Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are planning on adopting a seventh child, this time from war-torn Syria, according to reports emerging this week.

But could the Hollywood couple face religious hurdles in the reportedly planned adoption, with a large number of Syrian refugees being Muslim?

According to Islamic law, adoption is allowed and encouraged but the adopted child cannot take the name of the adoptive family and is not considered to be a true child of the adoptive parents. 

The child is to keep the Muslim birth name.

This law is in place to protect the Muslim heritage of the child and continue the lineage.

In Islam, adoption is seen more as a form of sponsorship that allows a child to be placed in a safe and loving home, but never gaining legal status as a part of the adoptive family.

Adoption limbo

In some Arab countries, such as Morocco, the adoption of Muslim children by foreigners is forbidden in the fear that the child will not be raised in a Muslim environment.

Both Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were raised as Christians, but the actress has previously said that she does not affiliate herself with any one religion, but that she has faith. Meanwhile her husband has previously told German magazine Bild in 2009: “I’m probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic.”

The couple has already adopted three children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia and they are known to try to preserve the cultural and religious lineage of their children, so the children are conscious of their roots.

Alternatively, the child to be adopted could be of another religion, where these questions may not come into play.

Nearly 2 million Syrian children are refugees. Refugee children are at risk of becoming ill, malnourished, abused, or exploited. Millions of refugees and children still inside Syria have been forced to quit school.

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Source: CNN