Model Context Protocol server

Fiqh with its sources attached.

islamqa-org-mcp gives Claude, Codex and any MCP client search across the IslamQA.org archive — answers from 47 darul ifta institutions, each with its madhhab, its mufti, and a link you can open.

98,634Answers indexed

47Institutions

4Madhahib

MITLicence

View on GitHub Install

The problem

Ask a language model a fiqh question and it answers from a blur of training data — no source, no madhhab, no way to check it. Worse, it answers with the same fluency whether it knows or is inventing. Fabricated fiqh reads exactly like real fiqh.

This changes the default. The assistant searches a real archive and quotes a real answer, or tells you it found nothing.

You

Can I wipe over ordinary cotton socks in wudu?

Claude

search_fatwas(query="wiping over socks wudu", madhhab="hanafi")

Claude

Not in the Hanafi school. Masah is only valid on socks with the characteristics of leather khuffayn: thick enough that water doesn't seep through, able to stand upright unaided, and durable over three to four miles of walking. Ordinary cotton socks fail all three.

Askimam.org · Mufti Ebrahim Desai · islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/127638/…

Bin Bayyah notes the Hanbali school does permit wiping over cloth socks, while the Maliki position restricts it to leather.

BinBayyah.net · islamqa.org/maliki/binbayyah/29891/…

Every answer carries the institution, the madhhab and the URL. Where the schools differ, you see that they differ.

Install

No clone, no setup. Pick whichever runner you already have.

Claude Code

claude mcp add islamqa -- uvx --from \
  git+https://github.com/RealYusufIsmail/islamqa-org-mcp islamqa-mcp

Claude Desktop & other clients

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "islamqa": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/RealYusufIsmail/islamqa-org-mcp",
        "islamqa-mcp"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Or via npx

npx -y islamqa-mcp

The npm package is a thin wrapper that hands off to uv, which runs the Python server in an isolated cached environment.

The first search builds a local index — about a minute and 22 requests to the sitemap. Everything after that is instant and offline.

Tools

Tool	What it does
`search_fatwas`	Full-text search across the archive, filterable by madhhab or institution
`get_fatwa`	One answer in full — question, answer, Arabic citations, issuing darul ifta
`list_sources`	All 47 institutions with per-site answer counts
`browse_fatwas`	Most recent answers, optionally filtered
`index_status`	Index size, cache size, last rebuild
`rebuild_index`	Refresh from the sitemap

The skill

A server gives the model tools; it doesn't teach it judgement. A bundled Claude skill handles the part that actually matters:

Asks your madhhab before answering — or lays out all four positions if you don't follow one.
Refuses to invent. No hadith, no scholar's position, no Arabic citation that wasn't in a retrieved fatwa. If the archive has nothing, it says so.
Keeps the real categories. Hanafi makrūh taḥrīmī doesn't get flattened into "disliked" or inflated into "haram".
Admits thin coverage. The archive skews Hanafi; a missing Maliki answer is reported, never inferred.
Refers on for divorce, inheritance and custody — matters that need a person, not a search index.

Built to be a good guest

islamqa.org is a free service run on donations, and it has no public API — its WordPress REST endpoints are disabled. So this reads the same public pages a browser does, carefully:

One request per second, serialised globally — concurrent calls can't burst.
The bulk pass reads the sitemap, not 98,000 pages. There is no crawler here.
Answers are cached for 90 days; fatwas don't change once published.
A real User-Agent pointing back at the repo.
Locked to one host — checked before a socket opens, so no model-supplied URL can turn it into an open proxy.

If you maintain islamqa.org and want anything here changed — the rate limit, the User-Agent, or the tool's existence — open an issue and it will be addressed.