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