Egyptian woman Amal Abdel Hamid fought a legal and social battle to establish the paternity of her daughter after surviving rape. Last May, the Mansoura Court of Appeal, in ruling No. 9829 of Judicial Year 75, Family Division, established the paternity of a child born as a result of rape, legally attributing her to her biological father and ordering her registration in the birth registry based on DNA testing.
Before this case, Egyptian courts had rejected claims seeking to establish the paternity of children born of rape, relying on the religious principle of al walad lil firash, derived from the Prophetic hadith, “The child belongs to the marital bed, and the adulterer gets nothing.” Under this principle, a child born outside marriage should not be legally attributed to the biological father.
But the significance of this ruling should not obscure a broader problem within the legal and jurisprudential framework governing paternity. When the principle of al walad lil firash is used to prevent a child from being legally attributed to their biological father, even when paternity can be scientifically established, it raises a fundamental rights question about discrimination between children based on the circumstances of their birth or the nature of their parents’ relationship, circumstances over which the child had no control.
From a children’s rights perspective, a child should not bear the consequences of rape or of a relationship outside marriage by being deprived of their name, parentage, or civil rights. A distinction must also be made between establishing paternity and a child’s right to registration and legal identity. Obtaining a birth certificate and being entered into official records is a right in itself and should not remain contingent on the mother successfully pursuing a paternity case or on her marital status.
The importance of this ruling, therefore, lies not only in exempting children born of rape from a rigid application of the al walad lil firash principle. It also reopens a broader question: to what extent are the rules governing paternity themselves compatible with the principles of equality and non-discrimination, and with the best interests of the child?
How Did Amal’s Story Begin?
The ordeal began in 2018, when Amal, who lives in a village in Egypt’s Dakahlia Governorate, was abducted and raped at the age of 18 by a man whose marriage proposal she had rejected. He then decided to destroy her life, deliberately stalking and repeatedly threatening her before abducting, beating, and sexually assaulting her.
Her life was upended. She gave birth to a girl who had no legal identity and no birth certificate, putting the child at risk of being unable to enroll in school later and of being denied other rights as well.
After the assault, Amal moved to Ain Shams in Cairo to stay with her paternal uncles, who took charge of her situation. The man who had assaulted her proposed marrying her. Instead, her uncles beat Amal and forced her to marry a man she did not know, without her parents’ knowledge. Her mother eventually managed to get her away from them with the help of the police.
Mother and daughter returned to their small village in Dakahlia, where Amal discovered that she was pregnant. The doctor who examined her advised them to go to the police and speak to the officer in charge at the Aga police station so Amal could recount what had happened. She filed a police report and was referred to the Public Prosecution and then to forensic medicine, which confirmed that she had been sexually assaulted.
The case subsequently faced a series of setbacks. The rape complaint was shelved, while the paternity case was rejected. After losing hope, Amal recorded a video and posted it on Facebook, in which she said that she had “given birth to a girl as a result of rape.” She appealed to anyone who could help her establish her daughter’s paternity and hold the perpetrator accountable. Eventually, Egypt’s Public Prosecutor decided to reopen the case after new evidence emerged.
The ruling was based on DNA testing, which found a match between the DNA extracted from the child’s blood and that extracted from the blood of her mother and biological father. DNA testing is considered one of the modern legal methods that can be used to establish a child’s paternity.
The ruling also relied on a fatwa issued by Al Azhar’s Council of Senior Scholars, which stated that the jurisprudential principle of al walad lil firash should not be used as grounds for denying the paternity of a child born as a result of rape, as the principle was originally intended to preserve lineage within the institution of the family.
Despite Amal’s courage and the difficult battle she endured at such a young age, particularly in a rural town in Egypt’s Nile Delta, she still does not know how she will tell her young daughter what happened or how she will live with all this pain. The biological father, meanwhile, received a sentence of just one year for destroying Amal’s life because he was no older than 15 at the time.
Amal’s story encompasses multiple, overlapping forms of violence. It began with stalking and harassment by a person whose marriage proposal she had rejected, with no one able to stop him or protect her. Then came the rape, followed by her uncles forcing her to marry a man she did not know to “cover up the scandal.” The perpetrator and his family continued contacting Amal and her mother, threatening to abduct and kill her daughter if she continued pursuing the case through the courts.
Amal was forced to recount her rape hundreds of times on social media and television programs, while enduring insensitive questions from the media about how and why it happened. Why did she not scream at the time? Again and again, she was made to revisit the traumatic memory, hoping simply to secure her daughter’s right to a birth certificate and legal recognition.
Yet the story became less about every child’s fundamental right to an identity and a birth certificate, and more about why Amal was raped and why she had to wage such a fierce battle to secure what should have been a basic right for her daughter.
As for Amal herself, she remains deprived of her own rights. She was denied the chance to live a normal life. She was still a child when she was raped and left school after the assault because, as she put it, “my daughter comes first.” She was forced to confront an uncertain future imposed on her by the perpetrator and enabled by an environment that normalizes multiple forms of violence against women.
There are no official statistics on the prevalence of rape in Egypt. However, some estimates suggest that around 20,000 rape cases are reported annually. The actual number is likely higher, as many survivors are unable to report rape because of the difficulties involved and the social stigma they face.
Consent and Coercion under Egyptian Law
Egyptian criminal law defines rape as sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent and punishes the perpetrator with life imprisonment or death. In its reasoning, the ruling establishing the child’s paternity explained the distinction between rape and “zina,” or unlawful sexual intercourse, noting that the two are treated differently in Islamic jurisprudence and law.
The ruling states that “usurpation means taking something unjustly,” and explains that Islamic scholars distinguish between rape and zina based on consent and coercion. Zina is an act involving the consent of both parties, while rape is forced sexual intercourse, meaning that it takes place without the woman’s consent and is imposed on her through coercion, threats, weapons, or physical force. According to the ruling, a rapist should receive a harsher punishment than that prescribed for zina because the punishment for zina concerns the rights of God, which are founded on leniency. At the same time, rape also violates the rights of another human being, namely the woman who was raped, and therefore warrants a more severe punishment.
The distinction between rape and “zina” appears to have been sufficiently blurred that the court felt the need to explain it. As Amal’s mother said in a television interview, “We can’t even leave the house. Everyone thinks my daughter did this willingly.” The burden thus fell on the survivor to prove her innocence before the people of her village and the wider community.
The ruling sought to clear Amal of that stigma, stating that establishing paternity is an inherent right of the mother, allowing her to defend herself against accusations of zina or against being shamed for having a child whose father is unknown.
But the very need to draw this distinction reveals a deeper problem in laws and concepts that continue to approach sexual violence through a moral framework that places “zina” and “rape” within the same conceptual category, rather than starting from modern principles centered on consent, bodily autonomy, and women’s freedom to decide what happens to their bodies.
When laws, or their interpretations, are built on rigid inherited classifications, the issue no longer remains an abstract jurisprudential debate. These classifications become rules that directly affect women’s lives, their rights, and their ability to access justice. From a rights-based perspective, the absence of consent and the presence of coercion should be at the core of how sexual violence crimes are defined, rather than moral judgments about the nature of the sexual relationship or a woman’s social status.
Abortion under Egyptian Law
What should perhaps happen after a rape is for the survivor to be tested for sexually transmitted infections, take emergency contraception as soon as possible, seek psychological support, or turn to an organization that assists survivors of sexual violence. But Amal’s life, like the lives of most women in Egypt, is not that simple. She was given no choice over whether to continue or terminate the pregnancy. Egypt’s Penal Code criminalizes abortion and does not permit it even in cases of rape or incest, forcing women to endure compounded suffering by carrying a pregnancy resulting from rape, one that may continually remind them of the traumatic assault.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights considers Egypt one of the countries with the most restrictive abortion laws. Under Article 262 of the Penal Code, women who intentionally terminate a pregnancy can face criminal penalties. The provision dates back to legislation introduced in the 1930s, modeled on French law at the time. While laws around the world have since changed, Egypt has continued to retain this legislation.
The Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance has called for legislation permitting abortion in cases of rape and incest, arguing that forcing survivors to continue pregnancies resulting from rape constitutes a form of psychological and physical torture and reinforces society’s control over women’s bodies rather than protecting them. At the very least, survivors should be given the choice.
A Long Legal Battle
Amal’s battle is part of a long struggle waged by Egyptian women seeking to establish the paternity of their children after their fathers refused to acknowledge them. It stretches back to the case of singer Fatma Sirri, considered the first paternity case in Egypt’s history, in 1925 and 1926. Sirri had secretly married Mohamed Shaarawi, the son of prominent feminist leader Huda Shaarawi, who later denied paternity of their child. After five years of litigation, she eventually succeeded in having her daughter legally recognized as Mohamed Shaarawi’s child.
It is a legal and social battle that Egyptian women from different social classes and backgrounds have fought across different periods of history, enduring stigma, abandonment, shame, and years of litigation.
This ruling may open the door for children born of rape to obtain a name and a legal identity. But there is a more urgent question: how can women be protected from perpetrators who stalk, harass, and threaten them amid the widespread violence against women in Egypt? State institutions must begin taking women’s complaints of violence seriously before stalking and threats escalate into sexual assault or murder.
