I brought up the daughters of my sister after her death and my marriage to their father. Now they are married. Should I wear the Hijaab before their husbands knowing that I did not give birth and they consider me their mother as I raised them with love and care and gave them more than a mother can give, praise be to Allaah Almighty? I am fifty years old.

All perfect praise be to Allaah, the Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam is His slave and Messenger.

In His Book, Allaah Almighty clarified the categories of women who are forbidden to men in marriage due to affinity bonds, as He said (what means): {…(and) your wives' mothers.} [Quran 4: 23] The mother of a man's wife is forbidden for him in marriage. The mother is the one who gave birth to the wife as well as all her grandmothers up to all levels. This includes paternal and maternal grandmothers. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, clarified that suckling makes forbidden for marriage what is forbidden through blood ties, as he said: “Marriage is prohibited between persons having a suckling relationship just as it is prohibited because of a blood relationship.” [Al-Bukhari, Muslim and others]

Thus, if you have suckled any of these girls five sufficient times before she reached two years, then you have become her mother by suckling and are hence forbidden to her husband. However, you are not a mother through suckling or blood relationship to those whom you did not suckle among them, so you are not permanently forbidden to their husbands and they are not considered Mahram (permanently unmarriageable) to you.

Therefore, you may only reveal before them what you reveal before other non-Mahram men. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that a sufficient incident of suckling is the one in which the child takes the breast of the woman and keeps suckling it until he lets it go without being forced to do so. This is one sufficient suckling. There might be more than one incident of suckling of this type in one session.

Allaah Knows best.