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Inheriting from a non-Muslim

Answered as per Hanafi Fiqh by Muftionline.co.za

Q: My question is about inheritance. This is the case: Christian Sitti (grandmother) which made her best to raise muslim kids passed away on November 2015. Her muslim husband passed away long time ago. 4 kids: 2 male + 2 women 1 of the women is a widow and has 5 kids: their economical situation is unstable (all of them) Their kids: 3 male 2 women, from them 1 boy still single and 1 girl still single. All Muslim. The grandmother passed away leaving behind her lots of wealth and properties. She used to always say that she would leave her wealth to 4 of her granddaughters which used to live with her (daughters of her male son) Now that she passed away. They decided to distribute her wealth in the islamic way: 2, 2, 1, 1 Although most of her wealth is invested in properties, in which any of her daughters are included. The situation now is the following. One of the brothers is in charge of the distribution of his mothers wealth, while the daughters say that their mom would always say that they would be the ones in charge. I forgot to mention that all of them are multi millionaires, expect the widow daughter which has 5 kids and no one of them has wealth. He decided to give from the wealth 1 property for the youngest not married daughter in the widow, and 1 property for the widow, out from all the wealth that their mother left behind, leaving almost the rest of the wealth for the 4 granddaughters that used to live with her( daughters of her son). What is from the Islamic point of view the right thing to do please? I am the wife of the oldest son of the widow daughter, which at the same moment is the grandmothers first grandson. We moved in to Palestine to give our family a good Islamic education, please I would like to know if it is permissible for my husband to tell his mother (the widow daughter since she was 36 yeards old) to tell her mother not to accept this way of dividing the inheritance because they are willing to give her something symbolic which does not protect her neither her offsprings while accepting to give her mothers wealth and properties to the 4 granddaughters which none of them are married yet. The widow daughter which is the mother of my husband is willing to be unfair between her kids just to avoid fighting with her wealthy brother. By the way in her condition of widow with 5 kids she didn’t have economical support from her wealthy family.

Bismillaah

A: Apparently it seems that the grandmother was a christian. As such, muslims will not inherit from a christian.

And Allah Ta’ala (الله تعالى) knows best.

Answered by:

Mufti Ebrahim Salejee (Isipingo Beach)

This answer was collected from MuftiOnline.co.za, where the questions have been answered by Mufti Zakaria Makada (Hafizahullah), who is currently a senior lecturer in the science of Hadith and Fiqh at Madrasah Ta’leemuddeen, Isipingo Beach, South Africa.

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