Fard Kifayah

A communal obligation: if enough people carry it out, it is lifted from everyone else.

Also written · Fard kifaya · Fardh kifayah · Farz-i kifaye · Fardu kifayah · Fard al-kifayah · Kifayah · communal obligation · collective duty · community obligation

The meaning

What Fard Kifayah means in Islam

The funeral prayer, memorising the Qur'an, medicine, and returning a greeting given to a group all fall here. If nobody does it, everyone capable shares the blame; once it is covered, it becomes merely recommended for the rest. Much of what a community actually needs, from judges and doctors to those who wash the dead, is organised under this single heading.

Evidence · Editorial · Our own summary, drawn from the sources named

Read beside it

Words that sit beside it

Fard 'AynAn individual obligation: every responsible Muslim must perform it personally.فَرْضُ عَيْن
FardObligatory: required by decisive evidence, and sinful to abandon without an excuse.فَرْض
Salat al-JanazahThe funeral prayer, said standing over the deceased, with no bowing and no prostration.صَلاةُ الجَنازَة
QadiA judge in an Islamic court, whose ruling binds, unlike a mufti's opinion.قاضٍ