Mother's Rights as Human Rights in Islam

Abstract

International human rights documents, in some cases such as maternity leave and maternity leave, specifically address mothers; but in general, the rights that are intended for all human beings or the rights that are intended specifically for women include mothers as a human being and at the same time as a woman; such as the right to health, life, housing, food and clothing, wages (remuneration), the controversial right to abortion and other cases. The point about these documents is that they are limited to purely material rights and have mentioned cases that can be specific to the mother's lifetime; whereas in the Islamic legal system, in addition to stipulating specific rights during the mother's lifetime, it is recognized that the mother has rights after her death, and the children are still obliged to fulfill the rights that the mother has even after her death. This difference is due to the difference in perspective and goals that these two systems have. We know that one of the names of God is Rabb, which means the Educator, and on the other hand, the purpose of the creation of man according to the Quran is nothing other than to worship God, and this worship is the way to develop human perfections in the individual.

Although the discussion of the right to feed a child places an obligation on the shoulders of the parents to provide nutrition; however, the manner in which this obligation is carried out is up to the parents themselves; that is, in fact, a distinction must be made between the principle of the obligation to feed the child and the manner in which this obligation is carried out. If it is possible to feed the child with something other than breast milk, the mother, while having the obligation to feed her child, has the right to refuse to give her milk, and only in one exceptional case, a limited obligation should be recognized for some mothers to give their milk; that is, when feeding the child with something other than breast milk is not possible, in which case the mother also has the right to demand payment from her husband, and in fact, this obligation simultaneously brings a privilege to mothers. In other cases where it was possible to feed the child to someone else, since feeding the child evokes the same concept of food (alimony), the cost of providing it was the father's, and this is also a privilege for mothers.