There Are Cases Where Male & Female Inherit the Same - Dr Zakir Naik
Dr. Zakir Naik explains that Islamic inheritance law is not uniformly male-favoring, presenting specific cases where males and females inherit equally, and even cases where females inherit more than males. He uses the example of parents inheriting from a deceased child and a husband inheriting alongside parents as evidence.
Summary
Dr. Zakir Naik begins by acknowledging the common perception that in Islamic inheritance law, women typically inherit half of what their male counterparts receive. However, he argues that this is not universally the case and provides specific counterexamples from Islamic inheritance rules.
He first presents a scenario where male and female heirs inherit equally: when a child dies leaving behind both a mother and a father, and that child had children of their own (i.e., the deceased had children, making the parents grandparents), both the mother and father each inherit 1/6 of the estate. This demonstrates a case of complete equality between the male (father) and female (mother) in inheritance shares.
Dr. Naik then goes further to present a scenario where a female actually inherits more than a male. He describes the case of a woman who dies leaving behind a husband, no children, and both parents. In this situation, the husband receives half (1/2) of the estate, the father receives 1/6, and the mother receives 2/6 (equivalent to 1/3). This means the mother receives double what the father receives, directly inverting the commonly assumed male-favoring ratio.
Key Insights
- Dr. Zakir Naik concedes upfront that in most cases women do inherit double compared to their male counterparts, but argues this is not a universal rule in Islamic inheritance law.
- Naik argues that when both parents inherit from a deceased child who had children of their own, both mother and father receive an equal share of 1/6 each — a case of full gender equality in inheritance.
- Naik presents a scenario where a female heir (the mother) inherits double that of a male heir (the father), directly contradicting the stereotype that Islamic law always favors males in inheritance.
- In the specific case of a childless woman dying and leaving behind a husband and both parents, Naik calculates that the mother receives 1/3 (2/6) while the father only receives 1/6 — making the mother's share twice that of the father's.
- Naik uses the husband's fixed share of half (1/2) in a no-children inheritance scenario as the baseline to demonstrate how the remaining estate is divided unequally in the mother's favor over the father.
Topics
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