Reconstracting Shiite Judicial Methodology
Mahdi Movahed-Abtahi
BASIR Institute for Medical & Islamic Research
Can we predict the response of Shi’ite jurisprudence to medical, ethical and technological challenges of the 21st Century?
To answer this question, we need a methodological approach to Shiite judicial decision making. As a physician and as an interdisciplinary researcher, I focuse on assisted reproduction in these six issues: cloning, egg/gamete donation, surrogacy, sex rearrangement and gender assignment
For many reasons, we can not use the current judicial approach:
Insufficient material available for judicial decision making on assisted reproduction
Restriction of jurists to traditional methodology
Exclusively difference of jurists on assisted reproduction: Avoiding from those Fatwa are 1) not issued by eligible jurists having enough knowledge and sincerity of heart, 2) not in line with relevant legal proofs, deduced from Qur"anic verses and the prophet’s and Imam’s traditions, 3) representing the views of the Muslims or their thinking as the views of Islam
Then our aims are;
To study relationship between debating fatwa and the primary sources of Islamic Law,
To provide a methodological approach to Islamic law, Shiite jurisprudences (figh), and usul al-figh (principles of jurisprudence),
To crystallize Islamic perspective of advanced biomedical challenges in human creation, parenthood, motherhood, marriage and kinship,
To examin the consequences of juridical debates for those concepts that are described in the explicit text of the Quran
To formulate those Islamic rulings and laws confounding cloning, egg/gamete donation, surrogacy, sex rearrangement and gender assignment
To suggest some of options for applying assisted reproduction in agreement to Islamic ruling or laws
In our approach, we;
Study the explicit text of the Quran
Formulate some principles of Islamic Law
Reform concepts of assisted reproduction
Re-construct judicial decision making methodology
The above text is a summery of my paper entiteled as "" A Methodological Approach to Shiite Judicial Decision Making on Assisted Reproduction"" that Prof. Robert Gleave presented it in the following conference: ‘’Medical, Ethical and Technological Challenges of the 21st Century: the response of Shi’ite jurisprudence’’. Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies organized it which hosted by the School of Government and International Affairs at 17-18 June
