Beyond religious identity: A systematic literature review of productive waqf governance and management in OIC and non-OIC ASEAN countries

<jats:p>Productive waqf has emerged as a strategic instrument of Islamic philanthropy with significant potential for social and economic empowerment, yet its governance and management vary considerably across institutional and regulatory contexts. Based on the body of published academic literature, this study aims to analyze and compare the governance and implementation of productive waqf across ASEAN countries that are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and those that are not, in order to identify the institutional factors shaping its development. This research employs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) with a meta-synthesis approach following the PRISMA protocol, analyzing 38 English- and Indonesian-language articles published between 2016 and 2025, retrieved from Scopus, ScienceDirect, and DOAJ, drawn from ASEAN OIC member states (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam) and non-OIC countries (Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia). OIC member states generally demonstrate more developed regulatory and institutional frameworks for waqf, though management quality varies considerably within this group. Non-OIC countries largely lack nationally standardized waqf institutionalization and remain predominantly consumptive in practice, with Singapore as a notable exception demonstrating professional, commercially integrated waqf management. These patterns suggest that OIC membership alone is not a sufficient predictor of waqf governance quality; country-specific institutional design remains the more decisive factor, as reflected in the substantial variation observed within both groups. As this study relies on secondary literature, its findings are constrained by the scope, depth, and availability of published sources, and do not capture primary field-level institutional practices. The density of publications is also uneven across some non-OIC countries; limited academic documentation in these contexts may understate the actual state of waqf practice rather than reflect its genuine absence. This study offers a cross-ASEAN comparative perspective rarely addressed in the waqf literature, distinguishing OIC from non-OIC institutional contexts and proposing a three-stage developmental framework, moving from policy legitimation to regulatory operationalization to governance optimization, for productive waqf development. Future research integrating empirical methods such as case studies to validate and extend these findings.</jats:p>