Is IVF permitted in Islam?

Yes, as long as the child comes from husband and wife. As long as the purity of marriage is preserved, no medical method that helps a married couple have a child goes against Islam.

We must not attribute to God anything He has not said. The Holy Qur’an forbids neither research nor medical help for couples who long for a child. Whoever declares such help a sin across the board adds something to religion that is not part of it.

What Islam protects is the purity of human reproduction as God has ordered it. A child should come from marriage, from a father and a mother who are married to each other. The last verse above ties the relationship between man and woman to marriage.

This sets a clear limit. The sperm of another man may not be used. Nor may another woman carry the child for the couple. In both cases a third person would enter the marriage, and the child would no longer come from husband and wife alone.

But if the child comes from husband and wife and is carried by the wife, then IVF is a permitted form of help. It makes use of the laws of nature that God Himself created. Even then it is still God who grants children to whom He wills, as the first verses above say. That is why prayer belongs to the treatment as well.