Medicine and Shariah

Description

Medicine and Shariah brings together experts from various fields, including clinicians, Islamic studies experts, and Muslim theologians, to analyze the interaction of the doctors and jurists who are forging the field of Islamic bioethics.

Although much ink has been spilled in generating Islamic responses to bioethical questions and in analyzing fatwas, Islamic bioethics still remains an emerging field. How are Islamic bioethical norms to be generated? Are Islamic bioethical writings to be considered as part of the broader academic discourse in bioethics? What even is the scope of Islamic bioethics? Taking up these and related questions, the essays in Medicine and Shariah provide the groundwork for a more robust field. The volume begins by furnishing concepts and terms needed to map out the discourse. It concludes by offering a multidisciplinary model for ethical deliberation that accounts for the various disciplines needed to derive Islamic moral norms and to understand biomedical contexts. In between these bookends, contributors apply various analytic, empirical, and normative lenses to examine the interaction between biomedical knowledge (represented by physicians) and Islamic law (represented by jurists) in Islamic bioethical deliberation.

By providing a multidisciplinary model for generating Islamic bioethics rulings, Medicine and Shariah provides the critical foundations for an Islamic bioethics that better attends to specific biomedical contexts and also accurately reflects the moral vision of Islam. The volume will be essential reading for bioethicists and scholars of Islam; for those interested in the dialectics of tradition, modernity, science, and religion; and more broadly for scholarly and professional communities that work at the intersection of the Islamic tradition and contemporary healthcare.

Contributors: Ebrahim Moosa, Aasim I. Padela, Vardit Rispler-Chaim, Abul Fadl Mohsin Ebrahim, Muhammed Volkan Yildiran Stodolsky, Mohammed Amin Kholwadia, Hooman Keshavarzi, and Bilal Ali.

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.

Preface

An Introduction to Islamic Bioethics: Its Producers and Consumers

1. The Relationship between Medicine and Religion: Insights from the Fatwa Literature

2. The Islamic Juridical Principle of Dire Necessity (al-ḍarūra) and its Application to the Field of Biomedical Interventions

3. A Jurisprudential (Uṣūlī) Framework for Cooperation between Muslim Jurists and Physicians and Its Application to the Determination of Death

4. Considering Being and Knowing in an Age of Techno-Science

5. Exploring the Role of Mental Status and Expert Testimony in the Islamic Judicial Process

6. Muslim Perspectives on the American Healthcare System: The Discursive Framing of “Islamic” Bioethical Discourse

7. Muslim Doctors and Islamic Bioethics: Insights from a National Survey of American Muslim Physicians

8. Jurists, Physicians, and Others in Dialogue: A Multidisciplinary Vision for Islamic Bioethical Deliberation

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Éthique et morale
• Islamic
• Medical
• PHILOSOPHY
• Médecine
• Islamic jurists
• Islamic philosophy
• Sharia
• Ethics
• LAW
• Islam
• Charia

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268108397
• Langue: English

Extrait

MEDICINE AND SHARIAH
MEDICINE AND SHARIAH

A DIALOGUE IN ISLAMIC BIOETHICS
EDITED BY
AASIM I. PADELA
FOREWORD BY
EBRAHIM MOOSA
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2021 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931594
ISBN: 978-0-268-10837-3 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10840-3 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-10839-7 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
CONTENTS Foreword Ebrahim Moosa Preface An Introduction to Islamic Bioethics: Its Producers and Consumers Aasim I. Padela ONE The Relationship between Religion and Medicine: Insights from the Fatwā Literature Vardit Rispler-Chaim TWO The Islamic Juridical Principle of Dire Necessity ( al-ḍarūra ) and Its Application to the Field of Biomedical Interventions Abul Fadl Mohsin Ebrahim and Aasim I. Padela THREE A Jurisprudential ( Uṣūlī ) Framework for Cooperation between Muslim Jurists and Physicians and Its Application to the Determination of Death Muhammed Volkan Yildiran Stodolsky and Mohammed Amin Kholwadia FOUR Considering Being and Knowing in an Age of Techno-Science Ebrahim Moosa FIVE Exploring the Role of Mental Status and Expert Testimony in the Islamic Judicial Process Hooman Keshavarzi and Bilal Ali SIX Muslim Perspectives on the American Healthcare System: The Discursive Framing of Islamic Bioethical Discourse Aasim I. Padela SEVEN Muslim Doctors and Islamic Bioethics: Insights from a National Survey of Muslim Physicians in the United States Aasim I. Padela EIGHT Jurists, Physicians, and Other Experts in Dialogue: A Multidisciplinary Vision for Islamic Bioethical Deliberation Aasim I. Padela List of Contributors Index
FOREWORD
EBRAHIM MOOSA
The nineteenth-century Irish physicist John Tyndall, deliberating on the process of fermentation, observed what the art and practice of the brewer had in common with that of the physician: both were founded on empirical observation. 1 Today observation together with professional collaboration between scientists and inventors has resulted in far-reaching breakthroughs in science and medicine.
One area in which collaboration and observation had been lagging is medical ethics and bioethics, especially Muslim/Islamic bioethics. Professor Aasim Padela, a physician and bioethicist, in editing this volume took an important step toward facilitating this conversation, and I trust that others will follow his lead to further this dialogue. I am honored to have been asked to share a few thoughts by way of this foreword.
Bioethics in general, and Muslim bioethics in particular, faces a range of challenges in an age of acceleration and speed. Not only is medical science rapidly changing, but also the growing role of techno-science in medicine raises new questions for the practitioners of medicine and ethicists, as well as for patients, caregivers, families, policymakers, and the healthcare industry at large. The truth is that techno-science and healthcare policies together are shaping our bodies and minds, wittingly and unwittingly. We certainly do have altered natures compared to our forebears centuries ago, and if this bold claim is unacceptable, then at least our subjectivities—how we think of ourselves as persons—have clearly shifted from the subjectivities cultivated by those before us.
Emerging forms and new patterns of existence are pressed onto our bodies and souls with the help of invasive mechanical and chemical treatments of the body. Even though I use the word “invasive,” I use the term advisedly and in a purely descriptive sense, not in an evaluative sense, since I am not prejudging mechanically and chemically intrusive therapeutic treatments. Chemical treatments might not be new. However, mechanical treatments, regenerative therapies, and genetically based interventions are increasingly becoming more sophisticated and refined and will most likely become more commonplace once medical therapies in conjunction with economic factors facilitate their optimal use.
At every stage of human development, scientists and medical practitioners, theologians and philosophers, ethicists and jurists are inclined to ask these fundamental questions: What does it mean to be human, to seek remedy and relief through treatment? Or what does it mean in certain instances to refuse treatment or decline specific forms of treatment? What is the meaning of life, and how do medical remedies, surgical interventions, and other forms of intervention add to or subtract from the meaning of life? Surely there is no single answer to any of these pressing questions, but the plurality of inquiries as well as the outcomes ensure that an ethical vitality will prevail. At the heart of any form of ethical vitality are the questions: How does one measure one’s quality of life? Who makes that decision ultimately? Individuals alone or together with their families? Do policymakers and governments have a say in our healthcare and treatment options? These are critical questions that this foreword cannot pursue but ought to remain foremost in the minds of the readers of this volume. Critical thinking in pursuit of ethical vitality in Muslim bioethics, to my mind, will surely advance the discipline in numerous ways and guide scholars, ethicists, and practitioners to more complex and insightful modes of deliberation and hopefully more adequate solutions.
Muslim bioethics is advancing in the direction of complexity and excellence. Juristic theology, a domain nurtured by the traditional ‘ ulamā ,’ still plays a critical role in guiding our attention in ethical matters. However, this monopoly of traditionalist jurist theologians is not an entirely totalizing one, since a more critical and diverse array of voices are rising to the challenge of presenting a plurality of robust perspectives. Yet the truth is that the field of Muslim bioethics is still largely dominated by soothing scriptural approaches that readily offer revealed texts and scripts of religious authority as definitive solutions to complex problems in bioethics. In search of authenticity, some end users view any traditional opinion and interpretation as a solution based on the face value of a claim or advocacy. Often practitioners have to deal with anachronisms and the absence of empirical evidence, which could potentially have harmful ethical outcomes for patients. Commitment to tradition does not mean that the past has a solid veto on the present. The surest way to suffocate tradition is to fawn over it with unthinking admiration.
Another way of putting this is to say that Muslim bioethics requires an intake of a serious dose of philosophical thinking. For this reason, I have advocated an approach called critical traditionalism, in which tradition is always part of the conversation but never a conversation stopper. Often Muslim ethicists and jurists shy away from philosophical thinking for multiple reasons. One is that philosophical inquiry requires deliberative, systematic, and analytical thinking, often in itself an onerous process. It requires the acquisition of a variety of skills and the mastery of multiple literacies in the service of bioethics. Another reason is that, in the minds of some gatekeepers of the moral discourse of Islam, especially some in the quarters of traditional ‘ ulamā ,’ as well as in the minds of those who identify with “traditionalist” perspectives, philosophical thinking has been stigmatized by polemics spawned by past Muslim theologians. This is also true of those who espouse tradition and engage ancient philosophical discourses; for many among this group, any discussion of contemporary philosophy that relates to our human predicament today is dismissed with the justification that the realms of the “modern” and the “secular” are equal to a fallen human condition. This tendency is not exclusive to Muslim ethics, for it has its equivalent in other faith traditions too.
Perhaps the more promising way forward is to revitalize the conversation with tradition by ensuring that there are solid and inclusive perspectives drawing on experiences of the present in the mix. This will allow for the dialectic and dialogic processes to deliver the multiple outcomes and possibilities such opportunities promise. Hence, the dialogue between practitioners of medicine and the proponents of juristic theology, which this volume attempts to facilitate, should be lauded. Ancient and contemporary philosophical traditions and contemporary knowledge traditions more broadly ought to be integral to the ethical endeavors of the medical practitioner and the practitioner of Muslim ethics. The lacunae in the field of Muslim bioethics can be addressed by a deliberative process of critical thinking, one that takes seriously knowledge of the tradition as a discursive component while not ignoring the fact that tradition requires updating and renewal.
Past Muslim philosophers, theologians, and ethicists engaged the world as it best appeared to them, and they took the picture of reality seriously as a point of departure. Their worldview was a complex one. Muslim theologians of the past were adept at dealing with the most complex conceptions of the body, in which metaphysics, medicine, and philosophy overlapped in distinctive and complex ways.
Contemporary Muslim jurist theologians are fond of the Arabic term fiqh , which means deep discernment and understanding. Often discernment/ fiqh is narrowly defined as limited to “insider” knowledge traditions. However, readers are asked to consider that fiqh is also synonymous with ḥikma , a term used to denote sagely wisdom. Muḥibbullāh Ibn ‘Abd al-Shakūr al-Bihārī (d. 1119/1707), a jurist theolog