DUNAMA JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC STUDIES (DUJIS) VOL. 2 NO. 1 MAY 2022 33 A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING PUBLIC PERCEPTION ON WAQF MANAGEMENT ISHIAKU, SAFIYANU sufyangme@gmail.com AND SHERIFF, MUHAMMAD IBRAHIM sheriffalmuhajir@gmail.com Abstract Waqf (Endowment) has been recognized among the Islamic institutions as another Islamic principle for redistribution of wealth and promotion of social welfare in Muslim societies. Thus, Muslims all over the world have being directly or indirectly practicing Waqf to achieve its objectives. However, despite its enormous roles in poverty reduction, the poverty rate continued to remain alarming and a serious threat for the wellbeing of many Muslim societies. This has attracted many scholars to conduct exploratory researches in trying to find the roots of the lingered economic hardships among Muslim societies. Other studies attributed the challenges affecting Waqf with many factors including; endowers’ feedback and the public perception about the practices and management of Waqf institution. This study explores the various factors motivating Muslim communities to pay Waqf. It reviews the relevant literature on Waqf management and its practices across Muslim communities. The findings reveal that there are two major factors that encourage the acceptability of Waqf institution which are categorized as ideological and logistical barriers to Waqf management, the barriers which are directly linked to the public perception towards the successes of Waqf institutions. The study attempts to construct a framework that examine and analyses issues affecting the Waqf institutions. The framework can be a significant tool that direction for researchers interested in providing solutions towards sustainability of Waqf institutions and could also be applied to explore public perceptions for other conventional and non-profit religious principles like Zakat and Sadaqa institutions. Keywords: Waqf, Framework, Management, Understanding, Public Perception. Introduction Perception has been defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted.” This reflects another definition by Berelson and Steiner (1964) that; perception is a “complex process by which people select, organize, and interpret sensory stimulation into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world”. In this manner, we can understand that perception is “about receiving, selecting, acquiring, transforming and organizing the information supplied by our senses” (Barber and Legge, 1976). Among the early research efforts on perception is that of Bartlett’s (1932), a background study that gives a detail on the constructive nature of cognition. |The study argues that human perception is normally dominated by schematic thinking to an extent that human generic beliefs about the world influence and shape information processes. Perception may be understood as knowledge gained from the process of coming to know or understand something. It includes awareness, consciousness, sense, concept, conception, idea, image, notion, and thought. Other terms related to perception includes attention, recognition, heuristic, information, intelligence, mental model, and understanding (Barber and Legge, 1976). It involves understanding (or