Sperm donation in Islam

[BeeMyBaby]

I was listening to a report on the Asian network (Iplayer) about sperm donation in the Asian communities, I just wanted to know - is it allowed in Islam? The programme pointed out that they would need to make sure that the children were brought up Muslim, but if this could be assured, is it allowed?

My understanding is that, for infertility treatments IvF using the sperm of a husband is ok but donor sperm would be classed as adultery by shariah law. As with all things, there will be different interpretations though

ok... so it's not ok then? This might be a really stupid question, I understand that some countries have shariah law, but are individuals meant to adhere to it if they are Muslim but not living in such a country? I suppose I could ask DH these questions but I like getting background info before floating (my very strange) ideas past him.

I believe so, but my disclaimer here is that although I'm an RE teacher, I'm not a Muslim, so I'm not approaching this from a faith background, if that makes sense?
We do IvF when we look St medical ethics which is where my (admittedly limited) knowledge is from.

Sounds daft, but the BBC religion and ethics pages are excellent for ideas about all kinds of things related to Islam and other world religions.

here

well it was a bbc radio programme that got me thinking about it all in the first place, and I looked at the page and it didn't say anything about sperm donation/infertility etc.

Basically a close member of our family may be infertile, but his wife is thought to be fertile - is the only way they could have a child by adoption? Would she have to miss out on having her own child because of her husband? I know that if the woman was infertile, the man would have the option of another wife (with first wife's permission) so that he could have his own children.

I'm sure sperm donation is not allowed because its classed as zinah for someone to be pregnant with donated sperm, like pottering along said..

hmm thank you firawla, I ended up googling the word 'zinah' and found a nice wikipedia page which was very helpful, apparently its not ok for catholics either. Thank you both for all your help!