Between one of no lineage and one of unknown lineage

M. Bitar, Ruba Mansour:      

أطفال الكرتونة".. ظاهرة تؤرّق لبنان في الصغر والكبر   A child of unknown parentage is not without parentage, as there is no new creature without a mother and father, The fact that the mother or father or both are unknown does not negate them, According to the 1989 Convention, these children are considered separated from their parents when they are under 18 years of age, This includes in particular children who were found by chance or what are called foundlings, or the children of mercenaries from the fighters, or the children of temporary or temporary marriage when the husband renting the woman disappears, or others.

Regarding what are called foundlings, there are statistics that say that their number reached 500 children in Syria in 2014! The number is constantly increasing and constantly changing, In the western Aleppo countryside, it was said that there were 1826 children of unknown parents, There are other numbers and areas that are difficult to count, It is certain that there are 4000 women and 8000 children in the self-administration area, i.e., the former Abu al-Hol camp,As for Aleppo, it is said that there are 36357 widows because of the war, Then in 2018 it was said that there were 189980 orphaned children!

From a social perspective, children of unknown parentage are a significant problem that patriarchal societies have failed to address ethically, rationally, and humanely, For example, a child born out of wedlock as a result of rape or captivity in war is branded with the stigma of “shame.” Were it not for this stigma, the problems would be greatly reduced and could be resolved constructively and honorably. Customs, traditions, and inherited beliefs based on the concepts of shame, sin, and permissibility have stood in the way of most honorable solutions, such as adoption. In Europe, the number of children of unknown parentage rose during the Industrial Revolution and the era of women’s liberation, with many children born without knowing their biological father, It was precisely at this time that society accepted the existence of unmarried women with children, and the concept of family changed from father, mother, and child to mother and child without a known father, The stigma was no longer attached to this dual structure—the family composed of a mother and child without a known father, Furthermore, there was adoption, which addressed the phenomenon of homelessness, affecting 2% of the Egyptian population, often referred to as street children, How egregious was society’s injustice when it obstructed the adoption process, Adoption, and thus the homelessness project was perpetuated.

In Europe, children and their mothers without a father are treated with the utmost respect and care to ensure a normal life for every mother with a child, regardless of whether the father is known or unknown, The state provides the system of a mother and child without a father with many material and moral privileges, which it does not provide to the three-person family, i.e., a mother, a father, and a child, This is in stark contrast to what Arab societies do in preventing adoption and attaching the label of shame to the child, his mother, and even their relatives, The label of shame is attributed, according to the opinion of that religious system that gave society those rules and rulings, such as the prohibition of adoption, which was born from the womb of decadence, as represented by the case of Zainab bint Jahsh.

All of this was reflected in the social, religious, moral, political, and humanitarian systems, For example, what the so-called Salvation Government did in Idlib, by refusing to register these children in schools, in addition to the stigma issued by the general public, demonstrated the lack of awareness and morality, the main cause of which was religious rulings.

There is nothing in the Arab religious order but evil and harm to the innocent child who is free from all sin, The roots of evil extend to considering sexual practice without that commercial paper marriage in the slave market as a kind of “adultery”, which does not exist in voluntary sexual relations, Voluntary negates the state of adultery and forced sexual relations is rape, Sharia wants to stone the adulteress, that is, it wants to stone all the women of Europe, since there is no woman in Europe who has not had sex before marriage, In general, Sharia encourages rape and harassment by placing the responsibility on the victim.

The savage groups do not care about the psychological trauma and damage that these criminal acts inflict on the innocent child, which will accompany him throughout his life, He is not entitled to practice many professions, including the profession of mufti, judge, or witness, Regarding military professions, there is the height of contradiction, as they are prohibited for foundlings by virtue of the general law derived from Sharia, Meanwhile, the imam of the Abu Dhar Mosque in Idlib saw the necessity of recruiting these children from a young age into the military, i.e. establishing something like the Janissary army, He cites here Al-Zahir Baybars, who was of unknown lineage, and despite that, he became a great leader according to the logic of Arab greatness, This is what ISIS and its ilk practiced, and ISIS education even pushed children to practice executions by shooting, i.e. attaching shame to the child and then turning him into a Janissary killer.

 The crime is not limited to the child, but includes the woman who gave birth to him in the first place, as she is also branded with the label of shame, and she may pay with her life because of the hypothetical shame, i.e., she is killed,The fear of the stigma of shame and its consequences drives her to throw her newborn somewhere so that he may be picked up by a passerby, To this extent has social savagery reached in the barbaric patriarchal society,How much rationality and concern for her child lies in the head of this woman when she is sure that her newborn has become in safe hands, and how great is the rationality in her head, and how great is the love in her heart, and how great is the morality in her conscience,She is compensating for a social failure that has not been able to provide solutions to the simplest individual problems, let alone the larger public problems.

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