Islamic Fiqh > Financial transactions > Ikrah: coercion in contracts
Signing under threat: what effect on the contract? Degrees of coercion, what is annulled and what remains valid, and coercion in penal matters.
Updated on 06 October 2026 at 10:50 PM
Duress (ikrah) is forcing a person to contract. Two cases must be distinguished.
Compulsion in the name of right: a judge compels a debtor to sell enough to repay. The sale is valid, binding and without withdrawal: the Prophet told the Jews of Khaybar: "whoever of you has wealth, let him sell it" (al-Bukhari 6545); al-Muhallab explains that since the payment of the right was already binding, their sale counted as their own choice.
A sale obtained by oppression: it does not bind the coerced seller, by the reported consensus (Muhammad ibn Sahnun: "our companions and the people of Iraq agree"; al-Abhari: "it is a consensus"); the schools then differ on its effect: the Hanafis make consent a condition of validity, the Malikis of binding force, and the Shafi'is and Hanbalis a condition of the act's validity. Once the duress ends, the seller recovers what he can: the Malikis order the goods to travel back hand to hand to whoever holds them, the oppressor bearing the price or the value, whichever is greater.
The Shafi'is hold that a pledge taken under duress, from either side, produces no effect: when the duress ends, the situation returns to what it was, and the asset is restored before any new contract. The Hanafis require consent and the owner's permission for the taking of the pledge; the muftis of the school tolerate the silence of the debtor present in the session as a sign of permission.
Consent is the soul of the contract: what is taken by force is not owned, and fiqh gives the victim a way back, asset by asset, up to the oppressor.