Yasir Qadhi – Ask Shaykh YQ #93 – Should a Wife Change Her Last Name back to Her Family Name
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Sister Satish emails from Pakistan. And she says that she got married a long time ago, 20 years ago or something, and she took her husband's last name. And now she is being told that this goes against the Koran. So should he she legally changed her name back to what it was before she got married.
One
out of seven, me COVID he came in.
No, he lay him first, blue, Lake Erie,
KU.
This is a simple response. Allah says in the Quran, the only Abba a boxer in the law call them by their fathers. That is the justice in the eyes of Allah subhana wa Tada. And this verse has been misinterpreted by some in our modern times to say that this applies to women changing their last names, but this is not the case, the western concept of woman changing her last name, and this is coming from the west, it never existed in the East it is a complete European construct, where if a lady would marry a man, she would change her last name to indicate that she is now basically owned by the man or she belongs to the man. Even in Western culture, it was never meant to indicate that
she is no longer the fault the daughter of her own father. You see, the western function of the last name is not the same as the Quranic verse with the rule homely Abba him, the Quranic verse with the room they are by means called them by their fathers, it means make sure that the child is is said so and so is the son of so and so so and so is the daughter of so and so, and do not substitute the son or daughter of so and so with another name that is not the parent. Now, in our modern culture, the first name is our name, the family name, it keeps on changing every few generations, you know, this is the default hardly any family maintains its name for a lengthy period of time. And there are some
family names that are so common, you have millions and billions of people that might have the exact same family name, which means nothing, then the family name in and of itself is not a identity marker, have called them by their fathers. That doesn't apply there. Does this mean she should change her name when she gets married? No. Why should you not change her name? Because it is a notion of ownership that Europe Europe had, and there's no need to do this. So she should not what if a lady marries she should not change your last name islamically speaking, if it has happened in the past, and she has already changed all of her legal documents to her husband's name, she is not
obliged to go back and redo the whole process. It is permissible to let it be she is not contradicting the verse in the Koran, because it is not ascribing her to other than her father. However, in her informal introductions in her talks and whatnot other than her passport, she should go back to the name of her family, because we do not agree islamically speaking that the wife belongs to the husband the way that Europe did. And there is no need to change the last name. Even if it is not an identity marker of the parents, sorry, of the of the parents. It is still identity marker of the family and she does belong to that family that she was born into. So bottom line, if
she if the lady is about to get married, she should not change the last name. If the last name has legally been changed, and it is now she wants to change it. She may do so informally. She should do so informally. But she is not obliged to go to a court of law and do whatever she wants to she may I'm not saying she shouldn't, but she's not sinful is what I'm trying to say. at a loss of Hannah without he knows best