The Beneficiary, the Law, and Sacred Space

As all religious endowments formally circumvent established rules of inheritance and property transfer by attaching specific (religious) obligations and naming beneficiaries (worshippers), the laws governing them have the capacity to radically shape the form and even content of religious practice. Chapter 4 further explores how the law manages propriety through property. Through the analysis of landmark Parsi legal cases over beneficiary access to trust-managed sacred spaces, this chapter will show how the role of trust beneficiary both enables and constrains notions of ethnoreligious identity and to what degree a secular court will interfere in religious trust matters.