The Rights of the Children in Islam:

Publisher: Iqbal International Institute for Research and Dialogue, Islamabad: 2017, 267pp. ISBN: 9789697576081

At the outset, the author claims that the subject of child rights and protection in Islam remains one of the most overlooked areas of serious research. This is so despite many references in the vast corpus of Hadith and the opinions of Muslim jurists regarding issues such as the custody of separated children, inheritance and illegitimate children and others, scattered in treaties of Islamic law. Unfortunately, claims the author, these regulations were not compiled in an academic way until the 1970’s (p. 11). Therefore, in chapter 1, he critically evaluates only those works that have put forward Islamic law to justify their arguments on child caring; that are considered serious books and are readily available on the topic of caring in Islam. Consequently, only six books in Arabic, one in Urdu and three in the English language are reviewed with the aim of identifying their shortcomings and justifying new research.

Interestingly, the earliest work dealing exclusively with the various rules of Islamic law involving children is Jami[ Ahkam al-Sighar by Muhammad b. Mahmud b. Husayn al-Astarushani (d. 631 AH/1234 CE) and the UNICEF (2005) publication by 12 academics from Azhar University. The author offers a useful overview of the contents and key issues within these. Some of his comments may be disputed by some readers. Nevertheless, considering the overall objective, the key findings are important and useful. A significant revelation, which hinders real change on the ground is that some NGOs hire local researchers to produce the least amount of work in the shortest possible time to please the contractors using web sources rather than in-depth research on Islamic law. Strangely, he questions whether the ritual of [aqiqah and the shaving of the hair can be treated as rights of infants. Unfortunately, the evidence and basis for such questioning is absent but, in the second chapter, on Framework of Child Rights and Protection in Islamic Law, he considers it to be a right for the new-born to be given a pleasant name based on Prophetic guidance.