The Prophet Muhammad was a man from Mecca who unified Arabia into a single religion under Islam. He is believed by Muslims to be a messenger and prophet of God. Muhammad was an adoptee and the father of an adopted son who believed that special attention should be paid to the care of children as prime recipients for charity—orphans should never be treated with harshness or driven away. A completely abandoned child is rare in the Arab world because Islamic law places a great deal of emphasis on family and the ties of kinship. If a child is orphaned, a thorough search to locate blood relatives to care for the child is an important step in the placement process. Contrary to adoption practices in the West, adoption by non-relatives seldom happens because removing a child from the local community, country, culture and Islamic religious roots is prohibited.
The Kaaba, in Mecca, Hejaz region, today’s Saudi Arabia, is the center of Islam. Muslims from all over the world gather there to pray in unity. The Prophet Muhammad was a man from Mecca who unified Arabia into a single religion under Islam. He is believed by Muslims to be a messenger and prophet of God.
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam that deals with secular law, personal matters, and everyday etiquette based on the infallible law of God, as opposed to human interpretation of the laws. Persons of the Islamic faith follow very specific rules laid down in the Qur’an that define the relationship between a child and their guardian parents, which is better described as a foster parent relationship. The role of the guardian foster parent is described as the individual responsible for feeding the child. The Qur’an reminds adoptive parents that they are not the child’s biological parents. Islamic rules specifically emphasizes to the adoptive foster family that they are not to take the place of the biological family. Their role is highly valued and important but they are merely viewed as trustees and caretakers of someone else’s child. Open adoption is required. The adoptive guardian foster parents are instructed to never hide the child’s biological family from the child and never allow ties with his or her biological family to be severed. Guardian parents are instructed to call their adopted children by the name of their biological father. The adopted child always retains their own biological family surname and does not change their name to match the identity of the adoptive parents. Changing the name of the child is not allowed because it is contrary to the truth.
According to the Qur’an inheritance follows biological lines and does not automatically descend from the adoptive parents to the adopted child. If the adopted child is provided with property and wealth from the biological family, the adoptive foster parents merely serve as trustees. Islamic law commands them to avoid intermingling their adopted child’s property and wealth with their own and by law can never give more than one third of their inheritance to an adopted child.
Rules of modesty exist between the adopted child and adoptive guardian family members of the opposite sex, but when the adopted child is grown, members of the adoptive family are allowed to marry adopted children because they are not a blood relative.
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اعتماد | الأطفال الأيتام | المتبنى | אימוץ | ילדים יתום | מאומץ | Adopsi | Anak yatim-piatu | pungut
Adoption Detective: Memoir of an Adopted Child 
MASHA ALLAH Very Nice Post…i like it 🙂
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People who don’t read have no advantage over those who can’t…
As an adoptee, many of the issues you’ve raised in your posts are concerns of mine. However, when it comes to Islam, your understanding is deeply flawed. Lacking in every way.
It’s always remarkable to me that an American woman would show even the slightest degree of support for a belief system that functions as a religion and a political doctrine in which women are virtual, and often actual, slaves.
Sharia law, and Islamic law in general, does not permit Freedom of Speech, does not permit Freedom of Religion. does not permit Gender Equality, does not permit Plurality and will never permit the existence of a legal framework in the form of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It cannot tolerate a separation between Church and State. Under Islam, the Church and the State are one. Islamic theocracies abound. On the other hand, there are no Christian theocracies.
As adoptees we have our issues, and some of them, such as access to our original birth certificates, are legal issues, but these headaches and barriers are insignificant next to the realities of life under Sharia law.
You raise some good points. Knowledge and understanding of other cultures isn’t necessarily showing support, but being informed is usually the best way to avoid surprises and unexpected outcomes. I encourage everyone to read as much as they can about other cultures, religions and legal protocols, especially for countries they plan to visit. International adoptions have become highly popular in the United States in recent decades but many Americans with high expectations and good intentions remain unfamiliar with many of the significant cultural differences and religious practices of other countries that are strikingly different than our own. Reading about Siddhartha drawing a sketch of his mother on the floor of an Iraqi orphanage and sleeping on her arm; Moses floating down the Nile River in the bullrushes; Heidi in the Swiss Alps; Anne of Green Gables in Nova Scotia; Orphan Trains in Kansas; and the Parish Boy’s Progress in England all have to be taken in the context of the time, culture, and country where they occurred. Most problems are best avoided and resolved when we understand the viewpoints, perspectives, laws and cultural traditions of others, even if we disagree with them. As you soberly point out, access to an adoptee’s original birth certificate in the United States is a minor legal issue compared to many of the realities of life under Sharia law. It is best that we learn about these things before we overly commit ourselves or stumble into regrettable situations. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This is an important topic. Differences in religious perspectives and cultural preferences are international issues that resonate globally and deserve more discussion.
Judith,
Once again, I encourage you to look a little more critically into Islam. Your original post and response truly miss the realities of Islamic existence and its complete incompatibility with our Western ways.
Aside from the fact that Islam — legally and religiously, which are the same in Islam — permits husbands to beat their wives (as detailed in the Qur’an), it also allows men to marry females so young we Westerners identify them as children. By western standards, Islam permits rape and pedophilia. It’s said that Muhammad’s wife was nine. The culture of Islam is shocking and appalling.
Moreover, there is an aspect of Islam that makes it crueler than the worst characterizations of adoption.
Muslim men who’ve moved out of their middle east nations to other countries, sometimes to attend college, sometimes to work, often marry non-muslim women who are citizens of the countries to which the men have relocated. The couples often have children, and too often the muslim fathers abandon their wives and return to their home countries with the children. Kidnapping them.
As these abandoned mothers have discovered, there’s virtually nothing they can do to retrieve their children. Even when the children are born in the US — therefore they are US citizens — the Islamic governments refuse to return them, instead, supporting the muslim fathers who’ve kidnapped these children. Moreover, Washington is no help. Unfortunately, these stories receive very little coverage in the US media, though there was one that resulted in a movie — “Not Without My Daughter” — however that movie was released over 20 years ago.
By the way, the photo of Mecca that you included in your post is a place that neither you nor I can enter. Non-muslims are barred from Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in the Islamic world. That’s just one of many ways Islam shows its contempt for all that is not Islamic. Of course, anyone can visit the Vatican as well as all Protestant sites and no Jewish sites are off-limits to visitors of other religions.
Thank you for sharing your concerns and highlighting some of the obvious differences between cultures, countries and religions. I hope others will heed your warnings, learn to educate themselves and use caution before getting involved in situations they are unfamiliar with before suffering regrettable but predictable consequences because in most cases it is naive individuals who are least informed who are the ones most likely to suffer negative consequences. Your message highlights the potential for human rights abuses as defined by international courts formed by treaties between nations, or under the authority of international organizations such as the United Nations. The movie you mentioned is based on a true story that attracted considerable international press coverage. In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation. To her horror, she found herself and her four-year-old daughter, Mahtob, virtual prisoners of a man dedicated to his Shiite Moslem faith, in a land where women are near-slaves and Americans are despised. Their only hope for escape lay in a dangerous underground. The story is depicted in the film “Not Without My Daughter”, starring Academy Award-winner Sally Field, was released in 1991. The film depicts Betty’s marital experiences and her escape with her daughter from her husband in Iran. Betty is deceived by her husband, who took an oath that they would return to America, swearing on the sacred Quran, but when she wants to leave, he becomes hostile and abusive, preventing her from leaving the house or using the telephone. Betty is told by the Swiss Embassy that she is now an Iranian citizen since she is married to an Iranian, and in Iran she has no parental rights over her daughter. She and her daughter are eventually smuggled out of the country. The story was an eye opener for Western audiences, but was widely criticized and labeled as biased by Muslims.
Readers interested in the broader topics of marriage and human rights violations against women and children may be interested in reading about “Honor Diaries” a 2013 documentary film produced by Paula Kweskin that explores violence against women in honor-based societies. The intent of the movie is to save women and girls from human rights abuses and draw attention to issues such as lack of access to education and restrictions on movement. The film explores the rising trend of honor-based violence in Western societies, and efforts to silence voices of opposition by intimidation.