Someone sent this in a letter to GDN:
"According to Sharia law, which is the law of Qatar and most Muslim countries, when a woman remarries she automatically forfeits custody of her child, and it goes to her mother or the father or his mother. Under the same law, custody is always awarded to the Muslim parent or his/her family.
Furthermore, the court will look unfavourably on the fact that Adam has a name other than his father's family name, as there is no adoption in Islam. The court will also consider issues such as the child speaking his native language and his ability to understand/practise basic religious duties.
The court will consider if Adam is perceived as being uprooted from the traditions of his father. This is not about the 77-year-old ailing grandmother or the family of Adam's father, this is about honouring their obligations to his late father and taking care of his son in an "appropriate" cultural context."
Those criteria make the court decision an absolute no-brainer. I presume they also reflect the cultural understanding of the father's side of the family about what is important in a child's upbringing - and it isn't his relationship with his mother, let alone a non-Arab mother.
The writer goes on to say (and I agree) that it is incomprehensible that the mother didn't understand this; she had, after all, spent at least a decade in the Gulf and was briefly married to an Arab.
Someone sent this in a letter to GDN:
"According to Sharia law, which is the law of Qatar and most Muslim countries, when a woman remarries she automatically forfeits custody of her child, and it goes to her mother or the father or his mother. Under the same law, custody is always awarded to the Muslim parent or his/her family.
Furthermore, the court will look unfavourably on the fact that Adam has a name other than his father's family name, as there is no adoption in Islam. The court will also consider issues such as the child speaking his native language and his ability to understand/practise basic religious duties.
The court will consider if Adam is perceived as being uprooted from the traditions of his father. This is not about the 77-year-old ailing grandmother or the family of Adam's father, this is about honouring their obligations to his late father and taking care of his son in an "appropriate" cultural context."
Those criteria make the court decision an absolute no-brainer. I presume they also reflect the cultural understanding of the father's side of the family about what is important in a child's upbringing - and it isn't his relationship with his mother, let alone a non-Arab mother.
The writer goes on to say (and I agree) that it is incomprehensible that the mother didn't understand this; she had, after all, spent at least a decade in the Gulf and was briefly married to an Arab.