Endowment: Selling Deteriorating Books from a Private Endowment
Practical Laws of Islam as per the teachings of Imam Khamenei
Endowment: Selling Deteriorating Books from a Private Endowment
English:
Question #2079:
A person made his private library an endowment for his male offspring. Since none of his offspring has become a clergyman, the books were left to gather dust. Termite damaged some. Others are on the road to ruin. Is it permissible for the inheritors to sell those books?
Answer #2079:
Should the person have made the endowment conditional on his sons becoming theology students and eventually clergymen, such kind of endowment is null and void to start with, because it was made dependant on a particular requirement. If the endowment was set up for their benefit, yet none of them had the capacity to do so, even sometime in the future, such kind of endowment is valid.
It is, therefore, permissible for them to put the books at the disposal of other people who have the capacity to benefit from them. The same applies if the endowment was made for the benefit of those who can use them, in which case the sons, should they be the trustees; have to put the books at the disposal of those people. However, they have no right to sell the books.
-Imam Khamenei, Practical Laws of Islam, Importance and Conditions of Endowments