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How Should Illegitimate Children Be Treated? Part 2

23 January, 2017
Q My biological dad raped my mom at a party one time. It was an Afghan party where there were non-Muslims and Muslims. I am the first daughter and second child. My half-brother is two years older than I am. My mom was going back to one of the room where she left her purse and a boy that was a teenager came and forced himself on her. My real dad left and my mom was ashamed to call the police, but she told her husband (my step-dad). They kept their mouths shut, and this is a family secret and since then. My parents are so mean and call me "harami", meaning "bastard" when they are mad, and I can't help but cry. My step-dad must hate me because he is probably has wounded pride that a handsome boy much younger than him marked my mom. I went online and a website on Islam said that illegitimate kids are prone to steal, lie, and commit sinful acts and that made my heart break. My biological dad my step-dad, my mom all broke my heart. My mom got pregnant three times again, having five kids total. I mean, I didn’t asked to be born and the Islamic website degraded someone like me, telling I am prone to do sins and that I am cursed. My parents treat me like a Cinderella. I am like a caged bird. They don't let me step one foot outside, and I am starting to get fat because I am at home all day and can’t exercise. My step-dad hates me; one day he scared me so much. I looked up online and it said that I can pluck my unibrow and irregular hairs on my eyebrows and my mom called me a slut and said that I have ten boyfriends. My step-dad secretly said to me that he will kill me and then kill himself. That was a long time ago. I know he is too scared to do it, but that threat was so mean! I can't believe him! Not to mention he always cages me in the kitchen to work and when I ask him to please let me play outside and go to the park, he always replies by quoting that stupid hadith! "And stay in your homes [...]" I think that hadith is fake. They bought me a trashy game console and said that all I need is in the home. It is still a cage no matter how much they buy me stuff to keep me in. I am only allowed to go to school, but I swear if I was in Afghanistan, I would have been married off at age nine and not allowed to go to school. I am like a caged animal and they are using Islam to justify my oppression. What should I do?

Answer

Discovering Islam Team
23 January, 2017

Asalamu Alaikum Dear Sister,

Thank you for contacting About Islam with your very important question.

Please find the second and final part of the answer to your question below. Find the first part at the link here.

In addition to practicing patience and self-restraint, reading and educating yourself as suggested in part one, you can be proactive by Improving Your Worship

Sister, please be steadfast in performing all obligatory acts of worship in Islam, especially the five daily prayers.

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Make tremendous dua to Allah to make a way out for you, and to turn the hearts of your mother and especially your stepfather in compassion and mercy towards you.

Focusing on Improving Yourself and Other Family Relationships

When you focus on self-improvement and polishing your own conduct and behavior with your parents and other family members, they will observe the positive change in your demeanor, and inshaAllah, they will become kinder and more benevolent towards you.

However, achieving this change might take a lot of time, maybe years of being patient and steadfast in good conduct, having ihsan towards family members.

Once they observe how nice and kind you are, the other members of your family, such as your younger sisters, will naturally gravitate towards you with love and admiration.

Time is the Best Solution

With the passage of time, change will come, and this I am saying with definite surety. 

So, capitalize on your youth, free time, and good health right now to focus on your education and self-improvement in both deen-related and worldly education, so that you can arm yourself with the weapon of knowledge because it is one of the strongest weapons a woman can possess.

Conclusion

You didn’t mention how your relationship with your older brother is. Perhaps you can become closer to him, and ask him to take you out to the park or to the library once in a while, with your parents’ permission.

It would help a lot if you could convey to your parents – repeatedly in a polite tone – that they should stop bringing up the past in their anger, and stop reminding others in the family, especially your siblings, about how you were conceived.

I am sure that every time that rape is mentioned, it hurts your mother as much as, if not more than, it hurts you.

Lastly, that “Islamic” website that you read in which it was stated that illegitimate children go on to do evil things just because they were born through a haram relationship, please discard what it said and expel it from your mind.

Julaybib was a companion of the Prophet (PBUH) who was teased and socially marginalized because of his unknown lineage and because of his physical features. Yet, Allah blessed him with a beautiful wife in this world, who was chosen for him by Allah’s messenger himself, and he was eventually granted the high status of martyrdom.

Lastly, cursing or insulting one’s own child or step-child on the basis of their origins or lineage is a habit that is closer to jahiliyyah than Islam.

Our own Prophet was called names, but he didn’t allow those who called him names to affect or thwart the positive work that he did. Parents have no right to insult a child or call her names, no matter how angry they might be.

May Allah grant you peace, love, and harmony. Ameen.

I hope this helps.

Walaikum Asalam and please keep in touch.

Please continue feeding your curiosity, and find more info in the following links:

It’s Original Mercy … Not Sin

Illegitimate Child: Inherit His Father?

Will an Illegitimate Child Enter Jannah?