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Islam is a way of life

Wed, 2008-07-02 10:31 - Kerry

Recognising diversity: a fostering scheme for Muslims

Posted: 02 July 2008 By Rowenna Davis

Cultural sensitivity is at the core of public sector service planning, but local authorities often struggle to transfer this ethos into how services are delivered on the ground.

In the case of vulnerable children considering cultural needs is particularly important because it could be a deciding factor in ensuring they experience a stable and healthy upbringing. The Islamic Fostering Service in Stoke Newington knows this better than most. Set up in 2003, IFS, a branch of Foster Care Link, has managed to find Islamic homes for over 60 Muslim children by acting as a "broker" between 15 local authorities in the south of England and families in the community.

Director Ismail Amaan believes that shared faith between children and carers has played a key role in the success of these placements.

Way of Life

"Anyone who knows Islam knows that it's a way of life," he says. "It affects what kids have in their packed lunch, the celebrations they go to and the way they interact with other people. Put these kids with non-Muslim families, and they can end up feeling isolated.

"One Muslim child we know was placed with a family with a dog and of course he felt unclean. Another set of parents couldn't figure out why their Muslim foster child was making food at midnight - they didn't understand that he was fasting. Councils need to understand that successful fostering means cultural and ethnic matching."

Although the Muslim community as a whole makes up just 2.8% of the UK population, research suggests that they could account for up to 6% of all fostered children. These high figures have international roots most of the children who come through the IFS are unaccompanied teenage boys from war-torn areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unsurprisingly, the tumultuous backgrounds of these children can leave them more vulnerable to extremism, something that the IFS's work helps to prevent. Placements in stable Islamic homes give these children access to adults who can offer guidance about more safe and appropriate ways to pursue their faith.

Meeka Choudhury, a British Muslim parent who works with the service, says: "Problems with extremism often stem from a lack of understanding between the carers and the child."

Following a rigorous application process, the IFS introduced Choudhury to Abdul, a 14-year-old Albanian boy who has now been with her for two years. "Before he came to us he was staying with a non-Muslim family," she says. "He felt he couldn't discuss his faith with his carers and started hanging around with people who were pushing him down the wrong track. But since he's come to us we've been able to guide his faith and explain what's right and wrong."

Successful integration

Choudhry believes that IFS has played a key role in Abdul's successful integration into family and community life. "We've been 100% supported by the service."

IFS's success has been recognised across the board. Ofsted has classified them as "outstanding" for helping children's achievement and enjoyment, and last year the organisation won the Muslim News Award for Excellence.

A "deep-rooted interest in the community, passion and attention to detail" are the keys to IFS's success, says Amaan. Another factor is that all nine members of his team are practicing Muslims. "There's a whole new level of trust when families see you as 'one of their own'," he adds.

Abdurrahman Sayed, senior social worker and Muslim scholar at the service, also believes strongly in the important link between the history of Islam - the Prophet Muhammad was taken in and raised by his uncle when he lost both his parents at the age of eight - and caring for vulnerable young people.

Sayed explains: "Muslim families who take in a child feel that they are fulfilling an element of their faith. This is reflected in the high quality of care that they offer."

 

Published in the 3rd July 2008 issue of Community Care magazine   http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2008/07/02/108681/a-culturally-specific-foster-care-placement-service.html

 

Comments

Wed, 2008-07-02 10:55 — Kerry

Foster care v. Adoption in Islamic Culture

It has been my understanding that Muslim's do not support adoption as a legal option for parenting, because a child has only one set of parents, and all matters of inheritance are based on family blood and name. 

"Before Islam, the Arabs practiced adoption, naming the child after the person adopting him or her, as if the adoptive parents and the child were related by blood.

Islam prohibits adoption but allows Muslims to raise children who are not theirs. Muslims can fully raise these children, look after them, and support them, but the children must be named after their real fathers. It is not a sin if a person is named after the wrong father by mistake.

Adoption is widely practiced in many non-Muslim western societies. Babies are taken from their parents and named after those adopting them. The children grow up having no idea who their real parents are. In a mobile society like the U.S.A. for example, an adopted boy may end up marrying his sister from his original parents without knowing that she is his sister. These cases have actually happened.

This harmful consequence is one of the reasons that Islam places such importance on the use of the child's real name. A person's name is important in Islam because many social rules like marriage, inheritance, custody, provision, and punishment, are contingent upon the blood relationship. This is a reason for women to retain their own names after marriage as well.

Adoption in non-Muslim societies is practiced for many reasons. Non-Muslim societies have many illegitimate babies as a result of extramarital sexual relationships. Very young mothers of these babies do not keep them because they cannot support them and devote time to raising them. So these young women give the children to other parents who have no children, or abandon them in the streets where people can pick them up. Worse than that, some of these babies are killed, put in trash bags, and then thrown in garbage cans.

In other cases, these children are sold to parents who cannot have children. Another reason for adoption in these non-Muslim societies is that many women do not like or want to get pregnant, for fear of ruining their beauty.

Many of these people claim that adoption is a humane service. They do not realize that Islam preserves the humane part of this practice by allowing people to raise children that are not theirs, while it prevents the negative consequences of adoption which can harm society by calling the child after the adoptive parents."

Excerpted, with slight modifications, from: stanford.edu  islamonline.net/

Given the current war-situation in Iraq, there is a growing need to care for orphaned children from that region.  Below is a copy of Foster Care Link's perspective on the controversial/confusing issue of fostering and adoption, explaining how Muslims can be called to help a child in need of a home and family.

HISTORIC SETTING

Your ALT-Text here ‘The most famous orphan in Islamic culture is, without doubt, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. His father died before he was born and by the time he was eight he had lost both his mother and the grandfather who named him. He was subsequently raised by his uncle Abu Talib who continued to be his protector until his own death, when Muhammad was an adult of almost fifty years of age.

When Muhammad's wife Khadijah gave to him a slave named Zaid, Muhammad freed the boy and raised him as if he were his own son. The importance of taking homeless children to care for them is well-established in Islam.

The Islam form of "adoption" is called kafâla, which literally means sponsorship, but comes from the root word meaning "to feed." It is best translated as "foster parenting."’

Source: The Islamic View Of Adoption And Caring For Homeless Children by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.

As can be seen, foster care is well established in Islam as a means of providing care to children. Fostering allows a child to benefit from the care of a good home, while at the same time not losing his/her rights from birth parents. 

THE PROPHET’S ADVICE

(Peace be upon him)

‘In the light of this historical fact, Muslims are no strangers to the concept of adoption and foster care. In fact, they have before them lofty examples of these practices right from the life of the Holy Messenger himself.

Having been brought up as an orphan himself, it placed the Holy Messenger in a position where he was able naturally and instinctively to identify with the plight of orphan children more than others. His teachings are therefore replete with the teachings and directives towards the orphan, of treating them with utmost kindness and compassion. The list of such teachings is lengthy and enumerating them in this brief article would be inappropriate. It is sufficient to quote but one saying of his: 'The home wherein the orphan is ill-treated is the worst home on earth.'

In the time of the Holy Messenger, there was hardly a home which had not taken in and adopted an orphan child. This was a normal practice in the society of his companions. Muslims should by virtue of the lofty examples and teachings of the Holy Messenger, be in the very frontline in efforts to secure the adoption and fostering of 'abandoned' children. In fact they aught to be setting the trend for the rest of society in this matter. At the least, it is expected of them to co-operate closely with groups and bodies that are promoting these efforts.

Due to the high standards of morality and conduct required of Muslims by their religious laws, Muslim homes and families are ideally positioned to imbue and impart these exalted values to adopted children - values that will be of life long consequence to them. A word of caution to prospective adoption families though; the humanitarian and noble practice of adopting children should never be motivated by material or pecuniary interests or intentions at all. This will destroy and demolish the very spirit of this gracious deed, leaving it as a lifeless corpse.’
Source: Mufti Zubair Bayat, South Africa, (www.direct.za.org)    http://www.fostercarelink.com/

My question is, why legal adoption at all?  Has birth-right, family name and biology taken a back-seat to the money made through the fees an agency can generate through "legal claims", formal documentations, and state licensed approvals?  Have we become a global working system more dedicated to "aggressive change" and "developing growth" than the maintenance of family and child safety?  Bottom line:    Why is foster-care linked to adoption, and not legal guardianship and  family preservation?

Wed, 2008-07-02 22:25 — Teddy

Because

In my own experience of foster parenting for over 4 years, all the families I knew (maybe 50) were in foster care to adopt.
It is common knowledge that adopting through foster care, there is extra money to care for the child/children which there is
NOT through international adoption.
Legal Guardianship, for Americans wanting to adopt, does not include the control that they are seeking, and in foster care there is always the instantaneous reuniting of the child with the family while ongoing therapy helps the family preservation.
BUT, and listen carefully:  I have known foster parents personally who deliberately sabotage the family preservation by alienating the children from their own parents.  It's a daily happening and anyone who says differently has not known enough foster parents.  Also, the  workers tell these FP which child/children the agency/court are trying hard to TPR!  My first foster child, I was told she would stay; she didn't, and I started listening closely to what was going on... 

IN A WORLD OF WHY,
 Teddy