Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Is it Haram for the Wife to take her Husband’s Surname

is related to a common question that's going around and some

people are getting really extreme in this regard. The issue is about

whether the wife can take the husband's surname, or should she?

Should she not? Can she? Is it permissible? Is it necessary or is

it prohibited? That's what I want to quickly deal with today. Now,

first and foremost, with regards to this issue, what is prohibited

is that a person claims to be biologically the child of an

individual that is not their biological father. That's really

what's prohibited. Because if we look at a hadith, the Prophet

sallallahu alayhi wa salam, in the Hadith, the Prophet sallallahu

alayhi wa sallam mentions that

the person who

claims to be a descendant claims to be a child of the offspring of

a certain individual,

paternity, claiming to be the child of somebody, and he knows

that he's not, or she knows that she's not, then that that's the

warning is about that, that they will, they will have an issue,

whoever claims to be the son of other than his own biological

father, knowing that he is not, then paradise is deep is denied

for that person. So that is the basis of this right? There's,

there's a number of Hadith about this, this is not the only one.

This particular one is related by Bukhari and Muslim. There's others

in Bukhari and Muslim and others where it speaks. So on the same

level, that once you attribute yourself to other than your real

father, then, you know, trying to give that image that I am his son,

I am you know, his daughter, then this is where paradise becomes

denied on such a person. Right? That's our basis. Now, what we

need to look at is a wife taking her husband's surname, why is it

done? And does it fall under these warnings? And will it deprive a

person from Jannah? If they do that? So the question the answer

to that is in our current situation, with the culture that

we have, right? It's not going to Inshallah, this, the husband, the

wife taken her husband surname, is not going to fall into the purview

of this hadith. Where it would, is, for example, if this was not

the culture, so if the culture was that the woman kept her own

surname, and the man kept his surname, obviously, right, but

then this one individual came up, and she decided to, because maybe

she didn't like her family, or whatever the case was, she decided

to change her surname to her husband's surname, giving people

the impression that she is from, you know, she, her background is

in this family, that's who you know, she's a daughter of this

family, this particular family or tribe, then in that case, it would

be problematic, but in our case, like, for example, in, in the

English, you can say, culture, and also in the Gujarati culture, in

particular, because most Pakistanis don't do this. And

neither do most Bangladeshis do this. And many Arabs don't do this

either. It's primarily the Gujarati culture. And there may be

other cultures as well, that I don't know about. But it's

primarily the Gujarati culture. It's not even the up culture, as

far as I know, to do this, right, which means in other parts of

India, it's the Gujarati culture to do this way they did they take

their husband's surname. Now, I don't know if they would do this

in India as well. But they definitely do that in the West.

They, as soon as they get married, they take their surname. Now, it

seems like you know, they're following the English trend,

because I can't see any other reason for doing it. However, just

because they're doing that it doesn't make it you know, it

doesn't make it haram, they obviously had some considerations

for why they did this, they probably did this to make it kind

of easier to fill in forms, et cetera, uniformity of a family

uniformity of a family name that, okay, the whole family is like

this, you know, there's not two different surnames in the family,

and there's no confusion about it, they could have had their

considerations, whatever those were. So that's why, because it

doesn't lead to any kind of confusion or real Miss

attribution. That's why it's not haram. It's not haram at all.

Having said that, though, what you have to realize is that if If a

woman wants to keep her surname, or if a husband insists to her

that you know, you keep your surname, then that that should be

the way it is. She should not be forced by the extended family, you

know, because they'll have no particular reason for doing it

except culture. She should not be forced to do that, because it's

not Islamic to do that. Right. I'll just give you my own personal

opinion is that my wife has her own surname, right. She that she

is not she is not Mangueira. She is has her own surname, and I'm

very happy with that. Because at the end of the day, that's the

family she came from. Right and knowing that has certain benefits,

because the Allah subhanaw taala says in the Quran, we created you

with your CompTIA Ruben Wakaba Elita our Rafo in a chroma command

Allah here at Qualcomm that we created you in in tribes we

created

As different tribes and so on, that's why those people who keep

you know, when you ask them where they're from, or whatever, and

they say, you know, we're from God's earth, and we're Muslim

only, and they don't want to give any other attribution. And it's a

bit ridiculous because Allah tells us himself, that this is the way

it created you so that you can get to know each other, you can get to

understand each other, you can get to identify each other, identify

where people are coming from this inherently in it is kind of, you

can say, giving us an understanding that, you know, it's

a recognition of people's different cultures, as long as

they don't contradict anything religious and Islamic in the

faith. So it's to recognize that okay, they come from this

particular family or whatever they known, you know, like in the

Arabs, certain different tribes are known for different qualities

or characteristics or weaknesses. So when you know that you will be

careful about this. So now,

if, if this is happening, it's not necessary to change the surname,

so nobody should insist on anybody else, that they should change

their surname. Right. So that's, that's the first thing that's very

important to understand. It's very important to understand number to

give you an example.

For those who are changing it.

And I mentioned that, it's as long as there's no confusion, it's

okay. If somebody insists on doing it in the towel, Rasulullah

sallallahu. Some, you have numerous examples, although the

majority kept their own father's names and their own tribal

affiliations even after they got married. And you know, many of the

Sahaba and many women in that time they were, you know, they were

married to somebody then they got married to somebody else. It was a

divorce or death. It was very easy. It was very casual to do

this in those days. And plus, they were, you know, multiple wives

were possible that time as well. So now what, in that case, what

you have is, let's, if you look at some of the wives of Rasulullah

sallallahu alayhi wasallam It's famous about zebra the Allahu Ana,

Zainab bint geohash. Right, Xena, Zainab bint geohash. She's She's

got her own, you know, name Ben geohash. She doesn't become you

know, any other name essentially. Right. Number two, Fatima Alma

Zou. Mia. She's got her own tribal affiliation of being among zoomy

Imran Joanie. She is from the bundle Joan. She is from the

Joanie, you know that the Joanie tribe. You've heard DJ Khaled, she

is married to Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, she's

got her own name Khadija been coilette. However, on the other

hand, for certain reasons, you have others who may have been

ascribed to other than their father, you know, not necessarily

the husband, but other than the Father, for example, the one

example that I could think of, and I came up with, and then maybe

others as well, was, there's a person called us word. Actually,

there's a person called Myka dad, his father, his real biological

father was MyKad was amor, mica, Dad ignore hammer. So he was the

son of Mr. McDonough, the son of Mr. McDonough, Ebner hammer,

McDonough ignore hammer, but because he'd been adopted by

somebody else whose name was password, so he had become known

as MC that YBNL S word. However, when the order came down in the

Quran, that you should not call your adopted sons by you know,

your own name like the Prophet salallahu alayhi. Salam had an

adopted son as such, whose name was Zaid, right, so he was called

Zaid, ignore Mohammed because that was the the trend of the day the

culture of the day to who if you adopted somebody, you gave them

your name, they took your name, and it came became like this.

Islam prohibited that that's why these Hadith came down, right,

that do not do this. So that's why zayde is now known as Zaid, ignol,

Haritha ZDm, no Haritha and not Zaid, ignore Mohamed, because that

had to be made very clear. So when this prohibition was revealed,

even Mick Dodd, he declared Mick doll, I am Myka. Dodd, ignore

hammer, he made it very clear, but because people had become used to

quoting MacDonald, so that's why if you look at many of them,

aerations, etc, you'll see metadata S word, but people knew

that he's not really a sweat, he's actually this. So it's just like,

you know, to get a another name that becomes famous for somebody.

So that's completely fine. So likewise, with the majorities,

etc, and anybody else for that matter? Who does this? It's not

haram to do it. But it should not be insisted on if somebody refuses

to do so I just wanted to clarify that because I get a number. I've

been getting a number of emails saying, you know, that look,

they're making it out that it's haram to do this, because they're

equating it, to making it as though they're equating it to as

if the woman is attributing her paternal, you know, her paternity

to somebody else. And that's not the case. This is not what's

happening. It's just a cultural thing that that people are doing.

There's another issue though, there's two more issues that I

want to quickly, you know, complete cover here. One is that

there are many, there are many other cultures in which there's no

concept of a surname. In fact, a surnames change from every

generation, and I find that really weird. I find that really strange

because you can't really

Tell where a person is strong, what kind of family is strong, you

can't really make any connections. And I believe making connections

is very Islamic to do right to to understand who's who paternity

ancestry, the prophets of Allah, some himself knew his ancestry

until I had none. He said up to that we know 400% Sure, you know,

this, this, you know, the this 20 people or however many it was,

it's very important, but when, in some cultures, it's the son will

take the Father's name as his surname. So now the father's

surname will now be lost. Right, then when this person has a son,

or daughter, son, really, then he will take his father's surname,

you've got people, even within the Gujarati culture and other

cultures, that they have these kind of generic surnames that are

supposed to be first names, they don't make, you know, they don't

give you any kind of distinction as to, you know, where you're from

what, in fact, some people abandon their family surnames, I believe,

and again, this is just this is not necessary. Again, this is not

necessarily but this is just I think that in keeping in line with

nisab, and ancestry genealogy, I think they should be a family

name, you should be proud of whichever family you're from

Subhanallah because that's, that is Allah subhanaw taala speaks

about the Cabal and Sherborn Cabal, as I mentioned.

So now that to avoid that confusion, we need to understand

that you can't just take on some kind of generic surname, right or

generic name. It's, you should attribute yourself to your parents

as much as possible and to your family as possible.