ميراث
Mīrāth
Topic
The Quran sets fixed shares for family heirs and allows a bequest of up to a third.
What it means
The Quran fixes shares for children, parents, spouses and siblings (4:11–12, 4:176). A son receives twice the share of a daughter, but each parent receives a sixth, and the mother and father may receive equal shares. A person can leave a bequest of up to one third of his estate to others, as the Prophet told Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas (Sahih al-Bukhari).
Often misunderstood as
That Islam values a woman as half a man.
What the sources say
The reason usually given for the difference in the son’s share is that the male is required to support the household, to pay the dowry and to maintain his wife and children, while a woman’s inheritance, dowry and earnings are hers alone and she is under no obligation to spend them. The Quran gave women a right to inherit at a time when in many societies they did not (4:7).