The corpus's FIRST primary OIC text written FOR Muslims living in the West — the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC), Resolution No.

Every other primary ruling in this corpus was written about a CONTRACT — which sale is valid, which lease, which guarantee, which certificate. This one was written about a LIFE. A Muslim community in the United States sent the Academy a list of questions that only arise when you live as a minority in a country whose banks, employers and high streets were not built for you, and the Academy's Council answered them. That makes Resolution No. 23 (11/3) the corpus's first primary collective text addressed not to an institution or a jurist but to the reader of this site: a Muslim living in the West, trying to work out what is actually possible from here.

WHAT KIND OF RULING THIS IS — read this before the answers. Res 23 does not have the shape of the other primary rulings in this corpus. Its operative sentence is procedural: the Council resolves 'To entrust the Secretariat General of the Academy to transmit to IIIT the answers of the Council of the Academy,' and the substance then follows under its own heading, 'Answers approved by the Academy'. So these are Council-approved answers rather than a numbered dispositive block of the Res 127 or Res 186 kind. They are stated decisively — several in a single sentence — but the form is a question-and-answer, and this entry does not dress it up as anything else.

IT IS ALSO PARTLY UNANSWERED, AND SAYS SO. Twenty-eight questions were submitted. The resolution carries its own footnote recording that 'Answers postponed for questions 1, 2, 7, 15, and 22.' — five of them, named by number, deliberately left open. The official edition does not print the text of those five, so this corpus makes NO claim about what they asked. One further answer, on slaughter by the People of the Book, carries its own rider: 'The Academy recommends a more detailed report on the subject for consideration in the forthcoming session.' — so that one is not treated here as closed either. What remains is answered: twenty-three of the twenty-eight questions, decisively.

THE HEADLINE ANSWER — QUESTION 28. This is the most directly load-bearing sentence in the corpus for what this site is about, and the remarkable thing is what the questioners put INTO the question. They did not ask an abstract question about interest. They asked with their own strongest objection already on the record: 'What is the ruling concerning the purchase of a house to live in, a car for personal use or furniture for the house through a loan from a bank or an institution that imposes a fixed profit on such loans and uses such assets as collateral for the repayment, noting that, in the case of a house, car or furniture, the alternative to the purchase is generally leasing on monthly installments, which are usually higher than the monthly installments charged by the bank?'

Read that clause again, because it is the argument nearly every reader of this site has already made to themselves: renting costs MORE per month than the mortgage would. It was put to the Academy in exactly those terms, by people living it. The approved answer is one sentence: 'This type of transaction is not permissible in Shariah.'

WHY THAT MATTERS MORE THAN A LONGER ANSWER WOULD. A ruling that had never heard the objection could be dismissed as written by someone who does not pay Western rent. This one heard it, in the questioners' own words, from the questioners' own city, and did not move. It also settles the scope question people raise next: the question named a house to LIVE in, a car for PERSONAL use, and FURNITURE — the three most sympathetic, least speculative purchases anyone makes, the ones most often argued into a necessity exception. The answer did not carve them out. Note too what the questioners called the bank's charge — 'a fixed profit on such loans'. Calling interest a profit did not change what it was.

WORK, WHERE MOST READERS ACTUALLY FEEL THIS. Questions 10 and 11 were sent by students who could not find work except in places selling alcohol or pork. The answer is a genuine, bounded concession rather than a blanket permission: 'It is permissible for a Muslim to work in restaurants owned by non-Muslims only if he cannot find any other work that is permissible by Shariah and provided he does not directly serve, carry, manufacture or trade in alcoholic beverages. The ruling is the same with regard to serving pork or other forbidden things.' Two conditions do the work — no other lawful job available, AND no direct handling. Both must hold; neither alone is enough.

Question 24 asked about taking a job in a non-Muslim government department. The answer: 'It is allowed for a Muslim to accept a job, permitted by Shariah, in a non-Muslim government agency or department, provided that such a job does not cause any harm to Muslims.' Questions 25 and 26 asked about a Muslim architect assigned to design places of worship for non-Muslims and about donating to a missionary organisation: 'It is not permissible for a Muslim to design or build places of worship for non-Muslims or contribute financially or physically to the likes.'

THE MOST PASTORAL ANSWER IN THE CORPUS — QUESTION 27. A family whose livelihood comes from a father's or husband's unlawful trade, who disapprove of it and cannot leave. The answer is neither a blanket absolution nor an instruction to starve: 'A wife or children who are unable to earn their living by ḥalāl (lawful) means can gain sustenance from the husband's or father's ḥarām (unlawful) earnings' — and the sentence continues — 'from the sale of liquor, pork or other haram sources, as a matter of necessity, and after having tried to convince him to find another job and earn a living by halal means.' Two things travel with the concession: it rests on NECESSITY, and it is conditioned on having actually tried to change the situation. It is not a permanent settlement, and it does not transfer to whoever is doing the earning.

THE COMMUNITY'S BUILDING — QUESTION 6. Muslims in the West routinely buy a house and turn it into a mosque, then move away for work. Can it be sold? 'It is permissible to sell a mosque that is not being in use or when Muslims have emigrated from the area where it is located or when it is threatened with expropriation by non-Muslims, providing that the proceeds of the sale are used to buy another mosque in another place.' The permission and the restriction arrive together: the proceeds are not free money, they are already committed.

WHAT THIS ENTRY DELIBERATELY DOES NOT COVER. Res 23 also answers questions on worship, burial, dress, marriage, family and social life. Those answers exist, they are part of the same resolution, and they are not reproduced here — not because they are disputed but because this corpus is scoped to how a Muslim earns, holds, spends and passes on wealth, and quoting a resolution selectively is only honest if the selection is declared. It is declared: this entry surfaces the money-and-work answers. A reader who wants the rest should read the resolution whole at the Academy's own publication rather than infer it from what is quoted here.

HOW TO USE THIS. Three questions, all of them the resolution's own rather than added doctrine. First, on any purchase financed by a bank charging a fixed return: the fact that the alternative costs you more each month was already argued and already answered — so the real question is not whether it is permitted but what your route out is. Second, on work: is there genuinely no lawful alternative, and am I directly handling the forbidden thing? Third, on a concession you are relying on: am I still doing the thing that made it a concession — still trying to change the situation — or has 'necessity' quietly become the arrangement?

SCOPE. The Academy answered questions sent from Washington, DC, but nothing in the answers turns on that city or that country. The reader in Perth, Manchester or Toronto is standing in the same position the questioners were: a lawful-by-local-law bank product, a job market that does not accommodate them, and a community asset held in a building. No market here is the baseline; the United States is simply where these questions were first put in writing.