To be upset that I was not told I was breast fed by my aunt?

[Evieanne]

So in my family’s religion and culture, breast feeding a baby who isn’t yours still forms kinship and re establishes part of who you cannot marry and who you’re allowed alone with from the opposite sex even within family and who can help marry you off.

In my case, as a baby I was Breast fed by my dad’s sister and I became my aunt’s milk daughter and I am the milk sibling to all of her aunt’s children - so my cousins from my aunty, through me being breast fed, became immediate family to me and are just like my biological siblings. so her male children can no longer marry me and can be alone with me and can be my guardian when I marry as they are considered my brothers.

So it is a huge thing in my family’s religion.

It took my parents a while to conceive, and they used a clinic to finally have me. There were concerns as to whether I was biologically both of my parent’s daughter, but they loved me anyway and said they didn’t want to know. My mum breast fed me a couple times just in case I wasn’t biologically hers and kept me bottle fed after that, so I know I am the mahram of her brothers and her dad. My aunt breast fed me when my parents took me to Pakistan as a baby to make sure there was no way I wasn’t blood family to my aunties and uncles on my dad’s side because my parents are related and there was no cheating, they were wanting to protect family ties. I don’t know why they just didn’t do a dna test.

But they kept this from me and I found out because my mum and my aunt had an argument about it and I was told by my mum I couldn’t be alone with any of cousins from my dad’s side unless female and I asked what about the cousins from this aunt who breast fed me, they’re my brothers ffs!!

Well said @Evieanne

@MakeMineAdoubleChocolate

I don't know how you can say that men and women are equal and then go on to say that a woman has a right to her husband's money but he doesn't have the right to hers, that women have to ask their husband's permission to out when he doesn't have to ask hers, that a dughter has to ask her father's permission but not a son (and the mother's permission apparently doesn't come into it), that men and women have different rules about what they can wear, that men can have four wives but women can't have four husbands (or men with husbands and women with wives but that's a whole other problem).

People complaining because now thongs are popular at the beach and men are just gawking at these womens bums. How many Muslim women do you see wearing a thong to the beach, or wearing something revealing to tesco, yet a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf is oppressed or forced.

A woman (or man) is perfectly entitled to wear a thong at the beach, and if a man gawks and her he's the one at fault, not the woman.

I have seen on here, women say they married someone and then found out he never wanted children or more children or makes her get an abortion and mumsnetters actually encourage her to divorce him and find someone else who wants kids. Why can't a Muslim man seek a new wife and the wife can also help and bringing up that child too.

So if a man makes his wife get an abortion when she doesn't want to, the answer isn't for her to leave a man who is controlling, but for him to get a second wife and the woman have to raise another woman's child? That's fucked up.

Even now all the minor signs of the world ending are here men calling themselves women, men dressing in women'sclothes, women will be dressed but will look naked, getting drunk and gambling will be common, people in high governmentplaces will be corruption liars, look at bish and trump and Boris Johnson.

The world isn't ending because there are men wearing dresses and women wearing skimpy clothes ffs.

There are a lot of instances where women are walking in the park and in dodgy alleys in the dead of Night and then get robbed or beaten and then they cry over what happened but do you think if that lady was was a Muslim lady who was at home at that time of night, would that have happened to her. Tell me how many hijab women do you see out in the dark in the dead of night.

So women shouldn't be allowed to go out at night because she might be attacked? That's not a way to live.

Hear hear!

> No he’s not genetically my uncle, going by the chart my mum is also genetically my second cousin, but that is because my dad is my mum’s first cousin once removed because my dad is his wife’s mother’s first cousin. And that is assuming I am their blood daughter.

My point still stands that a DNA test is to show who you are genetically related to. If you are not his blood daughter, a DNA test might not even show that, because you, your father and mother, have the same people as grandparents/great grandparents.

A commercial dna test like ancestry would not help you op as these tests are designed for people whose grandparents are not all related to each other! From a genealogy point of view you don’t have a family tree, you have a family spider web. You are not going to get any straight answers as everyone is a blood relative of everyone else.

I really think you’d be better spending your money on therapy and counselling.

@MakeMineAdoubleChocolate

With due respect, why are you sharing information that cannot be collaborated by the Koran, the hadiths and is in fact directly opposite. Please let us stick to the truth.

> whose grandparents are all related to each other

OP and OP's mother have the same 2 people as great grandparents.

Those 2 people are also OP's dad's grandparents.

A test will clarify nothing.

To the poster saying "Islam is so great it protects women". A women is sinful if she denies her husband sex. Like she can't say "not tonight I'm tried". She can only refuse if she's very very unwell.

Also something about the angels will curse her all night long.

In Saudi and many Muslim countries marital rape isn't seen as a crime.

A targeted dna test would help wouldn’t it? You can get sibling, half sibling, grandparent and niece nephew and first cousin ones. I’m not talking about a commercial test now as perhaps that would be a lot more confusing and wouldn’t be as clear, unlike one where I could test with a maternal uncle to identify if I’m his niece for example

Women who are forbidden for marriage because of kinship - Islam Question & Answer (islamqa.info)

I'm still non-plussed by the fact your Mum had to marry her (paternal) uncle.
Your Dad is your great-uncle, no?
The above link hasn't made it any easier for me. I was never very good at brainteasers.
he’s not genetically my uncle, going by the chart my mum is also genetically my second cousin, but that is because my dad is my mum’s first cousin once removed because my dad is his wife’s mother’s first cousin

He’s not her uncle. He’s her mum’s first cousin, so my mum’s first cousin once removed, it is permissible to marry your parents cousins or your own cousins.

https://islamqa.info/amp/en/answers/12335

@MakeMineAdoubleChocolate Totally convinced by the fish coming back to life in zam zam water story! Btw, Mufti Menk is banned in countries like Singapore. Ever wonder why? Izzit cos they are just evil kaffirs? A little bit of critical thinking would do you a world of good.

Most people have 8 great grandparents.

You have two, who are the same people as your mother's grandparents (most people have 4 grandparents, your mother has 2).

It might be 'permissible' but for anyone who understands genetics, it's clearly not the best idea.

A long time ago I had a programming assignment which was to classify the familial relation between any two characters in I, Claudius, which is as if not more complicated than any Pakistani family. (Incidentally, I, Claudius is back on screens later this month, I believe.)

Evianne, it seems you may need to decide how much you want to remain within a strict culturally-driven version of Islam (with its worries about who is a 'brother', etc) or whether you are ready to move to a more expansive, but essential, loving version of Islam. It seems this decision will give you the frame of mind to then sort out how you want to engage with your family. Good luck!

2 of my great grandparents may be the same people as 2 of my mum’s great grandparents, but her husband is still not her uncle though and I’m correcting that incorrect assumption.

Apologies for the error.

But my point still stands, unless I'm corrected that for someone where both parents have the same people as grandparents/great grandparents, a DNA test is going to be of very little use unless it's to prove that you have a different father from the one on your birth certificate.

Sorry OP. I made that assumption based on you saying one of the brothers had a son that was your dad. I thought you meant your great- grandma's brother had a child not your great uncle's son. Didn't mean to offend you and hope you find the answers you are looking for x

OP, DNA tests create you a bit long list of genes you have. There are so many that you can start to tell you relationships with others by the percentage of DNA that you share. Everyone gets 50% of their genes from their mother and 50% from their father. Then on average you share 50% of your DNA with your full siblings. But in theory you could share 0% of your DNA with your full sibling - if they got exactly the opposite genes from your parents. In reality that doesn’t happen because the numbers of genes are so huge that it’s almost impossible statistically. But a person doing a DNA test with 5 full siblings might share slightly more DNA with some and slightly less with others.
Because your family married cousins for several generations, the numbers used to guess what the relationship is between 2 people aren’t going to work. - First cousins generally share 12,5% of their DNA. If those cousins marry then their children will each share more than 50% of their DNA with each parent.

There are things geneticists can do to trace back paternal or maternal lines. In men, the Y chromosome always comes from the father, so you get the same Y chromosome as all the people in your family who share a male ancestor. (Minor mutations do occur all the time though, which is why all men on earth do not have exactly identical Y Chromosomes). And everyone gets their mitochondrial DNA from their mother. So on your family tree everyone who’s mother is a blood relationship of your great grandmother would share the same mitochondrial DNA. But your cousin with a white mother will have got his mitochondria from her, so comparing your mitochondrial DNA to his will tell you nothing.

@MakeMineAdoubleChocolate

You raise some interesting points and I have certainly learned some new things. However, belonging to a religion unfortunately does not change how men are, regardless of which religion. Cultural and societal factors tend to play a larger part. In fact, when I was heavily pregnant I often had to walk through a part of the city with a high Muslim population and I can say that the men there certainly did not lower their eyes with respect. On the contrary. They all stood and stared. I have visited several Muslim countries abroad and have unfortunately had my breasts groped by several different men and once by a group of young men. I was dressed modestly (covered from neck to ankle although no head scarf) and in a large group myself.
You say that women are required to ask permission from their husbands before venturing out for their own safety. This implies that their husbands are more worldly and that the women are incapable of making their own decisions as to whether to walk down a dark alley in and unsafe area at night or not. This is akin to parenting. Women are not children though. To use this as an reason seeks to legitimise control.
Yes, it is of course courteous to tell your partner where you are going. I would argue that the vast majority of partners do that. Mumsnet cannot be seen as reflective of general society. People post when they are encountering relationship problems. They don't post to say, "I just told my husband that I am nipping out to the shops".
It's also not exactly a positive for a man to ask his wife if he can have another one. Or another one. Or another one. That is not consideration. That is women accepting a very low bar akin to not having a choice (unless of course their husband is a complete arse and they find relief in sharing the burden).
There is lots to be said for some rules in cultures as they do try to encourage order and less chaos and there are certainly many issues in this country (the amount that people drink etc for example). But those rules should be applied fairly between the sexes.
Many rules that stem from religion are merely societal interpretations, often made by men, and often as a way of exerting control over their own lives. Many are born out of poverty and the desire to cement family ties/protect land and status. Many are outdated and not required but prevail because it suits men to exert control or because they are prevalent in other countries where issues of poverty are still a problem.
I won't bash you for victim blaming. Others have already raised that. And I sadly agree with you to some extent that, despite it being the problem of men and not the woman, it is nevertheless sensible for women to not walk home alone drunk etc in order to protect themselves. I wish that this were not the case.
I do think that you have a rather rose tinted view of the rules that have been passed down to you and have accepted those rules rather meekly. Some of them will no doubt serve you well. But you do have your own brain and I would suggest that, as a woman, you are perfectly capable of making certain decisions yourself without the need to ask a man. In actual fact men are far more likely statistically to be assaulted than women, so if anything it would make more sense for the man to have to ask the woman for permission to go out so that she can check whether she thinks it's safe for him to do so!

@MakeMineAdoubleChocolate

As for the Zam Zam water miracle... He gets the fish out of a freezer. It's partially, not fully frozen. Fish's blood contains a type of anti-freeze, so provided that they are not fully frozen to the core, you can stick them in the freezer for a couple of hours, then revive them with tepid room temperature water.

In fact, there is a video in The Daily Mail showing a frozen fish coming back to life. However, I wouldn't wish to follow The Daily Mail as a religion either, due to its misogyny and fascism.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6444687/Incredible-moment-frozen-fish-brought-life-defrosted-warm-water.html

As per previous posts, I explained how and why the 4 wives thing came into being. For further information, there are many academic books, so non-religious, that outline how Islam came about, when, and why. They also place hadiths such as marrying 4 wives into context.

Equality is a big thing in Islam, more slanted to protect women’s rights than men’s. Why? Because it’s women who lose out when something happens, such as divorce or husband dying. Also part of the reason why, unlike Hindus where wife pays dowry, husband pays dowry which is solely for the wife’s use and benefit. Same with wages. A husband is not supposed to touch a wife’s wages because it’s his duty to provide and also to safeguard women from being sent out to work while husband does nothing. Old fashioned? Yes.

Extremism is a small percentage of Muslims. There are ~1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. There are 35.4 million in Saudi Arabia. Do you really believe that all of those 35.4 million people agree with 100% of the laws in Saudi Arabia? Of course not! Yes, people should never be imprisoned for wanting more rights, that’s absolutely wrong and no one can doubt that! Is it right that I cannot go on pilgrimage to Mecca because my husband isn’t Muslim and a woman cannot go alone? No, of course it isn’t!

The shagging everyone comment is because, and I don’t know if it’s different for other cultures, parents automatically assume that their children will get up to no good when they move out. It’s like “why do you want to leave home? What’s wrong with living here?” Again, old fashioned, and wrong, but that’s how it is.

Those so-called Muslim men that groomed girls in Rotherham make my blood boil. They aren’t Muslim! They stand for everything that Islam is against! They should be dealt with as per sharia law if they want to be Muslim and be hanged, drawn and quartered - and that’s too good for them tbh. Do you really believe that any Muslim thinks that’s right? These “Muslims” that do these things aren’t Muslim, just as Christians or Jews that commit atrocities aren’t Christians or Jews, and certainly aren’t representative of what Christianity and Judaism stand for!

You must have read tabloid news or some such other thing if you really believe that this Muslims will go to Heaven! No such thing. They have committed the biggest crimes against humanity and will be barred from Heaven for all eternity. Paradise is for those who have kept on the straight path, and that not wearing a hijab, or praying 5 times a day. That’s keeping the “rules” as per God himself. Not the Hadith. The actual Quran.

Purity is pushed for the same reason that Christians and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and goodness knows how many other religious sects and groups push it - your body is a temple but that doesn’t mean you let everybody in! Sex is meant to be something special, something shared between 2 people who love each other!

The reason why females take a chaperone (who may also be female) is that whole safety in numbers thing. Men can’t really be trusted, the Quran tells us that, so the only thing a woman can do, is protect herself to the best of her ability. That’s why, as you get older and wiser, you do just go out alone. You’re less likely to be talked into doing something stupid, whatever that stupid thing may be.

I, and no woman in my family, have ever worn a hijab! I live in a very hot place, so I cover up to avoid sunburn and skin cancer, but during cooler (under 30 degrees) I wear dresses and skirts and short sleeves and whatever else. I go to public beaches. My daughter (18, so you can imagine!) goes out in mini skirts and whatever the current fashion is. Clothing doesn’t define my religious belief or my relationship with God and that’s just silly if people believe that it does.

I used the equality and social security examples to show that females according to Gods law are not subjugated. Unfortunately men don’t always follow Gods laws, and that is unfortunate.

Oh, and I have never thought myself superior to others either, just because I’m Muslim.

In fact, I believe that you all are my brothers and sisters!

Do I take it a bit far? Does my husband wish I would stop inviting those less fortunate than us around for dinner? Yes, probably but surely I’m only doing what a decent person would do.

That’s the religion that I was taught! Not covering up, bowing to my husband and all that other stuff! Being decent, helping others, keeping God in my thoughts and heart.

If that makes me wrong, then yeah, I’m a bad person!

@JoanOfAllTrades
Equality is a big thing in Islam, more slanted to protect women’s rights than men’s
As long as you tow the line.