My sister is getting married and wants to pierce her belly button for adornment to please her husband. I was wondering what is the Islamic stance on this?

God created women and instilled in their nature the love of adornment and Islam came in total harmony with intrinsic nature of women and for this reason Islamic Shari’ah permitted for women to use all kinds of adornment. The juristic scholars reached a consensus on the permissibility of women taking all kinds of jewelries made of gold and silver such as necklaces, rings, bracelets, ankles, chains and all other adornments which women are used to wear and did not reach the level of extravagance or resemblance to what men wear.

The jurists state that it is permissible for women to take gold jewelries as adornment according to their different cultures and customs. On the other hand, the Islamic law forbids any kinds of harm as one of the major legal maxims in jurisprudence is “don’t inflict harm on others and don’t harm yourself” and for this reason scholars differed on the jewelry which causes pain to the woman’s body such as piercing like earrings which necessitates to pierce the ear. The jurists believe that the Islamic legislation stressed on the importance that women attach to adornment and therefore permitted them to wear whatever they are used to according to their customary practices on the condition of not inflicting pain or harm on them.

According to the above based opinion, as long as piercing the woman’s belly to wear jewelery is part of the customary practice in these countries therefore there is no legal impediment to women piercing their belly button with the condition of not inflicting any harm on her body as there are some recent scientific researches which points at some negative medical effects which result from piercing. Some of these bad effects result from not sterilizing the medical instruments. In other words if harm was proven or piercing was not carried out in the correct medical method then piercing automatically is deemed prohibited for inflicting harm on the body.