this study was supported by a grant from the 'Agence de la biomedicine (ABM)', the national regulatory ART agency, under the authority of the French Ministry of Health. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Among the Maure of Mauritania and the Arabic speaking Touat-Gourara of Algeria, numerous corporal techniques are employed to transform a child into an adult in accordance with certain aesthetic and moral criteria. Following this are certain rites of passage, organised around processes of incorporation : Koranic studies for boys and force-feeding for girls. A detailed study of these socialisation practices shows how they are founded upon a representation of the child's body as a site of memory and education.

Why does Sunni Islam forbid sperm donation and allow intraconjugal insemination for married couples? And why does Sunni Islam forbid human milk banks but allow blood banks? These contemporary questions can both be clarified by an analysis of the meanings of sperm, blood and milk in Sunni Islam. However, the creation of these substances, the relations between them, and what is at stake in their transmission are not explicitly formulated in the foundational Sunni Islamic texts 1 -the Qur'an, the Sunna, 2 Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) -but must be decoded and even reconstructed through an analysis of the sayings and the practices around these substances. Ancient Islamic texts will be supplemented by more recent sources, such as legal consultations (fatâwâ) for medically assisted procreation.The question of the prohibition of human milk banks leads to the concept of milk kinship. It is necessary, therefore, to turn our attention to this institution in

No abstract