EVEN in the atmosphere of mutual suspicion and hatred that has arisen between the Muslim world and the west following 9/11 and the war in Iraq, one thing remains clear: in Islam, as in Christianity, there are many voices. It makes as little sense to speak of a single Muslim view of, for example, free market economics as it does a Christian one. What is true in politics is equally true in science. Yet in science, the diversity of Islamic voices is not getting heard. On everything from stem cell research to abortion, the conservative line is crowding out more liberal views.
An unofficial alliance forged this year between Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, a top Vatican official, and Abdulaziz Sachedina, a leading Muslim bioethicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, seems likely to reinforce this trend. The two called for more dialogue between Catholics and Muslims. This is undoubtedly a good idea. But the alliance was also designed to push the Vatican’s agenda on issues like abortion, stem cells and condoms.
In this it is damaging, for many Muslims have views on these matters that are quite different from the Vatican’s. Moreover, a failure to foster religious and intellectual freedom could seriously undermine scientific and technological progress in Muslim countries, as a report on Arab development published by the UN Development Programme last week points out.
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While the Catholic Church has an official line on technology, faith and ethics, Islam is not monolithic. “A diversity of views does exist and derives from the various schools of jurisprudence, different sects within Islam, differences in cultural background and different levels of religious observance,” says Abdallah Daar, director of applied ethics and biotechnology at the University of Toronto.
Take nuclear weapons. Iran’s former president Hashemi Rafsanjani told a Friday prayer congregation in August that Islam does not permit the development of weapons “that destroy humanity”. Yet in December 2002, a fatwa from Egypt’s Al Azhar University in Cairo had said precisely the opposite: that the Koran urges the faithful to “be fully aware of its enemies in order to enable Muslims to prepare and to have at least equal means of deterrence – if not greater means”.
Bioethics is no different. Mainstream Muslim opinion says, for example, that third parties should not be allowed to donate eggs or sperm to couples seeking IVF treatment. Nor is surrogacy permitted. “Islamic teachings limit procreation to between husband and wife only,” says Mohammed Albar, a consultant in Islamic medical ethics in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. But according to Marcia Inhorn, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor who is studying infertility in Middle Eastern countries, the authorities in Iran do not necessarily agree. Having children is considered such a crucial part of marriage in Muslim societies that infertile couples sometimes end up divorcing. Iran’s spiritual leader allows infertile couples to use third-party donor sperm and eggs to prevent them from splitting up, Inhorn says.
Muslim academics often voice contrarian viewpoints on biomedical ethics. The Iranian philosopher of science, Abdolkarim Soroush, for example, says he can find nothing in Islam that prevents animal-to-human transplants. Nor can he see any reason why couples should not be allowed to choose the sex of their baby – two issues on which Muslim and Catholic conservatives take a more restrictive line.
Even on abortion, the most forbidden territory of all, there is a divergence of views. A fatwa issued by the Islamic Jurisprudence Council of Saudi Arabia in 1990 allows abortion up to 120 days after conception if a fetus is “grossly malformed”. What this means is that Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most conservative Muslim countries, is significantly more liberal than the Vatican, which has decreed that abortion should be permitted only if the mother’s life is in danger.
Why is there such pluralism in Islam? Unlike Catholicism and most other Christian churches, Islam has no official priesthood. Religious leaders do exist, but they are, technically speaking, first among equals. The upside of this is that individual Muslims have the power to make their own decisions.
The downside is that almost anyone can set themselves up as an expert with a legitimate Islamic point of view. This makes it easier for organisations like the Catholic church to seek out Muslim voices that sound like their own – and vice versa. And this is what is happening. Even at the UN, the Vatican, conservatives from the US, and Muslim states often flex their combined muscle to defeat measures they dislike.
For Muslim countries, such an alliance offers a rare chance to be seen by Washington conservatives as the good guys. The casualties are the millions of ordinary Muslims – and indeed Christians – whose legitimate views are crowded out in the name of a spurious consensus.