Landmark #21: The Right to Name Your Own Child

In what has been dubbed the “Bin Abdullah” case, the Court of Appeal ruled in a landmark decision last month that an illegitimate Muslim child can carry the name of his father, contradicting two religious edicts, or fatwas, issued by the National Council of Islamic Affairs in 1981 and 2003. The fatwas state that illegitimate children should bear the patronym Bin Abdullah instead of his father’s name. In this particular case, the child was conceived out of wedlock, and was born less than six months after the date of his parents’ marriage. Here to explain the significance of this ruling is Nizam Bashir, a member of the parent’s legal team who argued this case successfully at the Court of Appeal.