Is a Muslim obliged to write a will?

Agreed. Not in itself — but yes, wherever something would otherwise be lost. The four schools do not make writing a will a duty on every Muslim. What they make obligatory is the will that is the only way a right reaches the person it belongs to. Ibn Qudama opens the Book of Wills with it: “the wasiyyah is not obligatory except upon one who owes a debt, or holds a deposit for someone, or has an obligation he must direct the discharge of — for Allah has made the returning of trusts a duty, and in this matter the will is the way it is done, so it becomes obligatory upon him”. As for bequeathing a portion of one’s wealth, “that is not obligatory on anyone, in the view of the majority” — and he names Malik, al-Shafi’i and ashab al-ra’y (the Hanafis) for it in the same sentence, his own statement being the Hanbali position. He then quotes Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr: “they are agreed that the wasiyyah is not obligatory, except upon one who owes rights with no evidence of them and holds a trust with no witness to it — save a group who broke away and made it obligatory”. Al-Jaziri sets the four out one after another and they line up: each divides the wasiyyah into categories, each puts debts and deposits in the obligatory one, none makes the will as such a duty. The Shafi’i formulation adds the point that matters most in practice — the duty to record deposits and known debts binds a person “even when he is not ill, so that people’s rights are not lost by his sudden death”. The dissenters are named and not one of them is a school: al-Zuhri, ‘Ata’, Sa‘id ibn al-Musayyib, al-Hasan al-Basri, Tawus, Dawud al-Zahiri and Ibn Hazm. The famous hadith is narrower than it sounds. Ibn ‘Umar’s report opens al-Bukhari’s Book of Wills — “It is not permissible for any Muslim who has something to will to stay for two nights without having his last will and testament written and kept ready with him” — and Ibn Qudama, having weighed it, reads it as “construed of one who has an obligation on him, or a deposit in his keeping”. Note what it does say, though, which the answer pages should not lose: the thing the hadith asks for is a written will kept ready — and the Qatari Fatwa Centre’s advice on drafting one is to have it witnessed “for its validity and its execution, and to prevent the possibility of its being denied or disowned”. That is a point about a will actually being found and believed, not about whether a document satisfies a Canadian statute. And the classical will is doing a narrower job than a Canadian will does. A bequest in favour of someone who already inherits does not take effect, so the wasiyyah never touches the fixed shares at all. What it carries is the rest: debts, trusts and deposits held for other people, outstanding dues owed to God, a gift of up to one third to someone who does not inherit — Ibn Qudama: the obligation in Surah al-Baqarah 2:180 was abrogated “and the recommendation remained, in respect of one who does not inherit” — and the appointment of a wasi, who is in al-Jaziri’s definition the man a person chooses “to stand in his place after his death, to deal with his property and to look after the interests of the vulnerable among his heirs”, glossed there as those not yet of full capacity. We checked this point; the schools do not differ on it.

Shared evidence: al-Mughni, Kitab al-Wasaya, fasl 4591 — “the wasiyyah is not obligatory except upon one who owes a debt, or holds a deposit, or has an obligation he must direct the discharge of”, naming Malik, al-Shafi’i and ashab al-ra’y, and quoting Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr: “they are agreed that the wasiyyah is not obligatory, except upon one who owes rights with no evidence and a trust with no witness” · al-Mughni, fasl 4592 — “the obligation was abrogated and the recommendation remained, in respect of one who does not inherit” · al-Fiqh ‘ala al-Madhahib al-Arba‘a, Mabhath hukm al-wasiyya — the Hanafi, Shafi’i, Hanbali and Maliki divisions set out one after another, each with an obligatory category confined to debts, deposits and dues that would otherwise be lost · Sahih al-Bukhari 2738, the first hadith of the Book of Wills — “It is not permissible for any Muslim who has something to will to stay for two nights without having his last will and testament written and kept ready with him” · Qatari Fatwa Centre, fatwa 22734 — “the majority of scholars, among them the four imams, hold that the wasiyyah is recommended, unless a right of God or a right of people attaches to a person’s liability, in which case the wasiyyah becomes obligatory” · Surah al-Baqarah 2:180, the bequest verse, which Ibn Qudama and al-Jaziri both record as no longer imposing the obligation once the inheritance verses came down · AMJA, Recommendations of the 20th Annual Imams’ Conference (2024), Fiqh Responses to Challenges Facing Muslim Families in the West — “A Muslim living abroad must make a bequest to divide their assets according to Shari‘ah after their death” · Succession Law Reform Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. S.26, s. 47(3) — parents take only “where a person dies intestate in respect of property and leaves no spouse or issue” · Surah an-Nisa 4:11 — “And for one’s parents, to each one of them is a sixth of his estate if he left children”.

Not covered by this finding: three things. One: whether a particular document is legally valid or effective in Canada. That is a question of provincial statutory form — signing, witnessing, revocation — and no classical text and no fatwa speaks to it. Two: the one place where our sources are not flush with each other. al-Jaziri puts a will covering unpaid zakat, an expiation or an unperformed hajj in the Hanafi recommended category (recording, and declining to prefer, a Hanafi minority that calls it obligatory), while the Hanbali and Maliki lists he gives put those same dues in the obligatory one; the Qatari fatwa summarises all four together as making them obligatory. We did not resolve that summary against the school manuals, and the related register entry huquq-allah-from-estate shows the schools genuinely differing on what happens to those dues. Three: a parent left out by the Ontario intestacy rules may still have a separate claim — Part V of the Succession Law Reform Act lets a parent whom the deceased was actually supporting apply for dependant’s support. That is a discretionary court remedy, not a share, and it is not inheritance. — not yet researched school by school. Treat that as open and ask a scholar of your school.