to engage only in acts that bring him closer to Allah. Someone who makes the mosque his residence is not observing a devotional retreat; rather, his conduct involves both doing what is prohibited and preventing what is prescribed. Someone in this situation prevents people from using that spot for the purposes for which the mosque was built: prayer, recitation and remembrance of Allah. As mentioned in the request for a fatwa, some of them prevent a person from reciting the Quran in that spot as other reciters do. What this wrongdoer has done is objectionable in several respects:

First, he uses the mosque as a place to sleep at night, rest at midday and reside, like rooms in caravanserais and inns.

Second, he prevents someone from reciting the Quran where recitation is prescribed.

Third, he prevents some people but not others. If he argues that those others recite because of the endowment established for them, whereas this person is not among its beneficiaries, that excuse would be even more reprehensible than the exclusion itself. Someone who recites the Quran seeking Allah’s reward is more deserving of assistance than someone who recites because of an endowment. The founder of an endowment has no right to change Allah’s religion. Merely establishing an endowment does not give its beneficiaries any right within the mosque that they did not previously possess.

Thus, if the founder wished to reserve a spot in the mosque for his endowment in such a way as to exclude others from it, he would have no right to do so. Even if he designated a spot in the mosque for the recitation, teaching or similar activities he had stipulated, that particular spot would not become binding, just as it does not become binding in the case of