| Country | Model of waqf management | Key feature of waqf system | Indian Waqf Boards (Pre-2025 Amendment) |
| Brunei | Centralized state administration via e-governance platforms. | Increased transparency, streamlined services, and public access to records; sultanate-level centralization and real-time state monitoring. | Stark contrast: Decentralized, minimally audited powers; could declare properties without digital verification or public access mandates. |
| Egypt | Ministry of Awqaf maintains full governmental authority. | Subsumes endowments into state budgets with rigorous oversight and tightly controlled registration/management. | Disproportionate latitude to claim properties retrospectively, a provision not replicated in Egypt's tightly controlled system; wielded immense legal and financial power with minimal direct bureaucratic interference. |
| Indonesia | Autonomous national waqf board under the Ministry of Religious Affairs. | Focus on productive waqf assets (hospitals, real estate); operates with mandatory annual audits and limited declarative powers. | Provided broader, unchecked authority to expand waqf holdings, distinguishing it from Indonesia's balanced oversight. |
| Iran | Supervised by the Organization for Endowments and Charitable Institutions under strict guidelines. | Properties permitted only if they generate sustainable financial returns without diminishing capital; emphasis on sustainability over expansion. | Could perpetually claim and hold properties without equivalent financial viability checks, affording disproportionate permanence and control. |
| Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria | Integrated under religious affairs ministries or councils. | Mandatory state audits and no independent declaration powers. | Waqf Boards uniquely empowered to override civil land records, fostering disputes that highlight the comparative excess and potential for misuse/abuse of autonomy. |
| Kuwait and Singapore | Mandates state oversight and corporate governance standards. | Integration with national development plans (Kuwait); modern waqf management techniques. | Lacked such mandatory alignments, holding expansive declarative powers that exceeded these countries' regulated models. |
| Libya and Sudan | Administered through centralized government departments under direct executive control. | Limited autonomy for independent boards; ministerial structures. | Granted State Waqf Boards quasi-judicial powers to adjudicate disputes without appeal to higher civil courts, a level of independence absent in these nations. |
| Malaysia | Waqf must be officially registered under civil laws enacted in 1956. | Focus on religious, educational, and social welfare; federal Sharia courts with appellate mechanisms exercise greater control. | Contrasting India's non-appealable tribunal decisions and broad property claims, which granted Waqf Boards greater unilateral authority. |
| Turkey | Managed by the state's Directorate General of Foundations; direct government oversight. | State has historically centralized/nationalized properties; subject to ministerial approval and judicial review. | Enjoyed significant autonomy, including unilateral power to declare property as waqf without mandatory government verification; functioned as quasi-autonomous statutory bodies with self-adjudication power. |
