Over at the Wired Science blog, Brandon Keim asked a few Muslim bioethicists about how Islamic views of biotechnology compare or contrast with Western approaches. Here’s a snip:

Would it be a bit too easy and reductionist, I asked, to then say that Muslims are less inclined to take an absolutist position and instead base their judgments by weighing the risks and benefits of each case? Replied [Brown University anthropologist Sherine] Hamdy,

“Yes, that is generally how Islamic law characterizes itself, as one sensitive to contingencies; as taking the social context into account (see for example, the intro to Harvard scholar Baber Johansen’s book Contingency in Sacred Law.)

Of course there are always people who are extremists and who take absolutist positions — but as a scholarly orthodox tradition, Islamic scholars have generally incorporated social contingencies into their opinions about the permissibility of modern practices, especially with the legal tool of “maslaha” — which is a calculus of weighing particular benefits against risks (measured both socially and spiritually); the current Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh Ali Gumaa is an example of a scholar who is trying to educate ordinary Muslims against the dangers of absolutism because the context is always so important.”

-Greg Dahlmann