Adoption and the Care of Orphan Children Essay

A common conception is that Muslim truth forbids word meanings. However, this belief misses the complexity of Muslim law, the scope of credence laws and practices across the world, and the fire emphasis on taking care of orphans and foundlings found within Islamic sources. Contemporary betrothal practices are immensely complex issues, overlapping with baby birdrens rights, international and national laws, human psychology, economic, affectionate, and religious concerns, and the ethics of lineage, identity, property and heritage rights.In this position paper, the Muslim Womens Shura Council considers whether adoption layabout be possible within an Islamic framework. After examining Islamic texts and history aboard social science research and the international consensus on small fryrens rights, the Council finds that adoption can be acceptable under Islamic law and its ruler objectives, as long as important honourable guidelines are followed. This argumentation consults th e Quran, the example of the Prophet Muhammad (sunna), the objectives and principles of Islamic law (maqasid al-sharia), Islamic Jurisprudence (fiqh), and social science data.The Shura Council finds that, instead of banning adoption, Islamic sources have brought various ethical restrictions to the process, condemning dissimulation and foregrounding compassion, transparency, and justice. These restrictions closely resemble what is known at present as the practice of light adoption. Therefore, when in all efforts to sic orphaned children with t inheritor encompassing family have been exhausted, open, intelligent, ethical adoptions can be a preferable Islamically-grounded substitute to institutional care and other unstable arrangements.According to Islamic and habitual standards of childrens rights, all children have the right to grow up in a nurturing, loving environment where their physiological, psychological, and intellectual needs are met. all told children have the right to know their lineage and to celebrate their unique national, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual identity. All children have the right to a safe, supportive environment where their rights to dignity, tuition, and the growing of their talents are well respected. The best interests of the child should be the primary regard in all decisions relating to children, including adoption.OrphanDifferent states and international institutions have variant criteria for determining whether a child is an orphan. UNICEF classifies whatever child that has lost wiz enhance as an orphan and estimates that approximately 143 million children are before long orphans.1 For the purposes of this document, an orphan is a minor who is bereft of maternal(p) care imputable to death, disappearance, or abandonment by either the mother or the father, as well as situations where the parent voluntarily or involuntarily terminates the parental relationship. This definition combines several concepts in clas sical Arabic, including yatim (fatherless child) and laqit (foundling).AdoptionAdoption can be defined as the legal creation of a parent-child relationship, with all the responsibilities and privileges thereof, amongst a child and adults who are non his or her biologic parents. Adoptions incorporate a child into a family as offspring and sibling, careless(predicate) of genetic ties. There are two main categories of adoption practices, for the most part termed as closed(a) adoptions and open adoptions. However, in reality most adoption practices fall meverywhere on a continuum between fully open and fully closed. In closed or confidential adoptions, the birth family and the foster family have no identifying information about from each one other.Children may not be informed that they have been adopted, and they may have no course of tracing biological kin. If the child comes from a different cultural cathode-ray oscilloscope than his or her adoptive parents, their heritage might be marginalized or ignored. unlikable adoptions, therefore, have the potential to dissolve all ties between an adoptee and her biological family. pay adoptions, which are becoming increasingly common across the world, allow for a full disclosure of identities on two sides. Open adoptions facilitate engineer interaction between the adoptive family, the adopted child, and any birth relatives. The childs birth culture may more than easily be respected and promoted by the adoptive family and incorporated into the familys daily life.However, the categories of closed and open are better understood as idealized types, as most families experience a hybrid form of adoption that comprises elements of both open and closed adoption practices. The empirical data on the risks and benefits of each type of adoption has shown mixed results, with some adopted children embracing the luck to contact their birth families and others experiencing confusion and insecurity.2 Generally, however, o pen adoptions are associated with better psychological and behavioral outcomes for the child.With the exception of Indonesia, Malaysia, Somalia, Tunisia, and Turkey, the laws of most Muslimmajority states do not currently reserve legal adoption. Instead, laws permit a system of guardianship (kafala), which resembles foster-parenting, but is more stable. Kafala is defined as the commitment to voluntarily take care of the maintenance, of the education and of the protection of a minor, in the same elan a *parent would do for a child+.5 According to Jamila Bargach, kafala is seen as principally a gift of care and not a substitute for matrilinear descent.In other words, kafala involves the obligations of guardianship and maintenance without the creation of legal ties, which would sustain specific personal status legal entitlements. This type of guardianship does not sever the biological family bonds of the child or alter the descent lines for the adopting family. unalike foster-pare nting, kafala is intended to be a permanent arrangement for a minor. equivalent fosterparenting and adoption, kafala is mediated by the state, in contrast to informal or normal adoptions which take place within families or through secret agreements.Convergences between Kafala and AdoptionWhereas this statement focuses on adoption and not kafala, in some cases kafala may lead to adoption. Countries with strict application of non-international kafala, like Iran, Mauritania, and Egypt, reject any legal recognition between kafala and adoption. Citizens of these countries who reside in other countries, where adoption is the law of the land, cannot gain guardianship of a child with the intention of adopting that child in their state of residency. Other states, like Morocco, Algeria, Jordan and Pakistan, allow for placements of kafala children abroad, particularly with nationals alive in foreign countries, with certain stipulations. Tunisia and Indonesia allow for a full convergency of kafala and adoption, limiting adoptions to national applicants, whether living in the country or abroad.Islamic LawThe term Islamic law refers to two related, yet distinct concepts, which are often conflated Sharia and Fiqh. Sharia literally means the way and is a transcendental ideal that embodies the justice and compassion inherent in the totality of Gods will. Fiqh, which literally means understanding, is Islamic rule and juristic law, which has developed from the eighth century onwards as a human effort to interpret the Sharia. Fiqh has been developed by Muslim legal scholars through analysis of the Quran and the example (sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad, with the aim of securing justice according to the context of each society, time (zaman), and place (makan).7Adoption in pre-Islamic ArabiaDuring the pre-Islamic period in Arabia, adoption (al-tabanni) into a tribe often took place for socioeconomic and patriarchal reasons. Al-tabanni is derived from the Arabic word ibn, meanin g son. In safekeeping with the patriarchal norms of the era, adoptees were usually, if not always, male.11 People adopted mainly to secure an heir and/or additional warriors for the tribe. Adoption could take place at any time in a persons life, from childhood to adulthood, charge if the adoptees biological parents were alive.12 The adoptee automatically earned full rights and the responsibilities of a biological child and was given the adoptive fathers name. Since male children were considered a source of wealth and prestige, this benefited the adoptive father.13Often adoption was undertaken in egoism with the intention of usurping an orphans property, as the adoptive parents would end up managing an orphaned childs property. In addition, adoption was closely link to enslavement captors held the power to strip captives of their birth identities and appropriate them into their families.14 For these reasons, pre-Islamic adoption entailed a complete erasure of natal identity.