The OIC Fiqh Academy's ruling on concluding contracts by modern means of communication

THE RULE BEHIND EVERY ONLINE CONTRACT. When you buy on a website, accept a quote by email, or agree a supply deal over the phone, you have concluded a contract without the two of you ever sharing a room. Classical fiqh built its contract law around majlis al-ʿaqd — the 'session' or attendance of the parties, the idea that offer and acceptance happen in one continuous meeting. So the obvious question for a modern Muslim is: is a deal struck down a wire, or on a screen, a valid contract at all, and WHEN exactly is it concluded? Resolution No. 52 (3/6), adopted at the OIC Fiqh Academy's 6th session in Jeddah (17–23 Shaʿbān 1410H / 14–20 March 1990), is the settled answer. It predates the consumer internet — its named instruments are telegraph, telex, fax, the computer screen, the telephone and wireless — but it decides the question at the level of PRINCIPLE (co-presence versus real-time versus relayed communication), which is exactly why it still governs email, messaging and e-commerce today.

WHY THE ACADEMY RULED. The Council issued the resolution 'Having examined the research papers submitted to the Academy concerning the Conclusion of Contracts by Modern Means of Communication', 'Having witnessed the enormous development in the means of communication and the current practice of using them to conclude contracts in order to ensure swift financial transactions and operations', and 'Having recalled the different statements of Muslim jurists concerning the conclusion of contracts verbally, in writing or through an intermediary.' (The IRTI edition renders the same body as studying 'the papers presented to the Academy on the subject of "The execution of contracts through modern means of communication"', 'Keeping in view the enormous development in the field of communication instruments', and recalling the jurists on concluding contracts 'verbally, in writing or through a messenger'.) So this is a considered ruling on a named, practical problem.

THE PRINCIPLE IT STARTS FROM. Before deciding anything, the Academy states the classical baseline, verbatim (official): a contract between two parties 'requires majlis al-ʿaqd (attendance of the parties) – except in wills, delegated wills, and agency – the compliance of the offer with the acceptance, the absence of any sign indicating the unwillingness of either party, the continuity of the offer and acceptance according to custom.' Two things are worth pausing on. First, the requirement is the SESSION, not the room: the parties must be joined in one continuous dealing, but the fiqh already recognised that some contracts are exempt from physical co-presence. Second — and this is the quiet link to the law of AGENCY (wakālah) — the exceptions the Academy names are 'wills, delegated wills, and agency': a will, a delegated will, and an appointment of an agent do NOT require the parties to be together. The whole resolution then extends that logic to modern channels. (The IRTI edition lists the exceptions more tersely as 'the case of will and agency'; the official edition's fuller 'wills, delegated wills, and agency' is the authoritative wording, and the difference is disclosed below, not smoothed.)

CLAUSE ONE — RELAYED / WRITTEN COMMUNICATION (THE E-COMMERCE CASE). Here is the core holding for any deal done in writing or through a relay. Verbatim (official): 'If the contract is concluded between two parties who are not present in one place, and none of them can see the other physically, can hear his voice, and they are communicating to each other through writing or through an intermediary, which includes telegraph, telex, fax and the computer screen, then, the contract shall be deemed to be completed when the offer is communicated to the offeree and the acceptance is communicated to the offerer.' Read the timing rule carefully: the contract is concluded at the moment the ACCEPTANCE reaches the OFFERER — not when the offeree merely decides to accept, and not when the offer is first sent. This is the primary-source basis for treating a website order, an emailed acceptance, or a signed-and-returned document as a genuine, binding contract, and for pinning the exact instant it takes effect (when the 'yes' lands back with the party who made the offer). The named instrument 'the computer screen' is the direct 1990 ancestor of the web page and the app checkout. (IRTI: the same clause, rendered 'through writing or through a messenger, which includes telegraph, telex, fax and the screen of computer'.)

CLAUSE TWO — REAL-TIME COMMUNICATION (THE PHONE-CALL CASE). When the two sides are talking live, the Academy treats the deal as if they were face-to-face. Verbatim (official): 'If the contract has been concluded between two parties at the same time, and they are in different places, as in the case of telephone and wireless, then this contract shall be deemed as a contract between two present parties. It abides by the original rules established by fiqh scholars which have been pointed out in the preamble of this resolution.' So a contract agreed on a phone call, a live voice or video call today, is simply a 'present-parties' contract — the ordinary majlis rules apply, because the real-time back-and-forth IS a session. (IRTI: 'a contract between present parties, and it will be subject to the original rules established by Muslim jurists'.)

CLAUSE THREE — AN OFFER LEFT OPEN IS BINDING FOR ITS PERIOD. The Academy then protects the person on the other end of an offer with a time limit. Verbatim (both editions, identically): 'If a person extending an offer through these instruments subjects his offer to a specified period, he shall be bound to abide by his offer throughout this period and cannot retract from it.' This is the primary-source rule that a quotation or offer marked 'valid until [date]' cannot be yanked back inside that window — a concrete protection for the party relying on a remote offer.

CLAUSE FOUR — THE THREE CONTRACTS THIS DOES NOT COVER (THE GEM). The most important qualification is what the resolution carves OUT, and WHY. Verbatim (official): 'The preceding rules shall not cover the marriage contract because the presence of two witnesses is a necessary condition for its validity, nor shall it extend to the Ṣarf contract (exchange), because it requires taqābuḍ (receipt of possession) from both sides in their presence, nor to the Salam contract because the immediate payment of the capital price is necessary for the validity of such contracts.' Each exclusion is principled, not arbitrary: (a) MARRIAGE is excluded because it needs two witnesses actually present — a remote channel cannot supply that; (b) ṢARF (the on-the-spot exchange of currency/gold/silver) is excluded because it needs taqābuḍ, hand-to-hand receipt by both sides in their presence — the very hand-to-hand requirement the corpus documents for currency and gold trading (Resolutions 102 and 84); (c) SALAM (forward purchase) is excluded because its validity depends on the capital price being paid up front, on the spot — the same 'pay the whole price at contracting' condition the corpus documents in Resolution 85. In other words, a contract can be concluded by wire ONLY when nothing about it requires a physical act (witnessing, simultaneous receipt, immediate payment) that a wire cannot deliver. This is the practical filter a household needs: an ordinary sale or service agreement — yes, conclude it online; a currency spot-exchange or a salam pre-payment — no, the on-the-spot physical element still has to happen. (IRTI glosses the same clause: 'the contract of Sarf (exchange of gold or silver against gold or silver), because it requires the possession from both sides in the "majlis"', and 'the contract of "Salam" (purchase of future goods by a spot price), because the immediate payment of the capital price is necessary'.)

CLAUSE FIVE — FRAUD AND ERROR GO TO THE ORDINARY RULES OF EVIDENCE. Finally, the Academy handles the obvious risk of a channel you cannot see through. Verbatim (official): 'In relation to the possibility of forgery, distortion or error, reference shall be made to general rules of legal evidence.' (IRTI: 'general rules of evidence'.) The Academy does NOT try to write a special evidentiary regime for wires and screens; it refers disputes about a forged or garbled message back to the normal Shariah law of proof — a deliberately open, adaptable pointer that still covers digital signatures, message logs and screenshots today.

HOW A RIBA-FREE HOUSEHOLD ACTUALLY USES THIS. (a) Buying or selling ordinary goods and services online, by email, or by an exchange of signed documents? That is a valid contract, concluded the moment your acceptance reaches the other side (Clause One). (b) Agreeing a deal live on the phone or a call? It is a 'present-parties' contract under the ordinary rules (Clause Two). (c) Relying on a quote marked valid for a period? The offerer is bound and cannot pull it back inside that window (Clause Three). (d) The three you must NOT simply 'click to conclude': a nikāḥ (needs witnesses present), a currency/gold spot-exchange (needs hand-to-hand receipt — settle it so both sides receive in the same sitting, per Resolutions 102 and 84), and a salam pre-payment (the full price must actually be paid on the spot, per Resolution 85) (Clause Four). (e) If a message is forged, corrupted or mistaken, it is resolved by the ordinary rules of evidence, not by any special digital exemption (Clause Five).

WHERE THIS SITS IN THE CORPUS. Resolution 52 is the corpus's foundational rule of CONTRACT FORMATION — the layer beneath almost every other contract it documents. It supplies the 'when is a remote deal concluded' answer that a website purchase, an emailed murābaḥa acceptance, or a phoned-in supply order all depend on, and its Clause-Four carve-outs point straight back to resolutions already held here: the hand-to-hand (taqābuḍ) requirement of ṣarf (Resolutions 102 currency and 84 gold) and the pay-up-front requirement of salam (Resolution 85). Its preamble also names AGENCY (wakālah) as one of the classical contracts exempt from physical co-presence — an honest, primary-source touch-point for the law of agency, though the resolution rules on contract formation generally and does not itself lay down the substantive rules of a wakālah. It is the quiet hub that lets a household know its everyday online and telephone dealings are real, valid contracts, and know the short list of transactions where the old physical requirements still cannot be done at a distance.

GENUINE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO EDITIONS (disclosed, not smoothed). The two translations agree on every operative point while differing in wording. WHOLE TITLE: official 'Conclusion of Contracts by Modern Means of Communication' versus IRTI 'The Execution of Contracts Through Modern Means of Communication'. RESOLUTION CODE: official 'Resolution No. 52 (3/6)' versus IRTI 'Resolution N° (52/3/6)'. PREAMBLE OPENERS: official 'Having witnessed the enormous development in the means of communication' versus IRTI 'Keeping in view the enormous development in the field of communication instruments'; official 'through an intermediary' versus IRTI 'through a messenger'. THE EXCEPTIONS LIST: official names THREE — 'except in wills, delegated wills, and agency' — while IRTI names TWO — 'except in the case of will and agency'; the official edition's fuller list (adding the delegated will) is taken as authoritative and the shorter IRTI list is flagged, not reconciled away. CLAUSE ONE: official 'the computer screen' versus IRTI 'the screen of computer'; official 'through writing or through an intermediary' versus IRTI 'through writing or through a messenger'. CLAUSE TWO: official 'deemed as a contract between two present parties' versus IRTI 'deemed a contract between present parties'; official 'abides by the original rules established by fiqh scholars' versus IRTI 'subject to the original rules established by Muslim jurists'. CLAUSE FOUR: official 'the Ṣarf contract (exchange), because it requires taqābuḍ (receipt of possession) from both sides in their presence' versus IRTI 'the contract of Sarf (exchange of gold or silver against gold or silver), because it requires the possession from both sides in the "majlis"' — the official edition uses the technical term taqābuḍ and the phrase 'in their presence', the IRTI edition glosses Sarf and says 'in the majlis'; and IRTI alone glosses Salam as '(purchase of future goods by a spot price)'. CLAUSE FIVE: official 'general rules of legal evidence' versus IRTI 'general rules of evidence'. CLOSING INVOCATION: official 'Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing' versus IRTI 'Verily, Allah is All-Knowing'. Every verbatim quote used above was machine-checked against both source PDFs (25/25 OK).

AN HONEST NOTE ON WHAT IS AND IS NOT HERE. This is a settled operative ruling (five decisive clauses — the two communication modes, the binding timed offer, the three excluded contracts, and the evidence pointer), not a deferral. The clauses above are the resolution's own words; the 'this is the rule behind every online contract' framing, the extension of the 1990 instruments (telegraph/telex/fax/computer screen/telephone/wireless) to today's email, messaging and e-commerce, and the household how-to are plain restatements and honest applications of the resolution's principle (co-presence versus real-time versus relayed), not new rulings bolted on by this site. The resolution's text cites no Qur'an verse and no hadith number — it reasons from the established fiqh of majlis al-ʿaqd (the contract session), the conformity of offer and acceptance, and the special physical conditions of marriage, ṣarf and salam — records no madhab tally and no vote count, and names no bank, product, figure or rate, so none is reported here. The cross-links to the ṣarf resolutions (102, 84) and the salam resolution (85) are the direct subjects of Clause Four; the observation that the preamble's 'agency' exception is a primary-source touch-point for wakālah is this corpus's own note, disclosed as such, and is NOT a claim that Resolution 52 legislates the substance of agency.