THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE: ISLAMIC BIOETHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Abstract. In January 1985, about 80 Muslim religious scholars and biomedical scientists gathered in a symposium held in Kuwait to discuss the broad question “When does human life begin?” This article argues that this symposium is one of the milestones in the field of contemporary Islamic bioethics and independent legal reasoning (Ijtihād). The proceedings of the symposium, however, escaped the attention of academic researchers. This article is meant to fill in this research lacuna by analyzing the proceedings of this symposium, the relevant subsequent developments, and finally the interplay of Islam and the West as a significant dimension in these discussions.     

Europe,the New Abyssinia: On the Role of the First Hijra in the Fiqh al-Aqalliyyāt al-Muslima Discourse

Since the mid-1980s, Muslim jurists and theologians have discussed the permissibility of mass-scale Muslim permanent voluntary settlement in majority non-Muslim countries and the unique challenges Muslim minorities face in secularizing Christian societies. Their efforts constitute a new field in Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh al-aqalliyyāt al-Muslima (the religious law of Muslim minorities). A number of participants in this field have introduced analogies between present realities and the first hijra – the migration to Christian Abyssinia (Ethiopia) with the blessing of the Prophet Muhammad. The objectives of this article are twofold: (a) to point to the roles of these analogies in fiqh al-aqalliyyāt al-Muslima discourse and (b) to demonstrate how Islamic jurists and theologians interpret similar or almost similar mythical narratives to support conflicting arguments. The article draws on a qualitative reading of several dozen religious decisions, treatises and sermons by jurists and theologians collected from mosques, Islamic centres and libraries in Europe, as well as from online resources.     

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND ORGAN DONATION AMONG MUSLIMS

Bioethics and health researchers often turn to Islamic jurisconsults (fuqahā’) and their verdicts (fatāwā) to understand how Islam and health intersect. Yet when using fatwā to promote health behavior change, researchers have often found less than ideal results. In this article we examine several health behavior change interventions that partnered with Muslim religious leaders aiming at promoting organ donation. As these efforts have generally met with limited success, we reanalyze these efforts through the lens of the theory of planned behavior, and in light of two distinct scholarly imperatives of Muslim religious leaders, the ?ilmī and the islāhī. We argue for a new approach to health behavior change interventions within the Muslim community that are grounded in theoretical frameworks from the science of behavior change, as well the religious leadership paradigms innate to the Islamic tradition. We conclude by exploring the implications of our proposed model for applied Islamic bioethics and health research.     

HUMAN CLONING THROUGH THE EYES OF MUSLIM SCHOLARS: THE NEW PHENOMENON OF THE ISLAMIC INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOSCIENTIFIC INSTITUTIONS

In the wake of the February 1997 announcement that Dolly the sheep had been cloned, Muslim religious scholars together with Muslim scientists held two conferences to discuss cloning from an Islamic perspective. They were organized by two influential Islamic international religioscientific institutions: the Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences (IOMS) and the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (IIFA). Both institutions comprise a large number of prominent religious scholars and well-known scientists who participated in the discussions at the conferences. This article gives a comprehensive analysis of these conferences, the relation between science and religion as reflected in the discussions there, and the further influence of these discussions on Muslims living in the West. Modern discussions on Islamic bioethics show that formulating an Islamic perspective on these issues is not the exclusive prerogative of religious scholars. Formulating such perspectives has become a collective process in which scientists play an essential role. Such a collective approach strengthens the religious authority of Muslim scholars and makes it more influential rather than undermining it.     

Traditionalism and reformism polemic in Malay–Muslim religious literature

At the end of the twentieth century, the Muslim academic world has been faced with a polemic between traditionalism and reformism, to the extent that it has come to preoccupy most present-day scholars. Most modern studies on contemporary Islamic law have mainly concentrated on Muslim countries in the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, but this study will look at Malaysia, which is a relatively new field of Islamic legal inquiry. The article will concentrate on historical events in Malaysia from 1900 until the 1940s and, on the basis of what these events revealed, will highlight the legal polemic initiated by Malayan Islamic reformism and traditionalism. The discussion will focus on three issues: first, the capacity of human reason to understanding Islamic teaching; second, the concepts of ijtihād and taqlīd; and third, attitudes towards classical Muslim fiqh.     

CONTEMPORARY MUFTIS BETWEEN BIOETHICS AND SOCIAL REALITY

Selecting the sex of a fetus has been a desire of parents in many different cultures. Modern Muslim religious scholars have identified advantages and disadvantages of this practice, permitting it in certain cases while forbidding it in others. In general, they do not appear to desire that selection of sex become a common practice, yet they are willing to allow it for personal reasons. This case‐by‐case approach exemplifies a key aspect of Muslim ethical discourse. After an overview of justifications for fetal sex selection in different cultures, I turn to a discussion of authoritative Islamic sources. I then analyze the reasoning of several modern authorities who deal with the issue. In the absence of a clear religious text on the subject, scholars seem inclined to legitimize sex selection, and in so doing they appear strongly influenced by social attitudes.     

Being an Intelligent Slave of God

How did premodern Muslim thinkers talk about living authentically as a Muslim in the world? How, in their view, could selves transform themselves into ideal religious subjects or slaves of God? Which virtues, technologies of the self and intersubjective relations did they see implicated in inhabiting or attaining what I shall call ?abdī subjectivity? In this paper, I make explicit how various discursive, ethical strategies formed, informed, and transformed Muslim subjectivity in early Muslim thought by focusing on the writings of an important ninth century Muslim moral pedagogue, al‐Mu?āsibī (d. 857). This study illustrates the advantages of approaching early Muslim texts and discourses through the tools and methods made available by comparative religious ethics in order to reexamine our understanding of Muslim subject formation and the role of ethical and theological discourses in the same.     

Pakistan Federal Shariat Court's Collective Ijtihād on Gender Equality,Women's Rights and the Right to Family Life

This article argues on the basis of recent case law that the judges of the Pakistan Federal Shariat Court (FSC) have asserted their right to ijtihād and have indeed engaged in collective ijtihād. While in some areas, such as freedom of religion, Islamic law has been interpreted rigidly in a non-human-rights-friendly fashion in Pakistan, in some other areas, the flexibility and pluralism of Islamic law has been used to improve gender equality, women's rights and the right to family life. By using its constitutional powers, with its collective ijtihād, the FSC has been tackling the traditionally illiberal interpretation and application of Muslim laws in these areas. Regardless of the methodology and process of this ijtihādic endeavor, the output shows that the FSC has been either modifying the traditional ijtihāds or coming up with totally new ijtihāds to answer contemporary questions faced by Islamic law. The findings of the article once again challenge the views of scholars such as Schacht, Coulson and Chehata, who have argued that, by the fourth/tenth century, the essentials of Islamic legal doctrine were already fully formulated and that the doctrine remained fixed.     

Between daʿwa and Dialogue: Religious Engagement in Muslim-minority Environments

ABSTRACT

Muslim engagement in interfaith and intercultural dialogue began in earnest after the turn of the twenty-first century in response to the rise of global jihad. Both dialogue and jihad are outgrowths of da?wa, the call or mission of Islam, the principal mode of modern Islamic activism. The foundations were laid in the later part of the twentieth century by Muslim intellectual-activists living in non-Muslim environments, who played a special role in conceptualizing the new notion of dialogue and its relation to da?wa. This essay focuses on four pioneering figures, two from the indigenous context of India – the modernist Asghar Ali Engineer and the reformist ?ālim Wahiduddin Khan, and two from the diaspora milieu of the West – the Palestinian-American academic activist Ismail Raji al-Faruqi and the European Muslim spokesman Tariq Ramadan. Each represents a distinct religious orientation that also reflects a different phase in the evolution of modern Islamic discourse. Taken together, these intellectual-activists chart the trajectory of modern Islam from the early pre-Islamist liberal hopes to the present post- and neo-Islamist efforts to navigate between Western-dominated globalization and Islamist jihadism.     

Muslim–Paulician Encounters and Early Islamic Anti-Christian Polemical Writings

This article investigates the portrayals of the Paulicians in early Islamic sources and specifically analyses the role that Paulician religious views play in Islamic anti-Christian writings. The study also gives insights into the nature of materials that were available to Muslim scholars and the strategies they applied in constructing coherent arguments to refute certain Christian religious beliefs. In doing so, the study touches upon Muslims’ religious needs and scholarly curiosity, which sheds light on their intellectual interactions with non-Islamic religious beliefs and philosophical ideas. The article demonstrates that references to Paulician religious beliefs can be found primarily in early Christian–Islamic polemics. Muslim polemicists, most of whom were Mu?tazilites, attempted to demonstrate the soundness and the coherence of Islamic tenets vis-à-vis inadequacies and contradictions in Christian doctrines. The reliance of Muslim polemicists on heresiographical discourse therefore constituted an important strategy to substantiate their polemical arguments. Two major issues stand out in Islamic portrayals of Paulician doctrines: the centrality of Paul of Samosata in the history of the sect, and his association with the view that Jesus was a human being devoid of divinity.     

MYSTICISM AS MORALITY

Sufism—spiritual practice, intellectual discipline, literary tradition, and social institution—has played an integral role in the moral formation of Muslim society. Its aspiration toward a universal kindness to all creatures beyond the requirements of Islamic law has added a distinctly hypernomian dimension to the moral vision of Islam, as evidenced in a wide range of Sufi literature. The universal perspective of Sufism, fully rooted in Islamic revelation, yields a lived (and not just studied) ethics with the potential to view and embrace all creatures through a single ethical vision, regardless of religious or other affiliation. This side of Islam, both acknowledging and surpassing the outlook of the legal heritage, offers important insight into understanding the nature of Muslim society as both Islamic and meta‐Islamic in religious orientation. Sufism, still significant in today's Islamic world, thus offers important material for locating Islam as part of an international order with principles and standards that resonate deeply with the moral vision of Islam itself.     

Two Shi‘i Jurisprudential Methodologies to Address Medical and Bioethical Challenges: Traditional Ijtihād and Foundational Ijtihād

The legal‐ethical dynamism in Islamic law which allows it to respond to the challenges of modernity is said to reside in the institution of ijtihād (independent legal thinking and hermeneutics). However, jurists like Mohsen Kadivar and Ayatollah Fa?lalla have argued that the “traditional ijtihād” paradigm has reached its limits of flexibility as it allows for only minor adaptations and lacks a rigorous methodology because of its reliance on vague and highly subjective juridical devices such as public welfare (ma?la?a), imperative necessity (?arūra), emergency (i?tirār), need (?āja), averting difficulty (‘usr) and distress (?araj), hardship (mashaqqa), and harm (?arar) without interrogating the fundamentals (u?ūl) of ijtihād. In contrast, in the “foundational ijtihād” model theology, ethics, intellect, epistemology, linguistics, hermeneutics, modern sciences, history, cosmology, anthropology, and the sources of Islamic legal theory (u?ūl al‐fiqh) interact with one another to obtain resolutions that are just and non‐discriminatory.     

The ʿUlamāʾ, Fatāwā and Challenges to Democracy in Contemporary Indonesia

This article examines the fatāwā issued by the Council of Indonesian ?ulamā? (Majelis Ulama Indonesia; MUI) regarding democracy, pluralism and religious minorities and explores their socio-historical contexts. The MUI emerges as having an ambiguous attitude towards democracy. The 1998 reform in Indonesia offered a backdrop that encouraged the MUI to be more independent from the state. This enabled the MUI to produce Islamic religious discourses that intersect with democracy, civil society, law enforcement, human rights, public security and elections. The MUI has accepted several principles that are prerequisites for a democratic society and state, such as equality before the law, good governance, protection of human rights, maintenance of public peace and security, and participation in fair elections. However, the Council is very conservative when comes to safeguarding Islamic faith and theology. It rejects pluralism, religious freedom and Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadiyya. The MUI's strict interpretation of Islam and support for Islamist ideology and conservatism prevent it from accepting democracy fully.     

Treating minorities with fatwas: a study of the Ahmadiyya community in Indonesia

The term “minority religious community” in the Muslim country of Indonesia refers not only to those embracing religions other than Islam, but also to minority groups like the Ahmadiyya. Recently, the treatment of Ahmadis has been worse than the treatment of non-Muslims. This article, therefore, intends to study the status of ‘deviant’ groups under Islamic law and the treatment of them in Muslim society. Specifically, this article addresses the following questions: How did ulama in the past define and treat minority groups? How do contemporary Sunni ulama define and treat the Ahmadiyya? What is the status of this group under Islamic law? Are they apostates, heretics, or unbelievers? And what are the legal consequences of these charges? To answer these questions, this article employs two methods. First, for theoretical treatment of minority groups in the past, this article focuses its analysis on al-Ghazāli’s Fay?al al-tafriqa and Fa?ā’i? al-bā?iniyya. Second, following a discussion of classical Islam, the article moves to contemporary time by analyzing fatwas against the Ahmadiyya from five institutions: the Rābi?a al-‘?lam al-Islāmī, Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI), Muhammadiyah, Council of the Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). This article argues that, first, fatwas against the Ahmadiyya issued by these institutions were intended as a device to sustain orthodoxy of umma and, second, orthopraxy or devoutness in observing religious rituals, as practiced by the Ahmadis, does not exempt them from the charge of apostasy because theologically they are believed to deviate from orthodox beliefs.     

Yemeni debates on the status of non‐Muslims in Islamic law

This essay examines Yemeni legal debates, in the period between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, regarding the status of and relations with non‐Muslims inside and outside the Islamic state. The legal works considered in this paper are written by Zaydi scholars, but they are informed by all other Muslim legal traditions. Studies of the Islamic law of nations and of the dhimma system have traditionally fluctuated between either wholesale condemnation or unqualified apologetic defence. And yet, as the works examined in this essay illustrate, the Islamic legal position on each of the controversial aspects of the laws of non‐Muslims is diverse, and it does not lend itself to essentialist classifications. Moreover, this diversity demonstrates the internal flexibility of the law and its inherent potential for reforming itself.     

Wilāyah (authority and governance) and its implications for Islamic bioethics: a Sunni Māturīdi perspective

Juridical councils that render rulings on bioethical issues for Muslims living in non-Muslim lands may have limited familiarity with the foundational concept of wilāyah (authority and governance) and its implications for their authority and functioning. This paper delineates a Sunni Māturīdi perspective on the concept of wilāyah, describes how levels of wilāyah correlate to levels of responsibility and enforceability, and describes the implications of wilāyah when applied to Islamic bioethical decision making. Muslim health practitioners and patients living in the absence of political wilāyah may be tempted to apply pragmatic and context-focused approaches to address bioethical dilemmas without a full appreciation of significant implications in the afterlife. Academic wilāyah requires believers to seek authentication of uncertain actions through scholarly opinions. Fulfilling this academic obligation naturally leads to additional mutually beneficial discussions between Islamic scholars, healthcare professionals, and patients. Furthermore, an understanding derived from a Māturīdi perspective provides a framework for Islamic scholars and Muslim health care professionals to generate original contributions to mainstream bioethics and public policy discussions.     

Political implications of the Islamic notion of ‘supersession’ as reflected in Islamic jurisprudence

The paper undertakes to investigate the ways in which the dominant Muslim community regulated legal‐ethical relations with its non‐Muslim minorities. The ideological underpinnings of the Islamic legal tradition in the area of jihad provided legitimacy for the Muslim political domination of the lands and peoples beyond the original boundaries of Islam. The central argument of the paper is that Muslim jurists were involved in the routinization of the qur'anic message about ‘Islam being the only true religion with God’ (Q. 3:19) in the context of the social and political position of the community. The interaction between the idea of Islam being the universal faith for all humankind and the existing predominance of Muslim political power created the specific legal language that provided the justification to extend the notion of jihad beyond its strictly defensive meaning in the Qur'an to its being an offensive instrument for Muslim creation of a dominant political order.     

THE RIGHTS OF MUSLIM WOMEN: A Comment on Irene Oh's The Rights of God

This review of Irene Oh's The Rights of God focuses on women's rights in Islamic theory and practice. Oh suggests that religious establishments, and the texts they disseminate, often press believers to recognize and reject social problems, such as racial and gender discrimination. Islamic scholars and texts have played a more ambiguous role in efforts to recognize women's rights within Muslim states. Modernist intellectuals have used Islamic texts to support the advancement of women's rights, but members of the more conservative religious establishment have typically curbed or rejected these efforts. Muslim women themselves have established various responses to the question of Islam's compatibility with women's rights. While some embrace the value and compatibility of both, others reject the propriety of either Western conceptions of rights, or the Islamic tradition, as harmful for women. Muslim reformers and feminists have much to learn from comparative studies with other faith communities that have undergone similar struggles and transformations.     

Engaging with Faith Councils to Develop Stoma-specific Fatawās: A Novel Approach to the Healthcare Needs of Muslim Colorectal Patients

Intestinal stomas are common. Muslims report significantly lower quality of life following stoma surgery compared to non-Muslims. A fatwā is a ruling on a point of Islamic law according to a recognised religious authority. The use of fatawās to guide health-related decision-making has becoming an increasingly popular practice amongst Muslims, regardless of geographic location. This project aimed to improve the quality of life of Muslim ostomates by addressing faith-specific stoma concerns. Through close collaboration with Muslim ostomates, a series of 10 faith-related questions were generated, which were posed to invited local faith leaders during a stoma educational event. Faith leaders received education concerning the realities of stoma care before generating their fatawās. The event lead to the formulation of a series of stoma-specific fatawās representing Hanafi and Salafi scholarship, providing faith-based guidance for Muslim ostomates and their carers. Enhanced communication between healthcare providers and Islamic faith leaders allows for the delivery of informed fatawās that directly benefit Muslim patients and may represent an efficient method of improving health outcomes in this faith group.     

SACRED LAW RECONSIDERED

People everywhere search for answers by using the resources of their traditions. They wish to do so in a legitimate way, and so they consult official institutions, specialists, and skilled individuals for their opinions; regardless of religious or cultural contexts, the common aim of these experts is to produce security, unity, and trust. Therefore, the norm‐finding processes in Islamic and Western contexts share fundamental similarities: the problem of finding a final ground for judgment, the strategies of constructing coherence and of organizing consensus, and the difficulties of obtaining legitimacy. What makes one debate “Islamic” and the other one “Western” is the different semantic materials, the different authorities, the different languages, and the different juridical frameworks. In my comparison of Muslim and Western discourses and practices, I conclude that Muslim and non‐Muslim scholars tend to overemphasize the uniqueness of Muslim legal and practical responses to bioethical challenges, because they restrict their purview to legal opinions, ignoring larger dynamics of legitimization.