’Allah), I’m just complaining about the attitude of not valuing religious vocations.

Another problem for the Muslim community is that we are ’startups’ in the Western world. Whilst older religious communities–particularly Christian–have the benefit of established resources, buildings and institutions behind them, we are in comparison, a new religious community. We have to do it all from scratch.

But, we can learn from the older religious communities here. I think having things like bookshops, nursing homes, halal-butchers & supermarkets, coffee-shops as part of a masjid complex would be fabulous and be a source of rental income to help pay decent wages for Imams.

And long-term trusts that we could setup to educate and attract the best and most knowledgeable imams would be such a dream!

We also need to reform mosque admin. boards if you ask me. Way too much in-fighting, status & ego squabbles, ethnic divisions etc. that take away the energies from serving Allah, subhana wa t’ala.

(My comments are made with the reservation that I am not an Imam, nor am I related to an Imam, so I am a relatively clueless layperson).

I seriously believe that our community leaders, religious and financial, need to sit down and start developing ideas and projects for the development of suitable awqaf that will help give financial stability to our islamic institutions and to fund islamic activity.

1. Option 6, as you said is a bit extreme and probably against the Sunnah. Paying for services is fine. But paying to get the front row of the Masjid, is way off track. People who could not afford the membership couldn’t earn the Ajar. Unfortunatley, that is our capitalistic nature talking.

2. One major overlooked issue is the cause of the problem. Masajid, Islamic Institutions, positions of Imams were never meant to be administered/financed by individuals/communities. These were always entities that were meant to be responsibilities of the Islamic State. When these entities become responsibilities of individuals, personal agendas and other dysfuntional behavior arises. Unfortuntately, we abandoned the Islamic Sate and are paying for it in all aspects of our lives.

Just my 2 cents.