The subject of disabilities in Islamic law has been studied by several academic scholars since the 1990s, while Muslim jurists have discussed it since medieval Islam and until the present. The International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA) that convened in Kuwait on 22–25 March 2015Footnote 1 briefly summarized in six points its decision concerning the Islamic principles of care for people with disabilities, incorporating past and present observations. In this short essay, I will elaborate on these articles, in conjunction with providing general observations on attitudes to disability in Islamic law.
The Decision is actually a fatwa numbered 213, titled “Qarar Huquq al-Muʿawwaqin fi al-Fiqh al-Islami” (Decision Concerning the Rights of People with Disabilities in Islamic Law). The term “people with disabilities” is translated into Arabic in the IIFA decision as al- mʿawwaqūn, the common term in contemporary Arabic for “the disabled.” Other inclusive terms found in contemporary Arabic legal social literature are ʿajaza (unable, disabled), aṣḥāb al-ʿāhāt, and aṣḥāb al-aʿdhār (“owners” of impairments or exemptions).Footnote 2 But in medieval Islamic legal texts, I could not identify any single term encompassing all types of disabilities; instead, various disabilities are named sporadically, when the disability is relevant to a specific field of law, and when the disability is believed to hinder its “owner” from performing a religious duty or engaging in a social or economic activity. Among the disabilities that might interfere with marriage are those that impede the sexual performance of either spouse, mental problems that could harm one's spouse or children, or severe and contagious dermatological diseases. But blindness and muteness, for example, which normally do not impact the validity of marriage according to the “purposes of marriage” (maqāṣid al-nikāḥ) as described in Islamic law, are nowhere mentioned among the laws of marriage or divorce. Yet, questions such as whether a blind person or a person missing an arm or a leg is eligible to participate in a physical jihad are relevant to the duty, and therefore would be mentioned in the legal texts. Also, concerning the qualifications of a community leader (imām or khalīfa), or an imam who leads the communal prayer (imām al-ṣalāt), the validity of a prayer led by a lame, paralyzed, or stuttering imam would be questioned. Lay people are supposed to follow the imam and imitate his movements and recitations, so a disabled imam cannot demonstrate the ideal performance of a valid prayer. Still, each particular health condition of a disabled imam is judged by the jurists as a separate case, and sometimes it might even be handled by jurists in two diametrically opposed ways.Footnote 3 While according to one approach a lame man cannot serve as imam; according to another his lameness should be tolerated by the community, especially if he was hired healthy and only later became disabled, or if his disability is temporary.
Only with regard to marriage do medieval scholars generally speak of ʿuyūb (sing. ʿayb, meaning “impairment,” “defect,” or “deformity”), which interfere with the proper flow of marital life. These are a specific group of disabilities listed in the legal literature since medieval times as those that can befall the husband, the wife, or both. Separate chapters in almost all legal compilations are dedicated to ʿuyūb fi al-nikāḥ (impairments in marriage), often adjacent to the chapters on marriage and divorce. It is noteworthy that most of the disabilities related to marriage in the medieval legal texts concern the sexual performance of the husband or wife, but rarely refer to either spouse's ability to create children. Thus, in the past infertility (ʿuqm) in the sense of failure to produce offspring was not a legally justified reason for divorce.
Marriage is the only case in classical fiqh where several disabilities are grouped together because they may harm a socio-legal institution, namely marriage. In modern times, as seen in contemporary medical textbooks, and contrary to classical fiqh, we are more likely to see disabilities grouped according to the organ they damage or the faculty they interfere with (e.g., heart conditions, brain damage, hearing, vision impairment, etc.). Here early Islamic law pioneered a unique way of looking at disabilities: it classified them according to the human field they affected negatively. If a disability does not disturb a normal human activity, or if that activity can be at least partially performed, albeit with the help of others or with technical aids, the disability, while it should be medically treated and never neglected, is ignored as a discriminative sign; hence it is hardly mentioned in the legal texts.
In this respect one may say that Islamic law is “disability blind”: the majority of medically acknowledged human disabilities do not constitute any social or other problem deserving legal attention, and are believed to be overcome by medications, facilitating exemptions (aʿdhār, rukhaṣ), or artificial aids. All in all, most disabilities are not believed to restrain a Muslim from performing most of the required duties and human activities, one way or another. As long as it is accompanied by good intention (niyya), a religious duty will be deemed “correctly performed” (ṣaḥīḥ) for the sake of reward in the Hereafter, no matter how partial its performance.
The IIFA Decision of 2015, like classical Islamic legal texts, tends to liken the disabled person's abilities to those of a person who is free of the same disability (salīm) (Article 1); it recommends assisting the disabled to enjoy respectable lives (ḥayāt karīma) (Article 2). This is in line with Qurʾanic guidelines holding that God intended religion to “go easy” on the believer (yurīd allāh bi-kum al-yusr) (Qurʾan 2, 185). In the spirit of this verse, exemptions are provided to the believer who, for example, cannot pray standing upright, so that he or she may pray seated or even lying down, according to what their physical condition permits. Also, someone who is blind but can financially afford to hire a guide is considered able (mustaṭīʿ) to perform the hajj, contrary to a blind person lacking those means, who is considered “unable” (ghayr mustaṭīʿ) and thus is exempt from this obligation.
Indeed, each law, whether originating in the Qurʾan or in the legal texts, always first addresses the requirements incumbent upon the healthy; but immediately afterwards it elaborates on the possible methods whereby unhealthy people should perform the duty so that it is ultimately weighed as legally “valid” (ṣaḥīḥ). This sequence results in what the IIFA decision calls “inclusion” (damj) (Article 5); the disabled are never ostracized from the community of healthy people, but are indeed included.
The study of disability in Islamic law has been tied to human rights awareness for centuries, long before “human rights” was acknowledged as an independent field of law. The disabled, similarly to the healthy, are entitled to the same rights of education, establishing a family and working in a profession that matches their mental and physical capacity, as well as to participate in the political, religious, and social life of their community. There is no field of law wherein the disabled are not taken into account and offered alleviations as to how they should perform a duty or human activity, as similarly as possible to the healthy. Sometimes the alleviations may lead to full exemption from the obligation, yet the disabled person will still be rewarded for his or her good intention. These are typical markers of “inclusion” (Articles 3, 5).Footnote 4
The state, according to the 2015 decision (Article 6), has obligations to the disabled. It is expected to establish health institutions to provide medical care for them, and to train them in useful occupations that they can master; the state is also obliged to train professional staff for employment in the medical services. This is in line with Aasim Padela's conclusions about the social responsibility of any state to its citizens (including the disabled), as part of their entitlement to basic human rights.Footnote 5
In addition to health services, a disabled person who cannot provide for his or her daily needs must be supported by his or her family (Article 4), then by the bayt al-māl, or in modern terms, the treasury, via the state's waqf (endowment) and zakāt (social welfare) mechanisms. However, despite the jurists’ compassion for needy people with disabilities, it is often emphasized that a person with a disability is not necessarily a needy person, and that the food an individual earns is much tastier than food donated by a welfare agency. Still, when one is completely unable to work and provide for oneself and one's family, then under the poor (faqīr) or the needy (maskīn) categories of zakāt beneficiaries mentioned in Qurʾan 9, 60, the destitute disabled person will be eligible for financial support from the state's bayt al-māl.Footnote 6
The IIFA decision ends with a recommendation to facilitate the lives of people with disabilities. This encouragement is evinced today in the abundance of fatwas permitting artificial limbs, transplanted organs, canes for the lame, wheelchairs in the mosque, Braille for the blind, sign language, hearing aids for the hearing-impaired, and more. Among its final recommendations the IIFA encourages conducting research to discover the sources of disabilities in order to reduce their occurrence in Islamic societies. All in all, Islamic law shows much tolerance toward people with disabilities; their inclusion in society has never been questioned, and the various alleviations they are granted are meant to help them mingle with “the healthy,” and to participate in almost any human activity, religious or otherwise, like able-bodied people.
