Contains twenty-one of the papers presented at the 3rd Islam and Bioethics International Conference held April 14-16, 2010, in Manavgat, Antalya, Turkey.

Background: Empirical studies in Muslim communities on organ donation and blood transfusion show that Muslim counsellors play an important role in the decision process. Despite the emerging importance of online English Sunni fatwas, these fatwas on organ donation and blood transfusion have hardly been studied, thus creating a gap in our knowledge of contemporary Islamic views on the subject.Method: We analysed 70 English Sunni e-fatwas and subjected them to an in-depth text analysis in order to reveal the key concepts in (...) the Islamic ethical framework regarding organ donation and blood transfusion.Results: All 70 fatwas allow for organ donation and blood transfusion. Autotransplantation is no problem at all if done for medical reasons. Allotransplantation, both from a living and a dead donor, appears to be possible though only in quite restricted ways. Xenotransplantation is less often mentioned but can be allowed in case of necessity. Transplantation in general is seen as an ongoing form of charity. Nearly half of the fatwas allowing blood transfusion do so without mentioning any restriction or problem whatsoever. The other half of the fatwas on transfusion contain the same conditional approval as found in the arguments pro organ transplantation.Conclusion: Our findings are very much in line with the international literature on the subject. We found two new elements: debates on the definition of the moment of death are hardly mentioned in the English Sunni fatwas and organ donation and blood transfusion are presented as an ongoing form of charity. (shrink)

Muslim Medical Ethics draws on the work of historians, health-care professionals, theologians, and social scientists to produce an interdisciplinary view of ...

ABSTRACT Modern medical practice is becoming increasingly pluralistic and diverse. Hence, cultural competency and awareness are given more focus in physician training seminars and within medical school curricula. A renewed interest in describing the varied ethical constructs of specific populations has taken place within medical literature. This paper aims to provide an overview of Islamic Medical Ethics. Beginning with a definition of Islamic Medical Ethics, the reader will be introduced to the scope of Islamic Medical Ethics literature, from that aimed (...) at developing moral character to writings grounded in Islamic law. In the latter form, there is an attempt to derive an Islamic perspective on bioethical issues such as abortion, gender relations within the patient‐doctor relationship, end‐of‐life care and euthanasia. It is hoped that the insights gained will aid both clinicians and ethicists to better understand the Islamic paradigm of medical ethics and thereby positively affect patient care. (shrink)

The ever-increasing technological advances of modern medicine have increased physicians’ capacity to carry out a wide array of clinical interventions near the end-of-life. These new procedures have resulted in new “types” of living where a patient’s cognitive functions are severely diminished although many physiological functions remain active. In this biomedical context, patients, surrogate decision-makers, and clinicians all struggle with decisions about what clinical interventions to pursue and when therapeutic intent should be replaced with palliative goals of care. For some patients (...) and clinicians, religious teachings about the duty to seek medical care and the care of the dying offer ethical guidance when faced with such choices. Accordingly, this paper argues that traditional Sunni Islamic ethico-legal views on the obligation to seek medical care and Islamic theological concepts of human dignity and inviolability provide the ethical grounds for non-intervention at the end-of-life and can help calibrate goals of care discussions for Muslim patients. In closing the paper highlights the pressing need to develop a holistic ethics of healthcare of the dying from an Islamic perspective that brings together multiple genres of the Islamic intellectual tradition so that it can meet the needs of the patients, clinicians and Muslim religious leaders interacting with the healthcare system. (shrink)

The ever-increasing technological advances of modern medicine have increased physicians’ capacity to carry out a wide array of clinical interventions near the end of life. These new procedures have resulted in new “types” of living where a patient’s cognitive functions are severely diminished although many physiological functions remain active. In this biomedical context, patients, surrogate decision-makers, and clinicians all struggle with decisions about what clinical interventions to pursue and when therapeutic intent should be replaced with palliative goals of care. For (...) some patients and clinicians, religious teachings about the duty to seek medical care and the care of the dying offer ethical guidance when faced with such choices. Accordingly, this paper argues that traditional Sunni Islamic ethico-legal views on the obligation to seek medical care and Islamic theological concepts of human dignity and inviolability provide the ethical grounds for non-intervention at the end of life and can help calibrate goals of care discussions for Muslim patients. In closing, the paper highlights the pressing need to develop a holistic ethics of healthcare of the dying from an Islamic perspective that brings together multiple genres of the Islamic intellectual tradition so that it can meet the needs of the patients, clinicians, and Muslim religious leaders interacting with the healthcare system. (shrink)

There is burgeoning interest in the field of “Islamic” bioethics within public and professional circles, and both healthcare practitioners and academic scholars deploy their respective expertise in attempts to cohere a discipline of inquiry that addresses the needs of contemporary bioethics stakeholders while using resources from within the Islamic ethico-legal tradition. This manuscript serves as an introduction to the present thematic issue dedicated to Islamic bioethics. Using the collection of papers as a guide the paper outlines several critical questions that (...) a comprehensive and cohesive Islamic bioethical theory must address: (i) What are the relationships between Islamic law (Sharīʿah), moral theology (uṣūl al-Fiqh), and Islamic bioethics? (ii) What is the relationship between an Islamic bioethics and the lived experiences of Muslims? and (iii) What is the relationship between Islamic bioethics and the state? This manuscript, and the papers in this special collection, provides insight into how Islamic bioethicists and Muslim communities are addressing some of these questions, and aims to spur further dialogue around these overaching questions as Islamic bioethics coalesces into a true field of scholarly and practical inquiry. (shrink)

ABSTRACTModern medical practice is becoming increasingly pluralistic and diverse. Hence, cultural competency and awareness are given more focus in physician training seminars and within medical school curricula. A renewed interest in describing the varied ethical constructs of specific populations has taken place within medical literature. This paper aims to provide an overview of Islamic Medical Ethics. Beginning with a definition of Islamic Medical Ethics, the reader will be introduced to the scope of Islamic Medical Ethics literature, from that aimed at (...) developing moral character to writings grounded in Islamic law. In the latter form, there is an attempt to derive an Islamic perspective on bioethical issues such as abortion, gender relations within the patient‐doctor relationship, end‐of‐life care and euthanasia. It is hoped that the insights gained will aid both clinicians and ethicists to better understand the Islamic paradigm of medical ethics and thereby positively affect patient care. (shrink)

End-of-life medical decision making presents a major challenge to patients and physicians alike. In order to determine whether it is ethically justifiable to forgo medical treatment in such scenarios, clinical data must be interpreted alongside patient values, as well as in light of the physician's ethical commitments. Though much has been written about this ethical issue from religious perspectives , little work has been done from an Islamic point of view. To fill the gap in the literature around Islamic bioethical (...) perspectives on the matter, we derive a theologically rooted rubric for goals of care. We use the Islamic obligation for Muslims to seek medical treatment as the foundation for determining the clinical conditions under which Muslim physicians have a duty to treat. We next link the theological concept of accountability before God to quality-of-life assessment. Using this construct, we suggest that a Muslim physician is not obligated to maintain or conti.. (shrink)

The events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent declaration of an open-ended “war on terror” have given a new urgency to long-standing discussions of the relationship of Islam to liberalism. In order to avoid the polemics that characterize much of the writing in the “Islam/Liberalism” genre, this Article proposes to use the framework set forth in John Rawls’ Political Liberalism to examine the grounds on which Muslim citizens of a liberal state could participate in a Rawlsian overlapping consensus. An (...) overlapping consensus according to Rawls arises among citizens in a politically liberal state when they - despite holding incompatible theories of the good - each endorse the constitutional essentials of a politically liberal state for reasons within their own comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrines. This Article argues that the basis on which orthodox Muslims can participate in such an overlapping consensus can be found in Islamic theology and ethics. Because theology and ethics comprise the fundamental commitments of orthodox Islam, the political commitments set forth in Islamic substantive law which are inconsistent with constitutional essentials must be interpreted in light of those commitments. After describing orthodox Islam’s theological and ethical commitments to rational theological and moral inquiry, the Article argues that such commitments implicitly require political institutions that allow free theological and ethical inquiry. The Article illustrates this aspect of Islam by describing the development of a system of intra-Muslim normative pluralism in which the existence of conflicting ethical judgments was accepted as a legitimate and inevitable product of moral reasoning. The existence of normative pluralism in the realm of ethics, in turn, made the project of a legal system derived entirely from revelation an epistemological impossibility. The result was that Islamic substantive law was forced to adopt non-theological modes of justification. The Article argues that, in the course of so doing, Muslim jurists made appeals to what Rawls would deem to be public reason. The Article concludes with a series of examples from Islamic substantive law that illustrate the ways in which the pre-modern Islamic legal system represents a qualified form of public reason, consistent with the public culture of a liberal democracy. (shrink)