Artificial insemination.
Q. There is a Muslim couple who can have no children of their own because of a problem the wife has. They want a child but the husband wants to be the father. The wife wants her cousin’s wife to be the mother. They want the procedure to be through artificial insemination. Is this permissible?
A. This method of artificial insemination is strictly forbidden and haraam (unlawful) in Islam. The only allowance given for producing this type of pregnancy is where the semen of the husband (alone) is placed into the uterus of his lawful legal wife. This is the ruling of all lslamic scholars throughout the world.
In this regard, Dr. Yusuf Ali Al Qardhawi (the great scholar of Egypt) writes:
Islam safeguards lineage by prohibiting ‘adultery’ and legal adoption, thus keeping the family line unambiguously defined without any foreign element entering it. It likewise prohibits what is known as artificial insemination if the donor of the semen is other than the husband’. (The lawful and Prohibited in Islam).
Similarly, Sheikh Mahmud Shaltut a former head of the Al Azhar Mosque and University in Egypt wrote, it is a despicable crime and a major sin, to be classified in the same category as adultery. Both adultery and artificial insemination by anyone other than the husband are similar in nature and in effect’. (Al Fatawa).
Based on the description you have given, it is clear that the semen which will enter into the womb of the cousin’s wife will not be that of her husband, instead it will be that of a stranger and hence, condemned as adultery.
And Allah knows best.
Mufti Waseem Khan