6 – His statement: “What is unlawful because of suckling is the same as what is unlawful because of lineage.”

Shaykh al-Islām said:

“If a child nurses from a woman five separate times within the first two years, before weaning, he becomes her child by unanimous agreement of the jurists. The child likewise becomes the child of the man whose intercourse caused her milk to flow, and that man is deemed a father to the nursling—again by consensus of the well-known imams. Every one of their children, whether born to the man alone, to the woman alone, or to them both together, is a sibling of the nursling. By agreement there is no distinction between the woman’s children who nursed alongside the child and those she bore before or after the nursing.

The wet-nurse’s relatives therefore become the nursling’s relatives: her children are his brothers and sisters; her grandchildren are his nephews and nieces; her fathers and mothers are his grandfathers and grandmothers; and her brothers and sisters are his maternal uncles and aunts. The man’s relatives likewise count as his paternal relatives through suckling, just as the relatives of his milk-mother do.

As for the nursling’s own relatives—whether by blood or by another milk relationship—they remain strangers to his milk-mother and to her relatives. Consequently, his milk-brothers may marry his blood-sisters, and the reverse is also permitted. The daughters of his milk-uncles and milk-aunts are lawful for him, just as the daughters of his blood-uncles and blood-aunts are lawful. All of this is agreed upon among the scholars.”