Majed Jarrar

Groups exists naturally because humans are, in fact, pack creatures (sounds better than saying pack animals, right?).

---

The truth is, most people don't have leadership skills and they need leaders to survive. It's an obligation for every Muslim to seek someone they trust and consult when they need advice. However, depending on your ability to make decisions alone, it's good (to vital) for you to find a group of good people with which you can associate, stay on track of good things, and achieve good goals that are hard to do otherwise.

---

However, (Disclaimer: this isn't about previous question on qabeelat ansar/ maghreb, or kawthar, or mac, or a cult formed by your pious sheikh, or any specific group - this is a very broad generic statement), being part of a group may not always be better. Many people slip into a blind space of trust where they almost stop using their principles and judgement, and turn to complete blind followers of the group, and become alienated or even desensitized from people outside that group.

---

Think of regular cases like nationalism; majority of people on earth agree to put their faith in a government to do what they think is their best interest. The majority of governments on earth are inadequate and/or corrupt, yet it is very hard to convince the majority of people with that. Think of extreme cases like KKK and ISIS. They have built their existence on the importance of unity and loyalty to a group. People who join them wholeheartedly believe that they are there for a good cause, that they are alone are the saved people on earth, that everyone else is a lost cause.

---

While you should seek a group to help you become a better person and achieve better goals; you should never become a passive or blind follower in a group, even when you are just a follower; you shouldn't have to sacrifice your own values and principles for the unknown goals of your group. Think about this: even the companions disagreed at times with the prophet, with the utmost love and respect to him, when they didn't think his idea was the best. Sometimes, instead of telling them listen trust me I know better, God told me so, he would agree to follow their idea, and their idea would prove to be worse, and he would never blamed them for it. All of this is to teach us that even if you are following a righteous person you trust completely, you should always evaluate, be critical, in a healthy and construction way.

---

To conclude, God Almighty teaches us this balance in one incredible short surah. He says: "Indeed, the human is at loss, except for those who [as a group] believe, do righteous deeds, remind one another with truth and remind one another of patience." [103: 2-3]

---

The first two exceptions can only happen by doing goodness with a group of other good people, and the second two can only happen by keeping your moral judgement alive and critical mindset open to remind even the closest and most righteous people you know.

View more

Adoption, defined as: guardianship and care-taking of minors who have no (capable) guardian = is a great and noble act in Islam.
The Messenger of Allah said: "The guardian of an orphan and I will be like this in paradise (and he pointed with his index and middle fingers as being close to each other)."
However, Allah forbade us from taking adopted children and giving them our last names and treating them exactly as own our children, because that's deception. Islam stresses on the point that the adopted child is not kinship, they are like a friend in need to the family. In other words, The adopted child, in Islam, can still grow up and marry from the family of the adopting parents, because there's no kinship between them. The adopted child doesn't have a default right to inheritance like a real child does, etc.
This may raise some awkward issues of opposite-sex interaction with the adopting family members, after growing up. One of the easy and convenient solutions, scholars recommend that Muslim families who want to adopt a child who's less than two-years old, make sure that the adopting mother nurse the child such that they become her child-in-nursery. Since kinship-through-nursery is identical to kinship-through-blood in Islam, the child can grow up in the same household and be considered a sibling to the kids.

View more