IIFA resolution 261 (6/26) on the effect of mental illness on legal capacity in Islamic law

A collective resolution of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy defining legal capacity and mental illness, resolving that the default is that an adult mentally ill person is responsible for his acts unless a competent authority establishes otherwise, dividing mental illnesses by their effect on capacity into those that remove it, diminish it or leave it unaffected, and assigning the assessment of that effect to psychiatrists and the ruling on it to the courts. ¹

The Academy's council, meeting at its twenty-sixth session in Doha, considered the effect of mental illness on legal capacity in Islamic law. ¹

The Academy defined legal capacity (ahliyya) as a person's fitness to bear the lawful rights and duties that are his and upon him, and for the acts issuing from him to be valid; it is of two kinds, capacity to bear obligations and capacity to act, the latter resting on the ability to understand the law, which is by reason, and the ability to act on it, which is by the body. ¹ It defined mental illnesses as groups of concurrent, clinically significant symptoms that affect a person's perception, behaviour or emotions and cause weakness or disturbance in his functioning at the personal, family, professional or social level. ¹

It resolved that the default is that an adult mentally ill person of full capacity is fully responsible for his acts unless an accredited competent authority establishes otherwise, and that specialists divide mental illnesses, according to their established effect on perception, discernment and will, into three kinds: illnesses that remove capacity, illnesses that diminish it, and illnesses that do not affect it. ¹ It made the criterion for identifying a mental illness and the extent of its effect on capacity the degree of its effect on perception, discernment, understanding and sound decision-making, a specialist matter entrusted to psychiatrists and those in their position; a mentally ill person loses the capacity to act when his loss of the ability to perceive and discern, or to control his acts, is established, and has diminished capacity when that ability is diminished, and it is the judiciary that decides the loss or diminution of the ability. ¹

The council recommended holding educational courses for those working in the judiciary and in fatwa to raise awareness of mental illnesses and their various effects, and holding joint courses of physicians, jurists, judges and those in their position to prepare joint specialist guides. ¹

The International Islamic Fiqh Academy, an organ of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, adopted this text as resolution 261 (6/26) at its twenty-sixth session in Doha (6–10 Dhu al-Qa'da 1446, 4–8 May 2025), and published it on iifa-aifi.org on 20 November 2025. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.