Islamic bioethics: an outsider's view

Tonight I returned from the University of Michigan, where I was privileged to participate in a conference on Islamic bioethics.  Granted, I'm neither a Muslim nor a bioethicist, so the invitation to me was especially gracious -- I was there to address the interplay of law and religion in American health care more broadly.  This was not an interfaith dialogue, so I had the opportunity to observe what was primarily a conversation among Muslim scholars and physicians aimed at developing Islamic bioethics for the American context.  I learned a lot, but what struck me were some of the similarities between their project and the ongoing project of developing Catholic legal theory.  Just a few quick observations:

First, many participants perceived a need within Islam to pay more attention to -- and cultivate more expertise regarding -- context.  The scholars of Islamic law are central to the endeavor, of course, but they must be in dialogue with experts who know the practice of medicine and American health care in particular.  As Tariq Ramadan put it in his talk today, the authority of the text (as interpreted by the scholars) must be joined with the authority of context.  It sounded very much like a call for the laity to step up in helping develop Church teaching.

Second, it was not always clear whether Islamic bioethics aims to be a "bioethics for Muslims" or a set of universal truth claims emanating from the Islamic tradition.  For example, Islamic teaching on the end of life (most scholars hold that brain death is not death) and modesty (not having women seen by male doctors) were portrayed as universal claims.  If so, then the project needs to articulate the relationship between Islamic bioethics and the secular law.  Is there a difference between the content of Islamic bioethics and the content of the secular law to which society should aspire?  And if the difference amounts to a recognition of the need for individual freedom to reach different conclusions on bioethical issues, is that difference a prudential concession to the fact of American Muslims being situated in a pluralistic society, or is it intrinsic to Islamic bioethics?  Obviously, similar conversations have occurred (and still occur) in Catholic circles.

Third, one recurrent theme was the failure of Muslim professionals to familiarize themselves with the teachings of the Islamic legal scholars.  One participant expressed frustration about the Islamic scholars' failure to condemn female genital mutilation, and the scholar responded testily by asking why the questioner was not familiar with the voluminous proceedings in which such condemnations occurred.  Disseminating knowledge of the available resources is a pressing problem for Catholics as well.

A couple of noteworthy differences:

First, my impression is that Islam does not have a tradition of conscientious objection.  The Muslim is to obey the laws under which they live.  This means that the project's basic stance toward existing law is not one of resistance, but of reform.  I'm not entirely sure of the implications, but I think this is important.

Second, to whatever extent Catholic legal scholars believe that our project faces stiff opposition from the surrounding culture, it is nothing compared to what Muslims face.  To be clear, conference participants disavowed any interest in having the Islamic community's bioethical judgments made to be legally binding on American Muslims.  Still, as evidenced by the shameful anti-Sharia laws cropping up in Oklahoma and elsewhere, there is widespread fear of American Muslims today, and it seems likely that the fear will be even more pronounced when presented with an increased Islamic institutional capacity to set norms (even non-legally binding norms) for Muslims, especially in the health care context, where our commitment to individual autonomy looms so large.  Since I was identified as a lawyer, many participants asked me, with some evident trepidation, about the likely prospects for the anti-Shariah campaigns.  As a non-Muslim, I was asked repeatedly about the motivation and mindset underlying these campaigns.  Everyone who asked me these questions was born in America (one woman informed me that her family has lived in America for 110 years), and the concern was coupled with a real sadness about the climate that has developed here in the past ten years. 

All in all, I was struck by the hospitality and by the openness, even eagerness, to engage with non-Muslims on these topics, not as debating partners, but as travelers coming alongside one another for guidance.  Though Muslims (like Catholics) are early enough in these projects to need some time for conversation as a community, I do think that more frequent interfaith dialogues about issues of common concern -- bioethics included -- will prove to be rich and productive.