Proving parentage by DNA is a scientific fact or a religious presumption?

About a year ago, the controversial professor of comparative jurisprudence and Islamic law at Al-Azhar University, Ahmed Karima, caused more tension and attraction between the rival sects about the involvement of religion in science or not, when he angrily asserted that the wife who gets pregnant while she is under the custody of a man is the child. For the man who is in his infallibility, regardless of any doubts, and that this lineage is limited to the waiting period only in the event of divorce, but if the waiting period ends, the child is not attributed to the husband even if medical analyzes prove that he is his son!

presumption, not evidence

A decent argument that he presented at the time is based (according to his saying) on ​​the fact that “Islamic jurisprudence is a merciful, objective and realistic jurisprudence, and there is a saying in it that the adulterer’s water is invalid, meaning that it does not result in legal effects and does not have a child attached to it,” and that “there is a difference between evidence and context, so the evidence It is definitive, but the presumption bears the right and the wrong.

Karima (who is one of the most prominent sheikhs of Al-Azhar on satellite channels and influential in the formation of popular, cultural and religious public opinion) continued, saying, “The evidence is not evidence, it is either martyrdom or approximation, and the judge can use it as a martyrdom or approximation order,” and he wondered, denouncing, “how Shari’a, rationally, and customarily, a child is attributed to a man who is not involved with the mother in a marital relationship?! Then after that we suffice to say that “DNA” was made?! for the right marriage.

In other words, if the full sexual relationship took place between a man and a woman and resulted in pregnancy and childbirth, then the child is without a father “by law” because the relationship was not within the framework of official marriage! As for the “DNA” and such analyzes based on science, “we do not deny it as a scientific matter, but we take it as a presumption and not as evidence because error is possible.” It is not always 100 percent correct!

This was a year ago, and Karimah’s position on science, medical sciences, and chemical proofs was dealt with under the pretext of laboratory and proof of knowledge that it is a religious whirlwind that has become usual in the cup of millions crouching around social media platforms or on sofas installed in front of satellite screens devoted to gossip, specifically “said” opinions Strange and “said” the strangest fatwas.

The ultimate in weirdness

The extreme degree of strangeness is achieved when gossip turns into action, and people find themselves in front of a man who denies the lineage of a child to spite the mother, or a team of lawyers harnessed to prove the misconduct of a woman, and her multiple sexual relations to deny the lineage of her child to their client who refuses to undergo a DNA test, or a child without identity papers because who He believes that he is the father who refuses to acknowledge his paternity in order to preserve his social status or refuse to take responsibility, or as a punishment for the woman for not complying with his orders or the rules he established for the relationship between them. Religion and science.

Until last December, there were no less than 12,000 cases of denial of lineage filed before Egyptian courts, and statistics from Egyptian family courts indicate that more than half of these cases were filed in the first five years of marriage, as the mother wants him to submit. Whoever says he is the father for a DNA test, and whoever believes that he is the father refuses, evades, or abstains, and the law protects him and those who interpret Sharia support him.

boy to bed

The vast majority of these courts and those in charge of them rely on the rule of “the child goes to the bed,” and it is the rule that is based on the hadith “the child goes to the bed and the adulterer gets stone,” which religious scholars interpret as “the adulterer has no right to the child, and the principle is that the child goes to the bed in order to preserve the lineages from being lost.” If a man is absent from his wife and she gives birth, then the child is followed by what he denies by cursing!

The fatwa issued by the Egyptian Dar al-Iftaa in 2009 indicates that the jurists agree that “a child born of adultery proves his lineage from his mother, because motherhood is a natural relationship, unlike fatherhood, which is a legal relationship. There is no proof of paternity for a person born of adultery from the water of his adultery.”

It is noteworthy that the Egyptian law remained conservative and prevented the woman’s right to register the child in her name, which means that thousands of children are without lineage or official papers that enable them to obtain a birth certificate on their way to enroll in a school and obtain vaccinations, health care and others, not to mention enjoying the right to be a citizen. He has an identity card.

Morality police

The identity of these children is closely related to the societal, cultural and religious morality police, and then the legal, judicial and governmental ones, which look with contempt and disdain at women who have sexual relations outside marriage, and although this relationship is established with a man, the societal tradition considers that the man’s relationships are within or Outside or around the marriage system, it is justified, understood, logical, and forgiven, and even solidarity with him by supporting him in denying the lineage of children to him if he does not feel a desire to do so, according to the group surprised by the clergy’s position that refuses to prove lineage by science.

As for the group that is satisfied and compliant with not proving the lineage of the man in the relationships that are “rejected by society” and leaving the child to the mother who is not allowed by the law itself to obtain identification papers for the young, they say that the wisdom in that is to protect people’s honor and preserve their genealogy, and there are those in this group who demand harsh penalties for Whoever begged himself to demand that one of them be subjected to a lineage test!

The father spends and protects

Many clerics assert that the wisdom of attributing a child to his father and not his mother is that the father is based on the children and is charged with their maintenance and in charge of their defense, not the mother, and although there are thousands, perhaps millions, of cases in which the father refuses to spend on his children (which he does not question In their lineage) and this is out of spite for the mother or a desire to direct spending to channels that have priority such as marrying another woman or others, not to mention the millions of families that women alone provide for, but the lesson remains in the ancient wisdom.

He presented wisdom that cannot compete with him in strangeness except the realism of a series of events that Egyptian society witnessed in the past few days, in which the wisdom of the father’s responsibility for the young and their protection intertwined, with the refusal to prove lineage with modern science, and with them the insistence on proving lineage to whom science said that he is not the father.

The husband ran away and stole the necklace

The family court in Giza rejected a lawsuit filed by a woman against a famous soccer player to prove lineage, as she says that she married the player, and resided with him for six months in a rented apartment. for him.

On the other hand, the ruling issued by an Egyptian court in another case months ago is still the talk of people in Egypt, and it is for a husband who doubted his wife’s behavior during his years of work in an Arab country. He underwent a DNA test to prove or deny the lineage of his three children, and the analysis proved that he is not The father, and although the wife and the man with whom she had a relationship while her husband was traveling were imprisoned for three years, after everyone was subjected to DNA tests that proved for the second time that the husband is not the father, the court ruled a few days ago to refuse to cancel the lineage of the children to the husband even though it was proven that he It is not the father twice by analyzing the DNA, in accordance with the jurisprudential rule that states that “the child is for the bed”!

Despite the contradiction that opponents describe as “obscene,” and the logic they describe as “absent,” issues, events, and incidents that involve features, landmarks, or suspicion of a relationship of a sexual nature are popularly dealt with from one of two starting points, not a third, either the woman’s claim Silence in order to be covered, or burying heads in the sand until the glow of the incident subsides and passes like others.

Clash of clergy and science

Events and incidents of attempts to prove or deny lineage through science and modernity remain in a state of clear and explicit clash with the majority in society, which is led by the bulk of the clergy, whether in official institutions or those independents who fill the spider ether with fatwas, ijtihad, and the dissemination of jurisprudence and ideas that the majority deals with as closer. It is often based on the Qur’an and Sunnah, and is seen by a minority as excessively strict and exaggerated in antagonizing science and rejecting modernity.

Clash of Enlightenment

The preacher and imam in the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments and one of the few reformers, Nashat Zaree, says that many clerics clash with the crowd of modernity and enlightenment, which is increasing day by day due to the communications revolution and its impact on everyone, and the possibility of obtaining information and exchanging ideas, adding, “When an issue is raised Such as female circumcision, child marriage, relationship with another, witchcraft, jinn, and others. We find many sheikhs who are resorted to for opinion, asking people who died more than a thousand years ago, and summoning people from their graves to answer questions and issues in which modern science and medicine have said their word, and they ignore science. And the documented research, and they cling to the opinions of those who used to climb the mountain to see the crescent with the eye, and they used three pebbles to clean themselves, and at their time there were no scientific or medical means to help them in facilitating their lives.”

Zaree emphasized that the fatwa changes in place and time, continuing the saying, “We do not blame those who diligently worked in his time, but rather those who reject diligence in our time and suffice with the same fatwas that were in force in the third century, refusing any use of knowledge that said his documented and confirmed word, and you see him insisting on The search is in the stomachs of books, mocking those who respect their minds, science and thought, at times describing them as secularists, at others as enemies of Islam, and at a third as those with agendas.

contradictory positions

In the same context, the writer, Sahar Al-Jaara, asks, sarcastic and angry, “Do we cancel the analysis?”, adding, “How does Islam prohibit adoption for fear of mixing of lineages, yet it attributes illegitimate children to a man just because he is the husband of the woman who gave birth to them illegally? Isn’t the lack of recognition The results of the DNA analysis are against science, and how, according to Sharia, rationality, and custom, is it proven that adultery is committed against a woman, and her children are attributed to the husband, even though the analysis proved that they are not of a descendant?

And she continued, “How do we deal with the issue of mixing of lineages in this case? Why did we take from the Sunnah the child to bed and leave the curse? If the law does not change, we will become like someone who cuts open the pregnant woman’s stomach to know the gender of the fetus and does not acknowledge the existence of the ultrasound! We deal with the child, who is the victim, as if it is a scandal that walks on two feet.” He is supposed to pay the price for his mother’s sin with life, and we treat science and the law as if they were heresy, the work of Satan.”

The amazing feat

The rejected “DNA” heresy, and in other sayings, the amazing scientific discovery called “deoxyribonucleic acid” and the controversy surrounding it and accompanying it is a new episode in the series of conflict between a group that is innovating or dreaming of religious renewal, and another that rejects renewal and is holding on to everything that is. It is old even if it was blown up, overturned, or denied by modern science.

“DNA” is that component found inside cells, which contains the genetic information responsible for the development and function of an organism, and allows molecules to pass from one generation to another, and is the basis of all forms of biological life, and is present in all types of cells as it carries the genetic information of organisms living organisms, and all the instructions they need to grow, reproduce, and survive.

Strangely, the many uses of “DNA” for solving crime mysteries, identifying human remains, genetic testing where each person’s DNA sequences are unique, identifying pathogens and tracking outbreaks of other diseases, analyzing biological remains at archaeological excavation sites, and shedding light The makers of ancient civilizations that baffled the world, study human migration patterns, develop new treatments for cancer types, and determine people’s readiness to contract certain diseases before they occur and others. So-and-so is the father of Allan or not, the matter turns into legal rules and jurisprudential foundations and the refusal to consider modern science as a presumption that bears error and right and not irrefutable evidence.

“Racial” difference intelligence

The discovery of the structure of DNA is attributed to the British scientists Francis Crick and the American James Watson in 1953, but it is painstaking work and extensive research that took decades, and it is also indicated that Watson – one of the two scientists attributed to them this great scientific discovery and the Nobel Prize winner – was stripped of many of his titles , including “Nobel” after he repeatedly repeated a point of view described as “racist” that genes lead to differences in intelligence rates between blacks and whites in favor of the latter group, and Watson apologized – or circumstances forced him – to do so, but it seems that the apology differs from Conviction, he said that he loves black people and will not benefit from harming them, but what he said is based on scientific, genetic research foundations.

The funny thing is that he “tried to kohl it, so he completely blinded it,” in an interview he gave in 2019, when the journalist asked him if he changed his convictions regarding the intelligence of blacks less than the intelligence of whites, and he said, “No, not at all. I would have liked them (blacks) to change or Evidence shows that ways of care and upbringing are more important than nature, but no scientific evidence has been shown to prove that. There is a difference in intelligence rates between them, and this difference is hereditary.

Watson returns and stresses that he hopes that indicators will appear that deny this, or that scientific ways will be found to change this “reality”, pointing to dealing with this situation on the basis of “If the difference exists, then we must ask ourselves: How do we work to improve it and not ignore Exist or deny it!