Re: Marrying your adopted sister !!?!!??
You can raise someone else’s child but you cannot give them your name and laws of inheritance will vary as well. The Prophet SAWS married the wife of his adopted son after the couple divorced. So he was like a father-in-law and she was like a daughter-in-law. “Like” does not equate to a blood relation. If Islam allows marriage between blood relations…such as cousins (and only cousins)…then anything “lesser” than blood would then also be permissible, no?
I can understand that some people would find it difficult to accept marrying someone that you literally grew up under the same roof with. But perhaps there is good in this rishta. If this lady’s family wholeheartedly accepted her into their family…then her adopted daughter is marrying someone who (hopefully) expects nothing of her and will continue to treat her with kindness and respect as he’s been used to…which ate traits that can be lacking in the more socially more accepted marriages of today. If the Prophet’s SAWS marriage in the above example is halal, then I’m assuming this kind of marriage would also be permissible…but you can verify that as I’m not an aalim. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if it’s halal and if nobody was coerced and both parties went about this willingly and are happy…then let them be. Maybe this girl’s adoptive mother feared that she might be mistreated by her in-laws if she had married outside the “family.” You’d be surprised at the things in-laws can pick on you for. My cousin used to get seizures and her MIL would taunt her about it. So, it could even have been a protective measure on their part..combined with an understanding between this girl and the guy. She’s very blessed MashaAllah to have a family that loves her so much.
For all we know, they may never have had a thorough bhai-behn dynamics despite calling each other “bhai/baji/etc etc.” It does happen that people within the same family, same class…who see each every day or often enough…can fall for each other. And as Saeed mentioned earlier, in our culture people call each other bhai all the time…and it isn’t necessarily a solidified thing.