Child Custody lecture- Insight Dubai Confrence

On the 28 of March 2011 from 9am to 10:30am,I attended one of the international conference “Insight Dubai” lectures, which took place at the college’s Multi Purpose Hall. It was hosted by the conference participants, and the guest speaker was Ammar Shams, Regional Head of Corporate Sustainability HSBC who discussed the topic of “Child Custody in the UAE law and the Islamic Shari’a “. Mr.Ammar mainly talked about the different transition points of the traditional Islamic law and Share’a throughout the past 1400 years in the issue of child custody.

In addition , he introduced the international participants who had no previous certain knowledge about the discussed topic to the Islamic Shari’a, and how it does contribute to the community needs in several law issues such as child custody in the divorce or death circumstances of the parents.

Mr.Ammar also talked about the five Islamic interpretations, and what are they meant to the Islamic Shari’a which are AlShaf’i,AlHanafi, AlHanbly,AlMaliki and the AlJafari and what the UAE law follows which are the only first four mentioned names.

Then he started to talk about how none Muslims under Islam had believed in certain false stereotypes of the Islamic religion, such as Islam is the religion of terrorist, the strict Islam Shari’a laws like cutting hands and wearing naqab and other spread claims and judgments that has no link to the reality of Islamic Shari’a. Islam is the only merciful, wise and peaceful religion that considers the custody of child rights as one of the vital and major issues in any community that people should be fully aware of.

But the most attention-grabbing part of the lecture was when he started to talk about the deep details of the traditional Islam Shari’a in child Custody rules and how the UAE law adapted and changed some of those laws to harmonize the current social structure of communities and fulfill their needs.

He mentioned that people around the world tended to approach child custody in what is the interest of the child, and whom he wants to be with. However, the Islam traditional assumption was women are the first and default custodian who maintain the child custody when the child is young till a certain age, and if the mother is not qualified for the custody for being incapable financially, mentally or physically the custody goes to the line of females in the child family like sisters, aunties or grandmothers but the father comes at the end of the line. Hence it just means that the father would eventually not get his child custody when the child needs one of his available and capable parents more than anytime else. Thus, since Islam was rotted in a very clear system that tells it has the capacity to be adapted and changed to make the law protect children from individuals’ interests, the UAE law modernized child custody law to qualify the father straightaway and not the female line of the family when there is a stated evident against the mother qualification. And that’s have been done not to raise conflicts or contrary in the Islam religion, yet as children in current life needs their parents more than before in the traditional Islam era.

Mr.Ammar also cleared out the fine line between the three terms custody, moral guardianship and legal guardianship and explained the differences between them.

 It was one of the very beneficial lectures I’ve ever attended, because I gained a lot of new knowledge about my own religion and things I’ve never knew before as a Muslim. But what really made me feel surprised was when the none-Muslims and none-Arabs participants of the conference felt so curious and raised questions we as Muslims might never think about. It just made me feel pride and respect the laws of my religion and country even if they sound debatable or argumentative to me because there is always a clear and wise answer for every questioned issue.