Islamic Fiqh > Marriage and family > Infertility and medically assisted reproduction
The thwarted desire for children: the MAR frame in fiqh, what is admitted, what is void, and the patience promised to the afflicted.
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Updated on 06 October 2026 at 10:50 PM
The OCI Fiqh Academy set the frame as early as 1986: resolution 16 (3/4) on test-tube babies (3rd session, Amman, 1986). Two licit paths, with the necessary precautions: fertilizing the couple's gametes followed by implantation into the wife's own uterus (IVF), and insemination of the husband's sperm into his wife's cervix or uterus. The protocol fits one line: gametes of husband and wife, the wife's uterus, no third party.
The same resolution bans 5 procedures absolutely: the husband's sperm with another woman's egg, a stranger's sperm with the wife's egg, implanting the couple's gametes into a volunteer's uterus (surrogacy), gametes of 2 strangers, a co-wife's uterus. The stated reason: "mixing of lineages, loss of motherhood". The Academy's resolution 181 (17/9) completes: the embryo is a human to be safeguarded, its life may not be destroyed except in an extreme necessity recognized by the shari'a.
The invocation of al-Furqan remains the couple's word: "Lord, grant us joy from our spouses and our offspring" (surah al-Furqan 74). And the highest path of the childless: "I and the guardian of the orphan are thus in Paradise" (al-Bukhari 5304): fostering, kafala, spending on orphans.
The tested couple: consult a doctor and a scholar together, check that the clinic follows the protocol (the couple's gametes, no third party), and keep the invocation of al-Furqan: the licit path exists within marriage, and its nobility lies in its limits.