Islam has abolished the type of adoption that makes an adopted child a member of the family, which would give him or her full rights of inheritance and to mix freely with other members of the household, and prohibit him or her to marry certain women or men, and so on.

But the word adoption is also used in another sense, one that is not prohibited by Islam. In this context, adoption means bringing home an orphan or an abandoned child to rear, educate, and treat as his own child as regards protection, feeding, clothing, teaching, and loving. However, he does not consider the child to be his own and does not give the child any of the rights that Islamic law reserves for natural children.