Is organ donation permitted?

The four schools never ruled on this. Transplantation postdates them, and the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia says so in its own introduction, listing organ transfer “from the dead to the living” among the questions the early jurists could reach only as hypothetical fiqh. What the schools do supply is the principle the modern rulings argue from — whether a living person’s necessity may be met out of the body of a dead one — and on that they differ, the Malikis alone refusing it outright. The ruling itself comes from named contemporary bodies, and they differ too: the Islamic Fiqh Academy, the Muslim World League’s Fiqh Council, the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta and AMJA permit donation on conditions; Darul Uloom Deoband refuses it. On the question this register actually turns on — directing it in a will — the split is sharpest: the Islamic Fiqh Academy treats the deceased’s prior authorisation as the very thing that makes cadaveric donation lawful, while the Islamic Fiqh Academy of India holds such a direction is not a valid wasiyya at all.

All four Sunni schools researched and sourced. Reviewed 2026-09-01. Full positions, evidence and sources — May a Muslim donate organs, and direct it in a will?.