The newborn child (mawlud)

Mawlud is a child born after the full term of pregnancy; a miscarriage (saqt) comes out before the term is complete. ^{1 2}

Signs of life are suckling, a cry, movement, coughing or breathing. With them the child gains the capacity to hold rights and to bear duties. If he dies, he is washed and prayed over, and blood-money is due if he is killed. His birth also brings into effect conditional divorces and manumissions. ^{1 2}

Most jurists recommend the call to prayer in his right ear and the iqama in his left, tahnik, and shaving his head on the seventh day with alms of the weight of the hair in gold or silver, and naming him on the seventh day. The Hanafis regard shaving as permitted. ^{2 3}

Zakat al-fitr is due for a child born before sunset on the last day of Ramadan, by agreement. Circumcision is judged variously as obligatory, a sunna or recommended. Piercing a girl's ears for ornament is allowed by the Hanafis and Hanbalis, and disliked for boys by the Hanafis; some Shafi'is forbid it for boys and allow it for girls. ^{3 4}

Suckling is due as long as the child needs it, and custody is an obligation in law. A father maintains his poor young children if he has means. When a father converts, his young children are counted Muslim with him; most jurists accept the conversion of either parent, while Malik gives no weight to the mother's or the grandfather's. ^{3 4}

According to the Hanafis and Malikis, a child's urine before he eats is an impurity like any other. The Shafi'is and Hanbalis sprinkle a boy's urine and wash a girl's. Human saliva is generally pure, and Ibn al-Qayyim notes the infant's saliva is a matter of general hardship. ^{4 5}

Most jurists hold that a child who is born alive and gives a cry, or shows a sign of life after most of his body has emerged, is named, washed, shrouded, prayed over, buried, and inherits and is inherited from, on the report that when a boy cries he inherits and is prayed over. ⁵