The primary-source ruling on the single most common everyday-riba product a household holds
The primary-source ruling on the single most common everyday-riba product a household holds — the OIC Fiqh Academy's operative decision on credit cards, with the exact line that answers 'but I pay it off in full every month so I never pay interest': it is impermissible to issue or use a credit card whose terms impose usurious interest ‘even if the cardholder intends to pay within the moratorium period before charging interest’. An interest-free card IS permitted, subject to two conditions the resolution states verbatim (a fixed issuance/renewal fee that is a real service charge, not tied to the balance; and a merchant commission only where the cash price equals the credit price); a cash withdrawal is treated as a loan, so any charge beyond the actual, amount-and-duration-independent service fee is ribā; and such cards may not be used to buy gold, silver or currencies. International Islamic Fiqh Academy (OIC), Resolution No. 108 (2/12), ‘Unsecured Credit Cards’ (official edition) / ‘Credit Cards’ (IRTI edition), adopted at the 12th session (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 25 Jumādā al-Ākhirah – 1 Rajab 1421H / 23–28 September 2000). Unlike Resolutions 78 (9/8) and 96 (4/10) — which deferred the question — this is the settled, operative ruling: a genuine set of do/don't clauses, not a study agenda.
What this source says
THE RULING ON THE PIECE OF PLASTIC IN ALMOST EVERY WALLET. Of all the primary sources in this corpus, this is the one that touches the most ordinary Muslim most directly. Resolution No. 108 (2/12), from the OIC Fiqh Academy's 12th session in Riyadh (25 Jumādā al-Ākhirah – 1 Rajab 1421H / 23–28 September 2000), is the Academy's settled, operative ruling on credit cards. It matters not only for what it decides but because it is the END of a long deferral: the Academy's Resolution 63 (1/7) on Financial Markets had ‘resolved to postpone adopting a resolution on the Shariah characterization of this type of cards’, Resolution 78 (9/8) postponed it again, and Resolution 96 (4/10) sent it to committee. Resolution 108 is where the question is finally answered — so it is a genuine set of rulings, not another study agenda.
START FROM THE DEFINITION THE ACADEMY USES. Resolution 108 recalls the definition given in Resolution 63 (1/7): ‘The credit card is a document given by its issuer to a natural or a legal person on the basis of a contract between them enabling the second party to buy goods or services from a vendor who approves the document, without paying the price immediately as the document includes the issuer's commitment to pay.’ The definition then names the exact problem: ‘Some issuers used to impose usurious interest on the total outstanding balance that the cardholders owe to them, after due date of payment, while other do not.’ That last clause is the hinge of the whole ruling — the Academy divides cards not by brand or bank but by whether the CONTRACT carries an interest term.
CLAUSE ONE — THE LINE THAT ANSWERS ‘BUT I ALWAYS PAY IT OFF IN FULL’. This is the most important sentence in the resolution and the one most people get wrong. Verbatim (official edition): ‘It is not permissible to issue unsecured credit cards or use them if their terms involve the imposition of usurious interest. This is so even if the cardholder intends to pay within the moratorium period before charging interest.’ Read the second sentence twice. The common defence — ‘my card charges interest, but I clear the balance every month inside the grace period, so I never actually pay a cent of interest, so it's fine’ — is the exact defence the Academy expressly rejects. The impermissibility, on this ruling, attaches to entering a contract whose terms impose ribā, not merely to the event of being charged it. Signing up to, and transacting on, an interest-bearing card is itself the problem, because you have contracted into a ribā term and are relying on your own discipline (and the issuer's clock) to avoid triggering it. The honest takeaway for a household: intending to pay in full is not what makes a conventional credit card permissible; the presence of the interest condition in the agreement is what makes it impermissible.
CLAUSE TWO — AN INTEREST-FREE CARD IS PERMITTED, ON TWO STATED CONDITIONS. The resolution is not a blanket ban on cards. Verbatim: ‘It is permissible to issue unsecured credit cards that do not have a condition to charge interest on the debt.’ It then permits the issuer two specific ways to be paid, and no more. (A) A fixed fee: ‘The card issuer is permitted to charge from the cardholder a specific fee at the time of issuing or renewing the card. Such amount constitutes the actual fee that the issuer deserves according to the services it provides to the cardholder.’ The key word is ‘specific’ — a set membership/renewal fee for a real service, NOT a charge that scales with your outstanding balance or how long you owe it (that would be interest wearing a fee's clothing). (B) A merchant commission: ‘The issuing bank is permitted to charge a commission on the trader's goods or services purchased by the cardholder, provided that such goods or services are sold at the same price whether in cash or credit.’ The proviso is the safeguard — the interchange/commission the bank takes from the merchant is lawful only where the shopper pays the same price with the card as with cash; the moment a card purchase costs more than the cash price, the extra is a credit charge on the buyer, i.e. ribā routed through the merchant.
CLAUSE THREE — THE CASH-ADVANCE RULE. Pulling cash out of a credit card is treated as a loan, and loans in Shariah may carry no benefit to the lender. Verbatim: ‘Cash withdrawal is considered a loan from the card issuer and is therefore not objectionable under Shariah if it does not involve a usurious interest. The service charge for withdrawal is not considered usurious because it is not associated with the loan amount or its duration in exchange for this service.’ So a FLAT ATM/withdrawal service fee (say, a fixed handling charge that is the same whether you draw a small or large sum, for a day or a month) is permissible cost recovery; but a percentage-of-amount or per-day cash-advance charge is not. The resolution states the boundary in its own words: ‘any other charge over the actual services is prohibited for being Ribā, which is prohibited by Shariah according to the Academy's two resolutions no. 10 (10/2) and no. 13 (1/3).’ Both of those anchor resolutions are already in this corpus: Resolution 10 (10/2) is the Academy's ruling that bank interest is the forbidden ribā, and Resolution 13 (1/3) is the ruling that a lender's service fee must be capped at the actual cost of the service. Resolution 108's cash-advance clause is simply those two rules applied to the card.
CLAUSE FOUR — NOT FOR BUYING GOLD, SILVER OR CURRENCIES. Verbatim: ‘Unsecured credit cards are not permissible for the purchase of gold, silver, and currencies.’ This is the ṣarf (money-exchange) rule showing up at the card terminal. Gold, silver and currencies are the ribawī monetary items that, when exchanged, must be settled hand-to-hand on the spot with no deferment. A credit-card purchase is by its nature a deferred settlement (the issuer pays now, you pay later), so using one to buy bullion or foreign cash breaks the same-sitting requirement even on an otherwise-permissible interest-free card. (This connects to the corpus's currency rulings — Resolution 84 on gold/ṣarf and Resolution 102 on currency trading — which set out the hand-to-hand rule in full.)
HOW A HOUSEHOLD ACTUALLY USES THIS. (a) The pay-in-full defence does not rescue a conventional interest-bearing card — Clause One rejects it by name; the lawful path is a card whose CONTRACT carries no interest term (a genuine charge card that must be settled in full with a fixed fee, or a Shariah-structured card), not a conventional card you promise yourself you'll clear in time. (b) When comparing an ‘Islamic’ card, the two tests to apply are Clause Two's: is the annual/renewal fee a FIXED amount for a service, or does the cost track your balance or debt duration (the latter is interest); and does the card cost you the same as paying cash at the till. (c) Treat the cash-advance function as a loan: a flat withdrawal fee can be lawful, a percentage or per-day charge is ribā (Clause Three). (d) Don't use even a permissible card to buy gold, silver or foreign currency (Clause Four).
GENUINE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE TWO EDITIONS (disclosed, not smoothed). The two translations agree on every operative point while differing in wording, and there are several honest divergences worth recording. TITLE: the official edition titles it ‘Unsecured Credit Cards’ (the Arabic distinguishes the uncovered/unsecured card — one not backed by a prior cash deposit — from a covered charge card), whereas the IRTI edition titles it plainly ‘Credit Cards’ and drops ‘unsecured’ throughout the body. MONTH NAME: official ‘25 Jumādā al-Ākhirah – 1 Rajab 1421h’ versus IRTI ‘the 25th of Jumad Thani to 1st of Rajab 1421 H’ — this is NOT a real divergence, because Jumādā al-Ākhirah and Jumādā al-Thānī are two names for the SAME sixth Islamic month; the Gregorian dating (23–28 September 2000) is identical in both. CROSS-REFERENCE NUMBERING: the two editions genuinely disagree on the sequential numbers of the resolutions they cite in the preamble — official ‘Based on the Academy resolution no. 63 (1/7) concerning Financial Markets’ versus IRTI ‘on the basis of its Resolution No. 65/1/7 on Financial Markets’, and official ‘In reference to the Academy resolution no. 96 (4/10)’ versus IRTI ‘in view of its Resolution No. 102/4/10’. In each pair the session-designation is identical (1/7, and 4/10) and is the stable identifier; only the running number differs (63 vs 65; 96 vs 102). This corpus follows the official edition's numbering (63 (1/7)), consistent with its own Resolution 63 entry, and records the IRTI variants here rather than silently choosing. ANCHOR CITATION IN CLAUSE THREE: the official reads ‘the Academy's two resolutions no. 10 (10/2) and no. 13 (1/3)’, which is internally correct — the resolution with session-designation (10/2) is Resolution 10 (Bank Interest is Ribā) and the one with (1/3) is Resolution 13 (loan service fee at actual cost), both in this corpus — whereas the IRTI edition prints ‘Resolutions No. 13 (10/2) and 13 (1/3)’, mis-numbering the (10/2) resolution as ‘13’; the official reading is the clean one and is used above. CLAUSE WORDING: official Clause One ‘It is not permissible to issue unsecured credit cards or use them … even if the cardholder intends to pay within the moratorium period before charging interest’ versus IRTI ‘It is impermissible in Shari 'ah to issue a Credit Card or use it … even if the card bearer has the intention to pay within the moratorium period that precedes imposition of interest’ (‘cardholder’ vs ‘card bearer’ throughout; ‘vendor who approves the document’ vs ‘those who recognize the card’ in the definition). CLOSING INVOCATION: one genuine divergence, reported rather than reconciled — the official edition closes ‘Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.’ while the IRTI edition closes ‘And Allah (S. W. T) knows better’. Every verbatim quote used above was machine-checked against both source PDFs (22/22 OK).
AN HONEST NOTE ON WHAT IS AND IS NOT HERE. This is a settled operative ruling (four decisive clauses), not a deferral like Resolutions 78 (9/8) or 96 (4/10) that preceded it, and not a mere recommendation — this entry treats it as the binding decision it is. The four clauses above are the resolution's own words; the ‘pay-in-full defence does not save the card’ reading is a plain restatement of Clause One's second sentence, not an inference added by this site. The cash-advance and anchor-rule logic in Clause Three is the resolution's own cross-citation of Resolutions 10 and 13. The resolution's text cites no Qur'an verse and no hadith number, records no madhab tally and no vote count, and names no bank, card scheme, figure or rate — so none is reported here. The ‘how a household uses this’ guidance and the cross-links to Resolutions 10/13 (ribā and cost-only service fees), 63 (financial-markets card definition) and 84/102 (ṣarf / currency) are the corpus's own commentary drawn from the resolutions' shared logic, not additional clauses of Resolution 108.
Wording inside quotation marks is quoted from the source. The rest is this notebook’s summary of it — read the original before relying on it.
Provenance
- Compiled from
- Compiled from TWO genuinely different English translations of the SAME primary resolution, cross-read 2026-07-13, every load-bearing quote machine-verified verbatim against both source PDFs (line-wrap, hyphenation, page-number-insertion and diacritic aware, whitespace-normalised, 22/22 OK): [1] the INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC FIQH ACADEMY (OIC) OFFICIAL ENGLISH EDITION, ‘Resolutions and Recommendations of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy’ (official edition, October 2021), printing it as ‘Resolution No. 108 (2/12) / Unsecured Credit Cards’; and [2] the IRTI/IDB PRINTED EDITION, ‘Resolutions and Recommendations of the Council of the Islamic Fiqh Academy 1985-2000’ (Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah), printing it as ‘Resolution No. 108 (2/12) / On “Credit Cards”’. Both editions carry the same 12th session (Riyadh, 23–28 September 2000), the same four operative clauses, and the same reliance on the Res 63 (1/7) definition of a credit card. This is a SETTLED ruling, not a deferral: it is the resolution that finally answered the credit-card question that Res 63 (1/7), Res 78 (9/8) and Res 96 (4/10) had each postponed. The load-bearing content is the four Resolves clauses: (First) interest-bearing cards are impermissible to issue or use — expressly even for the pay-in-full-before-interest user; (Second) interest-free cards permitted, with a real-cost issuance/renewal fee and a same-price merchant commission; (Third) cash withdrawal = a loan, service charge lawful only if independent of amount and duration, anything beyond it is ribā (citing Res 10 and Res 13); (Fourth) not usable for gold, silver or currencies.
- Source
- PRIMARY TEXT (full title; session/city/date; the Res 63 (1/7) definition of a credit card verbatim; and the four operative Resolves clauses in full — First interest-bearing cards impermissible ‘even if the cardholder intends to pay within the moratorium period’, Second interest-free cards permitted with a fixed real-cost fee and a same-price merchant commission, Third cash withdrawal treated as a loan with only an amount/duration-independent service charge lawful and any excess being ribā per Res 10 (10/2) and Res 13 (1/3), Fourth not permissible for gold/silver/currencies — plus the closing invocation) from [1] the INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC FIQH ACADEMY (OIC) OFFICIAL ENGLISH EDITION, ‘Resolutions and Recommendations of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy’ (official edition, October 2021), printing it as ‘Resolution No. 108 (2/12) / Unsecured Credit Cards’ (12th session, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 25 Jumādā al-Ākhirah – 1 Rajab 1421H / 23–28 September 2000) — extracted verbatim from the published PDF (https://iifa-aifi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Resolutions-Recommendations-of-the-IIFA-Official-Edition-Oct-2021.pdf), read 2026-07-13. CONFIRMING SECOND, GENUINELY DIFFERENT TRANSLATION from [2] the IRTI/IDB PRINTED EDITION, ‘Resolutions and Recommendations of the Council of the Islamic Fiqh Academy 1985-2000’ (Islamic Research and Training Institute, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah), printing it as ‘Resolution No. 108 (2/12) / On “Credit Cards”’, same 12th session, same four clauses — extracted verbatim from the published PDF (https://zulkiflihasan.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/majma-fiqh.pdf), read 2026-07-13. THE TWO EDITIONS ARE GENUINELY DIFFERENT RENDERINGS that converge on the same operative content; genuine differences reported rather than smoothed: TITLE (‘Unsecured Credit Cards’ vs plain ‘Credit Cards’, the official keeping the ‘uncovered/unsecured’ qualifier the IRTI drops); MONTH NAME (‘Jumādā al-Ākhirah’ vs ‘Jumad Thani’ — the SAME sixth Islamic month under its two names, identical Gregorian 23–28 September 2000, so NOT a real divergence); CROSS-REFERENCE NUMBERING (official ‘resolution no. 63 (1/7)’ and ‘no. 96 (4/10)’ vs IRTI ‘Resolution No. 65/1/7’ and ‘No. 102/4/10’ — identical session-designations 1/7 and 4/10, differing running numbers; the official numbering is followed to match this corpus's own Res 63 entry); ANCHOR CITATION (official ‘no. 10 (10/2) and no. 13 (1/3)’, internally correct — Res 10 = bank interest is ribā, Res 13 = loan service fee at actual cost — vs IRTI's mis-numbered ‘Resolutions No. 13 (10/2) and 13 (1/3)’); CLAUSE WORDING (‘cardholder’ vs ‘card bearer’; ‘vendor who approves the document’ vs ‘those who recognize the card’). ONE GENUINE DIVERGENCE IN THE CLOSING INVOCATION, disclosed not reconciled: official ‘Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.’ vs IRTI ‘And Allah (S. W. T) knows better’. Every verbatim quote used above was machine-checked against both source PDFs (line-wrap, hyphenation, inserted-page-number and diacritic aware, 22/22 OK). Trust: high (two independent verbatim primary editions of the same OIC resolution).
- School / basis
- Comparative / transactional-law with a PRIMARY OIC collective-ijtihad text. Resolution No. 108 (2/12), 12th session (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 25 Jumādā al-Ākhirah – 1 Rajab 1421H / 23–28 September 2000), is a SETTLED operative ruling on credit cards — the resolution that finally decided the question deferred by Res 63 (1/7), Res 78 (9/8) and Res 96 (4/10). Four decisive clauses: (First) it is impermissible to issue or use an unsecured credit card whose terms impose usurious interest ‘even if the cardholder intends to pay within the moratorium period before charging interest’ — the pay-in-full-inside-the-grace-period defence is expressly rejected because the impermissibility attaches to contracting into the ribā term, not only to being charged; (Second) an interest-free card is permissible, with the issuer entitled only to (A) a fixed issuance/renewal fee that is a genuine service charge (not scaled to the balance) and (B) a merchant commission provided the good is sold ‘at the same price whether in cash or credit’; (Third) a cash withdrawal is a loan, so a flat withdrawal service fee independent of the amount and duration is lawful but any charge beyond the actual service is ribā (citing Res 10 (10/2) that bank interest is ribā and Res 13 (1/3) that a loan service fee is capped at actual cost); (Fourth) such cards may not be used to purchase gold, silver or currencies (the ṣarf hand-to-hand rule). Res 108 cites no Qur'an verse, no hadith number, no madhab count and no vote, so none is reported here; it names no bank, card scheme, figure or rate. The definition of a credit card is drawn from Res 63 (1/7); the ribā and cost-only-fee anchors are Res 10 and Res 13; the currency-exchange rule behind Clause Four is set out in Res 84/102 — those are cross-links, not clauses of Res 108.
- Captured
- 2026-07-13
- Added
- 2026-07-13
- Trust
- Primary or near-primary source with a stable public URL.
Compiler’s note
Added 2026-07-13 (auto-run). The OIC Fiqh Academy's SETTLED credit-card ruling (12th session, Riyadh, 25 Jumādā al-Ākhirah – 1 Rajab 1421H / 23–28 September 2000) — the most household-central everyday-riba product in the corpus and, until now, a glaring gap. Chosen over the standing NEXT-candidate Res 89 (6/9) Currency Issues, which on reading proved to be itself a symposium-commissioning resolution built expressly on Res 42 (4/5) (already in corpus) — near-duplicative and thin. Res 77 (8/8) 'Shareholding in Joint-Stock Companies Dealing with Ribā' and Res 78 (9/8) 'Credit Cards' and Res 87 (4/9) and Res 96 (4/10) were all checked and REJECTED as deferrals/study-agendas (Res 77 explicitly 'commission further research … at its next session'; the share-screening substance already lives in this corpus's Res 63). Res 108 is the resolution that finally DECIDED the credit-card question those deferrals postponed, so it is a genuine operative ruling. KILLER GEM (Clause First, verbatim official): 'It is not permissible to issue unsecured credit cards or use them if their terms involve the imposition of usurious interest. This is so even if the cardholder intends to pay within the moratorium period before charging interest.' — the primary-source rebuttal to 'but I always pay it off in full before any interest': the impermissibility attaches to contracting into the ribā term, not only to being charged it. GEM 2 (Clause Second): interest-free cards ARE permitted, with only a fixed real-cost issuance/renewal fee and a same-price merchant commission ('sold at the same price whether in cash or credit'). GEM 3 (Clause Third): cash withdrawal is a loan; a withdrawal service charge is lawful only because it 'is not associated with the loan amount or its duration', and 'any other charge over the actual services is prohibited for being Ribā' per Res 10 (10/2) and Res 13 (1/3). GEM 4 (Clause Fourth): not permissible for buying gold, silver or currencies (ṣarf hand-to-hand rule). GOLD-STANDARD pairing: two genuinely different English editions cross-read — the Academy's OWN OFFICIAL ENGLISH EDITION (Oct 2021 PDF) + the IRTI/IDB printed edition (1985-2000, which DOES carry this 12th-session/2000 resolution, so the pairing holds), both pdftotext-verbatim. Genuine divergences reported not smoothed: title 'Unsecured Credit Cards' vs plain 'Credit Cards'; month 'Jumādā al-Ākhirah' vs 'Jumad Thani' (same 6th month, NO real divergence, identical Gregorian); cross-ref running numbers 63/96 (official) vs 65/102 (IRTI) with identical 1/7 & 4/10 designations; IRTI's mis-numbered anchor 'Res 13 (10/2)' for the correct Res 10 (10/2); 'cardholder' vs 'card bearer'; and ONE genuine CLOSING-INVOCATION divergence ('Indeed, Allāh is All-Knowing.' vs 'And Allah (S. W. T) knows better'). All 22 load-bearing quotes machine-verified against both source PDFs (22/22 OK, whitespace/hyphenation/inserted-page-number/diacritic aware; the raw 'misses' were line-break hyphenations card-holder / in-terest / resolu-tions, confirmed verbatim across the break). HONESTY built in: the four clauses are the resolution's own words; the 'pay-in-full defence fails' reading is a plain restatement of Clause One; the definition is drawn from Res 63; the ribā/cost-fee anchors are Res 10 & 13; the ṣarf rule behind Clause Four is Res 84/102 (cross-links, not clauses of Res 108). DROPPED per no-fab: Qur'an verse / hadith number (Res 108 cites none); madhab tally; vote count; any bank/card-scheme/figure/rate. Articles 92->93. Clean `rm -rf .next && npm run build` green; `npm run lint` = 0/0. NEXT candidate (substantive finance ruling, in BOTH editions i.e. ≤2000/≤12th session, not a deferral, not yet covered): Res 109 (3/12) Penalty Clause (the late-payment/liquidated-damages ruling — 'permissible in all financial contracts except when the original commitment is a debt', directly relevant to Islamic-finance default fees; sits on the same 12th-session page, already extracted), or Res 73 (4/8) Auction Contracts; AVOID Res 89 currency (near-duplicate of Res 42) and the known deferrals Res 22/45/77/78/87.
Topics
islamic-financecredit-cardsunsecured-credit-cardcharge-cardusurious-interestribainterestpay-in-fullgrace-periodmoratorium-periodannual-feerenewal-feeservice-feeactual-costmerchant-commissioninterchangecash-advancecash-withdrawalloanqardsame-price-cash-or-creditgoldsilvercurrencysarfhand-to-handeveryday-financeconsumer-financebankingislamic-cardshariah-cardoicinternational-islamic-fiqh-academyiifaresolution-108res-108108-2-1212th-sessionriyadh2000primary-sourcecollective-ijtihadsettled-ruling
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