This was in the Ann Dunham FOIA thread, but I would like to develop it more and have the info easier to find for birther battles.
This is a work in progress, but since the whole "Obama was adopted in Indonesia" nonsense has been stirred up by the FOIA paperwork, it seems timely to introduce this now.
I posted the below at Doc C's place. Corrections have been made and are easily noticed. All emphasis is mine.
I see that some are bringing up the Soetoro adopted Obama non-sense again. There isn’t any proof that this occurred; it is supposition.
A few years ago I was dating a Muslim man from Egypt, who had become an American citizen. He wanted children, as do I. But I have to adopt; my uterus isn’t very cooperative and I knew this before our relationship began. My relationship with Gamal ended because Islam isn’t adoption friendly. The Western idea of adoption doesn’t exist within Islam.
In many middle eastern countries and with Muslim families, adopting a child simply means that you take on the responsibilities of providing for that child in the orphanage or in school. Adopted children
don’t come to often don't live with their adoptive families. Parents who adopt are much more like a sponsor than a parent for the children that they adopt.
I found this to be odd, until I discovered that Islam isn’t very adoption friendly.
In Islam, parent/child relationships are blood bound. Islam is very, very clear about this. The idea that a Muslim man would take on the legal role of a parent to the child of another Muslim man who is still living is absurd. This doesn’t mean that a child can’t be raised by someone that isn’t their blood relative. Mohammad was “adopted” in the Islamic custom.
Quote:
The guardian/child relationship has specific rules under Islamic law, which render the relationship a bit different than what is common adoption practice today. The Islamic term for what is commonly called adoption is kafala, which comes from a word that means “to feed.” In essence,
it describes more of a foster-parent relationship. Some of the rules in Islam surrounding this relationship:
*
An adopted child retains his or her own biological family name (surname) and does not change his or her name to match that of the adoptive family.* An adopted child inherits from his or her biological parents, not automatically from the adoptive parents.
* When the child is grown, members of the adoptive family are not considered blood relatives, and are therefore not muhrim to him or her. “Muhrim” refers to a specific legal relationship that regulates marriage and other aspects of life. Essentially, members of the adoptive family would be permissible as possible marriage partners, and rules of modesty exist between the grown child and adoptive family members of the opposite sex.
* If the child is provided with property/wealth from the biological family, adoptive parents are commanded to take care and not intermingle that property/wealth with their own. They serve merely as trustees.
Quote:
Islamic regulations regarding adoption are generally distinct from practices and customs of adoption in the other non-muslim parts of the world like Western or East Asian societies. Contrary to what happens in the Western world, the
social and jurisprudential understand is not that child formally leaves behind his or her identity as a member of his or her biological family and enters the one that raises them (the adoptive family). While raising a child who is not one’s genetic child is allowed and, in the case of an orphan, even encouraged, the child does not become a child of the “adoptive” parents.
It is forbidden by Islamic law to adopt a child (in the common sense of the word). Instead, children retain membership to their original family. This is called in Arabic: kafala. This means,
it is forbidden by Islam that the new father name the son after himself, and that the child is counted as a non-Mahram.[1] This can be sidestepped by having the child breast-fed by the adoptive mother in the first two years of life (see milk kinship).[2]>
The idea that Soetoro, a practicing Muslim, would try to adopt Obama is not supported by any evidence OR by Islamic practices/law. NO Muslim man would legally adopt a child western sense) with a living father, regardless of the religion of the birth father.
Even if Soetoro did adopt Obama, believing that Obama had no living father, Obama’s last name would have never changed. Obama would have never changed his last name to Soetoro because of Islamic rules and law.
Quote:
In today’s Huffington Post there is an article on infertility and Islam:
After six years of infertility treatment and no successful pregnancies, Dilnaz got a phone call from her husband’s cousin in Pakistan, who already had three sons with another on the way.
If his wife gave birth to another boy, the cousin offered to let Dilnaz and her husband adopt him. Adoption, after all, has a long and respected lineage within Islam. The Prophet Muhammad himself was orphaned and raised by an uncle, and he later adopted a son.
Dilnaz called about 20 lawyers before she finally found one who said it could be done.
“Shariah law doesn’t allow for adoption if there’s a possibility of a living parent,” said Judy Stigger, who coordinates a handful of adoptions from Muslim countries each year as director of international adoption at The Cradle, an adoption agency in Evanston, Ill.
Islamic law does, however, allow something closer to permanent foster care. The child must know who his or her parents are and retain their name.“For infertility, informal adoptions are looked upon favorably because this is your blood,” said Najma Adam, a social work professor and therapist who is herself Muslim. Her parents, in fact, gave her sister to an aunt and uncle who couldn’t have children of their own.
“I know my parents did it because they really just felt compassion,” Adam said.
Six months after Dilnaz got the first phone call, she and her husband got another one. “Congratulations,” the cousin told them. “You have a baby.” The cousin’s family brought the child to the U.S. when he was six months old.
Yet even that religiously acceptable solution became complicated three years later, when Dilnaz became pregnant with a son of her own. Some elders asked if she would be returning the adoptive son.
“I just felt like a boulder hit me,” Dilnaz said. They asked, “Why aren’t you giving your first child away? Why isn’t he going back to Pakistan? You don’t need him anymore.”
The article is fascinating!
Doc. C, if you are interested, I am happy to help put together more on Islam and adoption. It pretty much kills the “Soetoro adoption” myth. The birthers will still spin it, but they have no evidence, and are always claiming that a good Muslim without a son would have adopted Obama. Uh, no. Unless adoption records are found, there is nothing to this story (and never was). In addition, Indonesia would not have allowed Obama to be adopted since he had a living parent (two actually). The law in Indonesia for that time would need to be found, but I am confident that Indonesia would have denied any attempts by Soetoro to adopt Obama.
I think that this info kills the adoption myth. The birfers will say that Soetoro adopted Obama in the US if he couldn't adopt Obama in Indonesia. Well, that would have only happened if Soetoro was willing to break with Islamic code AND Obama Sr was willing to as well.
This father/child bond is, IMO, one of the many reasons why women are punished much more severely than men are if they are found to have cheated on their spouse. The idea of a Muslim man
(and thus unwillingly) raising another man's child is obscene in Islam.
Adoption is highly respected in Islam, but the concept of adoption is very different in Islam when compared to the Western concept of adoption.
I will do some more research on this as I can.
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