In recent years, preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) of IVF embryos have gained much traction in clinical assisted reproduction for preventing various genetic defects, including Down syndrome. However, such genetic tests inevitably reveal the sex of IVF embryos by identifying the sex (X and Y) chromosomes. In many countries with less stringent IVF regulations, information on the sex of embryos that are tested to be genetically normal is readily shared with patients. This would thus present Muslim patients with unintended opportunities for (...) sex selection based on personal or social biases without any pressing need or valid medical reason. Additionally, there are other patients who claim using PGT for preventing genetic defects as a pretext or “convenient excuse,” with a secret intention to do sex selection when it is banned in their home country. Currently, non-medical sex selection is a highly-controversial and hotly debated issue in Islam, because there is generally a strong preference for having sons over daughters due to widespread cultural norms of elderly parents depending on their sons for financial support, as well as the need for male heirs to continue the family lineage within the backdrop of local patriarchal cultures. There is a risk of gender imbalance and social disequilibrium occurring in Islamic societies due to prevalent sex selection. Hence, the question is whether opportunistic sex selection with PGT would contravene Islamic ethics and principles, which will thus be discussed here. (shrink)

Non-medical or Social egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) is currently a controversial topic in Islam, with contradictory fatwas being issued in different Muslim countries. While Islamic authorities in Egypt permit the procedure, fatwas issued in Malaysia have banned single Muslim women from freezing their unfertilized eggs (vitrified oocytes) to be used later in marriage. The underlying principles of the Malaysian fatwas are that (i) sperm and egg cells produced before marriage, should not be used during marriage to conceive a child; (ii) (...) extraction of mature egg cells from single women being unacceptable; and (iii) fertility preservation in anticipation of late marriage is a conjecture that has not yet occurred. Ovarian tissue freezing can potentially be a more Shariah-compliant alternative to social egg freezing, because once the frozen ovarian cortical tissue sections have been re-transplanted back into the woman, mature egg cells can readily be produced, collected, and fertilized by the husband’s sperm only during the period of marriage contract (′akd al-nikāḥ). Unlike accidental mix-ups with frozen eggs, muddling of lineage (nasab) would be automatically avoided in ovarian tissue freezing due to immunological rejection. However, upon critical analysis based on Qawā’id Fiqhiyyah (Islamic Legal Maxims), Maqāṣid-al-Shariah (Higher Objectives of Islamic Law), and Maslaḥah-Mafsadah (benefits versus harmful effects on society), elective ovarian tissue freezing by healthy single women for social reasons would likely be a highly contentious and controversial issue within Muslim communities that may conflict with conservative social-religious norms. This thus needs further debate among Islamic jurists in dialogue with medical doctors and biomedical scientists. (shrink)

Artificial womb technology for extracorporeal gestation of human offspring (ectogenesis or ectogestation) has profound ethical, sociological and religious implications for Muslim communities. In this article we examine the usage of the technology through the lens of Islamic ethico-legal frameworks specifically the legal maxims (al-Qawaid al-Fiqhiyyah) and higher objectives of Islamic law (Maqaṣid al-Shariah). Our analysis suggests that its application may be contingently permissible (halal) in situations of dire need such as sustaining life and development of extremely premature newborns, for advancing (...) fetal medicine and avoiding maternal co-morbidities during fetal treatment, and for enabling motherhood for women without functional wombs, or who face grave medical risks in pregnancy. However, its application may be proscribed (haram) for enabling healthy women to avoid pregnancy and childbirth, or to achieve parenthood equity. Specification of these views to particular policy, legal contexts and Fatwa will require multidisciplinary Shariah-based bioethical deliberations between jurists, policymakers, and scientists. (shrink)

In this work, Muhsin Mahdi--widely regarded as the preeminent scholar of Islamic political thought--distills more than four decades of research to offer an authoritative analysis of the work of Alfarabi, the founder of Islamic political philosophy. Mahdi, who also brought to light writings of Alfarabi that had long been presumed lost or were not even known, presents this great thinker as his contemporaries would have seen him: as a philosopher who sought to lay the foundations for a new understanding of (...) revealed religion and its relation to the tradition of political philosophy. Beginning with a survey of Islamic philosophy and a discussion of its historical background, Mahdi considers the interrelated spheres of philosophy, political thought, theology, and jurisprudence of the time. He then turns to Alfarabi's concept of "the virtuous city," and concludes with an in-depth analysis of the trilogy, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. This philosophical engagement with the writings of and about Alfarabi will be essential reading for anyone interested in medieval political philosophy. (shrink)

pt. 1. The attainment of happiness.--pt. 2. The philosophy of Plato, its parts, the ranks of order of its parts, from the beginning to the end.--pt. 3. The philosophy of Aristotle, the parts of his philosophy, the ranks of order of its parts, the position from which he started and the one he reached.

Although medical confidentiality is widely recognized as an essential principle in the therapeutic relationship, its systematic and coherent practice has been an ethically challenging duty upon healthcare providers due to various concerns of clinical, moral, religious, social, ethical and legal natures. Medical confidentiality can be breached to protect the patient and/or others if maintaining confidentiality causes serious harm. Healthcare professionals may encounter complicated situations whereby the divulgence of a patient’s confidential information may pose a threat to one party whereas the (...) concealment of such information may cause harm to another. After deliberating on the Islamic concept of harm (ḍarar), this paper focuses on the dual duty and conflicts of interests faced by healthcare professionals in the practice of medical confidentiality. Referring to serious infectious diseases with a special mention of AIDS, this study also provides discourse on how healthcare professionals deal with difficult scenarios of conflicts of interests and ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

Having constituted a new epoch in human history and a new religiouspolitical order, the revealed religions challenged the tradition of Greek philosophy to adjust to, investigate, and make intelligible a religiouspolitical order based on prophecy, revelation, and the divine law. The challenge led certain Arab and Muslim philosophers to reassess the relative distance between the thought of the Greek masters, and the doctrines propagated by the revealed religions, and to make use of such works as Plato's Republic and Laws, rather (...) than Aristotle's Politics, when offering a philosophic account of the new religious–political phenomenon and of such new disciplines as the science of the divine law and the science of revealed theology. Les religions révélées, en inaugurant une ère nouvelle dans l'histoire humaine et un nouvel ordre “religio-politique”, ont constitué un défi pour la tradition de la philosophie grecque. Celle-ci devait s'adapter a un ordre religio-politique fondé sur la prophétie, la révélation et la loi divine, en faire un objet d'investigation et le rendre intelligible. Ce défi conduisit certains philosophes arabes et musulmans à réévaluer la distance qui sépare la pensée des maîtres grecs des doctrines propagées par les religions révelées. Il les conduisit aussi à faire usage d'oeuvres telles que la République et les Lois de Platon, plutôt que la Politique d'Aristote dans leur effort de rendre compte philosophiquement du phénomène religio-politique nouveau et des nouvelles disciplines telles que la science de la loi divine et la science de la théologie révélée. (shrink)

This volume consists of nine essays on the political teaching of such Muslim philosophers as al-Kindi and al-Razi, as well as the more familiar al-Fârâbî, ...

This book, first published in 1957, is the study of 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who founded a special science to consider history and culture, based on the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and their Muslim followers. In no other field has the revolt of modern Western thought against traditional philosophy been so far-reaching in its consequences as in the field of history. Ibn Khaldun realized that history is more immediately related to action than political philosophy because it studies the (...) actual state of man and society. He found that the ancients had not made history the object of an independent science, and thought it was important to fill this gap. A factual acquaintance with the conclusions of Ibn Khaldun's reflections on history is not the same as the full comprehension of their theoretical significance. When these fundamental questions are answered, it becomes possible to pose the specific question of the relation of Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, or his new science of culture, to other practical sciences and, particularly, to the art of history. After an exposition of the major trends of Islamic historiography, part of this book attempts to answer this question through the analysis of the method and intention of the sections of the 'History' where Ibn Khaldun himself examines the works of major Muslim historians, shows the necessity of the new science of culture, and distinguishes it from other practical sciences. (shrink)

THE ARTICLE COMMENTS ON THOSE SECTIONS OF ALFARABI'S "BOOK OF LETTERS" WHERE HE PRESENTS A META-PHILOSOPHICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 'HISTORY' OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION, THE STAGES THROUGH WHICH THEY PASS, AND THE RELATION AND CONFLICT BETWEEN THE TWO-BOTH AS THEY DEVELOP WITHIN A SINGLE NATION AND WHEN THEY ARE TRANSFERRED ACROSS NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. IT SHOWS ALFARABI'S ACUTE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS REGARDING THE TEMPORAL AND RELIGIOUS CONTEXT WITHIN WHICH PHILOSOPHY WAS BEING PRACTICED IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD.

The human being labours to understand and signify both the external world and himself - sometimes by objectifying himself with the potential he possesses; one of these labours emerges as art. Neither definition nor determination of the content of the concept of art is so clear cut because of its controversial nature in relation both to its different forms and references as the source of meaning. Some could assert even an ambiguity or boundlessness, insomuch as rejecting an essentialist concept of (...) art encompassing all different kinds or forms of art. Therefore, this article attempts to ground the argument that art is one of the basic and constitutive procedures of signifying the external world - like philosophy and science – with the human being as the signifying subject. (shrink)

Avicenna (980-1037) is perhaps the most provocative figure in the history of thought in the East. He was the product of the impact of Greek thought on Islamic teachings; his environment was that of the Persian Renaissance in the tenth century. This book attempts to present Avicenna's life and works to the general reader.

: The Islamic jurists utilized the discipline of maqāṣid al-sharīʿah,in its capacity as the philosophy of Islamic law, in their legal and ethicalinterpretations, with added interest in addressing the issues of modern times.Aphoristically subsuming the major themes of the Sharīʿah, maqāṣid play apivotal role in the domain of decision-making and deduction of rulings onunprecedented ethical discourses. Ethics represent the infrastructure of Islamiclaw and the whole science of Islamic jurisprudence operates in the lightof maqāṣid to realize the ethics in people’s lives. (...) Scrutinizing the key themesof maqāṣid-based ijtihād and scope of ethics in maqāṣid, this article delvesinto the discourse on the application of maqāṣid to medical ethics. As a casestudy, this research analyses the extent of medical confidentiality in the light ofmaqāṣid and arrives at the conclusion that limited confidentiality goes more inline with the maxims of maqāṣid. (shrink)