This volume covers a topic of increasing interest in public, professional, and academic circles – Islamic bioethics. One needs only to look at the newspapers to observe the relevance of “Islamic bioethics” to current controversies. For example, the recent proliferation of American press reports, expert commentaries, and editorials related to the trial of Dr. Jumana Nagarwala – a Shia Muslim physician – who performed a religious genital cutting procedure on children illustrates how religious views on the body and Muslim customs can impact physician practices. The ongoing case also brings into focus how Islamic views and ethical notions play a role in contemporary political, legal, and ethical debates.
Interest in Islamic bioethical perspectives is also burgeoning within the health professional and academic sectors. Over the past decade within the United States, Islamic bioethics conferences have been held at Penn State, University of Michigan, Yale, University of Florida, and the University of Chicago. Similarly, on the global scene, the last ten years has witnessed Islamic bioethics conferences at institutions such as Haifa University in Israel, Ankara University in Turkey, Georgetown in Qatar, University of Hamburg in Germany, and the International Islamic University in Malaysia. Drawing upon the scholarship and interest generated by these initiatives, leading academic journals such as the Journal of Bioethics, Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics, Theoretical Medicine and Biomedicine, Die Welt des Islams, the Journal of Religion and Health, and Zygon have all published on thematic issues related to Islamic bioethics. Further, the growing body of Islamic bioethics literature has spurred granting agencies to action. For example, the Qatar Foundation funded the Kennedy Institute of Ethics to develop a resource library on Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics, and they are supporting Oxford University Press’ plans to publish an Encyclopedia of Islamic Bioethics. These disparate ventures aim at generating a body of work that can enable further academic research and field development.
By glancing at the preceding activities a casual observer may suppose that Islamic bioethics is an established field, and that a home for Islamic bioethics within the academy has been secured. One may assume that because “bioethics began in religion,” and that theological perspectives, particularly Christian ones, have been part and parcel of the academic bioethics discourse since the beginning, Islamic bioethics sits alongside other faith traditions well-ensconced in institutions and well-represented in academic journals and books.
Yet if one were to move beneath the surface to examine the literature more closely one would find that the foundations of an academic Islamic bioethics have yet to settle for concepts that demarcate the field remain undefined, e.g. what are the “Islamic” aspects of Islamic bioethics? Furthermore, the blueprint for the building remains incomplete as important actors like seminary-trained theologians and congregational imams are often left out in academic forums.
Consequently their insights into how the ethical teachings and values of Islam are to be transmitted to, and translated for, biomedical actors, e.g. patients and clinicians, are largely unknown and unexamined. A more overarching issue is that even the land upon which to build an academic Islamic bioethics is argued about; debates rage on over whether religious perspectives on bioethical questions should be considered a part of bioethics, or whether they should be relegated to the province of religious studies.
Consequently, Islamic bioethics remains very much a field in and under construction. What is Islamic bioethics? What are the source materials and outputs of Islamic bioethics? Who are Islamic bioethics experts? All of these questions remain open to discussion and debate. Thus, individuals seeking out Islamic bioethical perspectives, whether they are academicians, patients, or physicians, find it difficult to locate and make sense of the diversity of Islamic bioethical writings. Similarly, those seeking to setup Islamic bioethics-related courses, certificate programs, and centers for research also struggle in their attempts to formulate pedagogical parameters and research methods.
