Who'll care for the orphans?

Now that the shock of the Dec 26 tsunami has begun to wear off, the Indonesian government is faced with the reality of hundreds, if not thousands, of orphans. The immediate need is to place the affected children in orphanages and begin the process of adoption placement. I was taken back initially at two stories on Wired concerning this.
>>First Story<<
>>Second Story<<

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Curious, I did a little more digging and have pretty much figured out the following:

There is a difference in the definition and concept of adoption between Christian and Muslim religions. Specifically, the western concept is that the child who is adopted becomes the official child of that family and has all the rights that a natural child in the marriage would have. In Muslim society, the Muslim personal law (Sharia) prohibits this type of adoption and specifies that the adoptive parent becomes the guardian and the child the ward. Additionally, the Muslim inheritance law (Hanafi fiqh) prevents the adopted child from inheriting the parent's estate (unless he would have inherited based upon a different relationship than that of child).

Hence, from the outside looking in, it appears to me that a Christian adoption is based upon love for the child, whereas a Muslim adoption caries more of a flavor of duty. I think that the Muslim law was attempting to protect the natural born children of a parent from losing their inheritance to a brother adopted out of duty. For instance, if the father of two natural born sons (ages 14 and 12) adopted a son (age 15), then the adopted son would have an equal share with them according to Christian tradition, but the natural born sons' inheritance would be protected under Islamic law.
This article deals well with this issue.

There also seems to be another aspect with regard to allowing ANY children to live in a Christian orphanage.

The Prophet Muhammad said, "No babe is born but upon Fitra (as a Muslim). It is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Polytheist."(Sahih Muslim, Book 033, Number 6426)

Though this has broader application, it would be an effective impediment to any serious Muslim in allowing a child to live in a home where he could be influenced away from Islam.

There are many Christians with a similar viewpoint, though I remind all that the Christian viewpoint is simply that, "All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God." Rom 3:23 This means that children are sinners too. In essence, no one is born a Christian, each must accept Christ as their savior. God already knows who will and will not come to Him, but it is a choice that each of us will make. Regardless of circumstances, a person will either choose or reject Christ.

In light of this, I found one quote in the Wired article particularly interesting.

"This confirms some of our worst fears that certain missionary groups would exploit the tragedy and the earthquake to enter into these areas and convert people through use of a disproportionate power relationship," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.(CAIR)

One last interesting point, I visited muslim.adoption.com which redirected me to Parent Profiles, a site listing parents willing to adopt children - any children - and ran 2 queries using religion as the sole criteria. When I ran the query for "Baptist", I recieved 16 hits. When I ran it for "Muslim", I received, you guessed it, 0 hits. You can draw your own conclusions.

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