right to support from legally designated relatives.
Sometimes the child is temporarily placed in the
custody of these relatives, to ensure regular mainte-
nance and supervision (as is reported about the
Prophet Mu™ammad, who brought his young
cousin ≠Alìinto his household). In some cases, this
fostering arrangement is carried a step further, and
poor parents give their children away to relatives
for adoption. In most Muslim societies, it is under-
stood that Islamic law gives every person the right
to know and benefit from his or her true natal iden-
tity. Nevertheless, some children are not told about
their biological parents until they reach adoles-
cence. In this case, the arrangement might best be
described as temporary adoption, since the child
grows up initially unaware of his different status
within the family.
Fostering and adoption by relatives is also a
means for dealing with infertility in many Muslim
societies. A childless couple may be given a child by
a relative – usually a brother or sister – who has
more than one child. Sometimes this is done with
the goal of stimulating conception, since there are
reports in many societies, Muslim and non-
Muslim, of previously childless women conceiving
after adoption. In most cases, the main goal is to
allow a childless couple to share in the joy of rais-
ing a child. This is usually done out of a sense of
empathy for the couple, but in some traditional cul-
tures, for example, among the Chinese Kazakhs,
this is more of an obligation (Svanberg 1994, 241).
Among the Kazakhs, it is also traditionally under-
stood that grandparents have a right to adopt their
eldest grandchild, so they will not be lonely in a
house without small children. The emotional im-
pact on the child has not been well studied, but
there are suggestions that there are few problems in
traditional societies in which group identity is para-
mount. However, in modern societies, in which the
nuclear family is idealized and individuality is cul-
tivated, youths may be emotionally devastated
when they learn that they were given away as chil-
dren in such an arrangement.
Due to Islamic restrictions on interaction be-
tween unrelated members of the opposite sex, it is
less common for Muslims to assume custody of
unrelated children than related children. Islamic
law prohibits a man from being alone with a
woman unless he is her ma™ram, and requires
women to wear ™ijàbin front of non-ma™rammen.
These regulations do not generally apply to chil-
dren, but would affect a foster child who has
reached puberty. Breastfeeding an unrelated child is
a means of removing these barriers. In Islamic law,
suckling (ra∂à≠a) establishes a biological relation-2 adoption and fostering
ship that results in the same marriage prohibitions
(ta™rìmàt) that entail from a birth relationship.
Consequently, not only the foster mother, but also
her sister or other close female relatives, can suckle
a child to establish a relationship of ta™rìmamong
them. In modern times, women have been able to
use lactation drugs to stimulate their ability to feed
a foster child. Legal schools differ about the num-
ber of feedings needed to establish this relationship;
five or ten feedings is the average. Most legal
schools also require that the child be under a certain
age, usually two years, for a nursing relationship to
have legal effect. There is a ™adìth, however, that
the Prophet allowed this to be done for older, even
post-pubescent children (Muslim 1929, x, 31–3).
Although suckling establishes a biological rela-
tionship, it does not establish maintenance and
inheritance rights. Foster children, therefore, have
no share in the inheritance designated for children
in the Qur±àn (4:7–12). However, any Muslim can
will up to one-third of his or her estate to a person
who does not have a right to inherit, and foster chil-
dren often benefit from this (Glander 2001, 118). In
addition, during their lifetimes, Muslims may freely
gift their property to any party or interest. The fam-
ily trust (waqf) has traditionally been used in
Muslim societies to ensure a stable income (and
sometimes social status) for vulnerable family
members, including daughters, handicapped chil-
dren, freed slaves, and foster children.
The severe negative social and legal consequences
for extra-marital sexual activity among Muslims
have traditionally been a major deterrent to the
acknowledgment and legitimization of any child
born out of wedlock. Abortion, although generally
prohibited in Islamic law, has always been available
in Muslim societies, and certainly is used to prevent
the birth of illegitimate children (Musallam 1983).
Illegitimate children are sometimes abandoned
anonymously, although abandonment can also be
due to dire poverty. Islamic law gives the finder the
right to guardianship of the foundling (laqì†), unless
he or she is unfit for this responsibility (Nasir 1990,
168–9). To protect the child from living with the
stigma of illegitimate birth, guardians and authori-
ties often create respectable identities for the child.
For example, guardians may claim that a child is
the offspring of distant relatives who have died. In
some cases, women who are expecting to take cus-
tody of an abandoned or illegitimate child fake a
pregnancy before bringing the child home (Rugh
1995, 134). These “secret adoptions” are always
motivated by a desire to avoid shame: the shame of
being an illegitimate child, the shame of an illicit
pregnancy, or the shame of infertility.