Islamic adoptional jurisprudence

Islamic views on adoption are generally distinct from practices and customs of adoption in other non-Muslim parts of the world like Western or East Asian societies.

Raising a child who is not one's genetic child is allowed and, in the case of an orphan, even encouraged. But, according to the Islamic view, the child does not become a true child of the "adoptive" parents. For example, the child is named after the biological, not adoptive, father. The child is also a non-Mahram to members of the adoptive family. Thus many Muslims say that it is forbidden by Islamic law to adopt a child (in the common sense of the word), but permissible to take care of another child, which is translated into Arabic as Arabic:kafala‎. The adoptive child can become a mahram to his adopted family, if he or she is breast-fed by the adoptive mother before the age of two (see milk kinship). There can also be confusion between a child that has been orphaned and one who has been abandoned but is presumed to have living parents.