© The Author(s) 2015
Mohammed Ali Al-Bar and Hassan Chamsi-PashaContemporary Bioethics10.1007/978-3-319-18428-9_11. Introduction
(1)
Medical Ethics Center, International Medical Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
(2)
Department of Cardiology, King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The present study undertakes to examine biomedical issues as they have emerged in the last three decades. In the Muslim world, as in any part of the globe, advancements in biomedical technology has meant a number of new issues in the medical treatment and procedures that impinge upon Islamic values as taught by the Qur’an and the Sunna (the Tradition of Prophet Muhammad). Our investigations in bioethical issues require Muslim ethicists to examine a number of judicial decisions made by Muslim scholars in response to the growing number of cases in the clinical settings as well as national health policies adopted by various Muslim governments in the last two decades. The field of bioethics is new even in the Western countries where its principles and rules are being worked out in a standard approach to secularly mediated resolutions of morally problematic issues regarding, for instance, embryonic inviolability or end of life decisions in connection with terminally ill patients.
For several centuries, the world, and particularly Europe, has benefited from the great contributions made by Muslim physicians in the field of medicine. These contributions were not only based on technical skills but also on the role of eminent Muslim physicians in establishing medical ethics. Many prominent physicians of the Islamic civilization involved themselves with professional ethics; among them were al-Ruhawi, and al-Razi (Rhazes). Both wrote the earliest and most thorough books on medical ethics over a 1000 years ago [1].
In this study we hope to bring these and other ethical issues on which Islamic scholars have provided religious-moral guidance by investigating the foundational sources of Islam like the Qur’an and the Sunna.
Ethics in this Study
It is important to begin our study by elucidating some key concepts with which we will be concerned in this research. The most important term that we need to formulate in view of its central role in Islamic legal-ethical decision-making is ethics. Although the term ethics is clearly a heritage of all humanity experiencing moral dilemmas in their everyday relations with other persons, in this study we have taken ethics to mean that inquiry which examines the rightness and the wrongness in human conduct. Human conduct is informed by moral principles which determine the outcome of particular acts or activities. Furthermore, according to Beauchamp and Childress, ethics is a “generic term for various ways of understanding and examining moral life [2].” In this latter usage, then, it is appropriate to speak about normative and non-normative ethics, depending upon the sources of this understanding. Normative ethics based on the source of these norms, attempts to understand which general moral norms should we accept and why. In contrast, ethical theories attempt to identify and justify these norms revealing justificatory reasoning that provide resolution to moral dilemmas. However, ethics is concerned with examining human conduct and, therefore, it seeks to find ways of predicting practical aspects of human activity by investigating moral problems, practices and policies in professions, situations, and public policy. In other words, ethics is concerned with applications and in this sense bioethics is a branch of applied ethics concerned with resolving problems in the area of living sciences, including research and practice in the field of medicine.
In contrast to normative ethics, non-normative ethics which takes human experience, culture, and history as important sources of moral decision-making takes the form of descriptive ethics which studies how people reason and act. Thus, for instance, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians study the norms and attitudes of societies towards moral issues in different societies and epochs and the factors that are used to justify their actions in different professions and in matters connected with larger public. The other branch of non-normative ethics is meta-ethics. Meta-ethics involves the analysis of conceptual language and methods of reasoning in ethics. It addresses the meaning of right and wrong, virtue and vice, the good and the bad, and so forth in the larger global context. In short, it addresses the ethical epistemology and forms of justificatory reasoning.
In this study, we use ethics and morality interchangeably to refer to norms about right or wrong in human conduct that are so widely shared in a certain society. These norms differ, at least in details, from one society to another, and from one era to another in the same society. However, many principles, rules and virtues remain constant across different cultures and different times. For instance, almost all persons know that lying, stealing and killing an innocent person is immoral; and veracity, fidelity and saving a human life is a great virtue and a highly commended moral act. Our interest in this book is to discuss the sources of common principles of morality and ethics to show that commonalty unites all human beings in understanding the difference between moral and immoral. This is the scope of our first chapter, where we explain and elaborate:
1.
Intuitive nature ( al – fitr’ a ): This is a fundamental Qur’anic idea, which speaks about the basic nature of all human beings by which human beings can discern certain things to be morally right (honesty, truth telling, doing good, benevolence, etc.) and certain things to be wrong (lying, cheating, stealing, killing an innocent person or being unjust).
2.
Reason ( intellect, mind, al – ‘aql ): God endowed humanity with the ability to use reason to differentiate between right and wrong, and to discern the proper course of action. Those who refuse to use their minds and follow their egotistic desires, and blind themselves with self-importance follow their instincts and hedonistic desires and deviate from the true path, becoming unable to minimally distinguish right from wrong. To be sure, even if they know the truth of the matter, they are inclined to follow their carnal desires and lust for material ends and tramp over whatever remains of their conscience.
The Qur’an extols humanity to strive to control egotistic and hedonistic desires, and it deplores those who are arrogant, mischievous and having insatiated desire for wealth and power, which they use to crush the poor and weak. Muslim theologian, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, has admonished people correctly when he says: “If you cannot reach the level of Angels, then do not fall into the level of beasts, scorpions and snakes [3].” We will have more opportunity to cite the Qur’an and the Sunna, in addition to theological and philosophical heritage of Islam, when we undertake to elaborate this point further.
3.
Revelation ( wahy, Tanzil ): Muslims believe that all communities had received Allah’s (God’s) guidance through revelation given to the Prophets and Messengers of God. In Islam, Adam is not only first human being; he is also the first Prophet who delivered God’s message of monotheism to his descendants.
It is important to state from the outset that Muslims do not believe in original sin. Adam committed an act of disobedience by eating from the fruit of the tree which God had ordered him not to eat. According to the Qur’an, he and his wife, Eve, repented and God accepted their repentance and they became pure. God bestowed on Adam and Eve and their children His Grace and Blessing “We honored the progeny of Adam, provided them with transport on land and sea; given them for sustenance things good and pure; and conferred on them special favors above a great part of Our creation” (Qur’an/17:70). Furthermore, Muslims believe that God sent to every nation and people, prophets and messengers to guide them to worship one God and follow the path of righteousness. In other words, Muslims believe in all these prophets and that they brought the same religion in its essence, and worshipped only one God. This belief is the source of unity among human beings under the unity of God’s religion, which is essentially the same. However the followers of these religions distort God’s religion and bring back polytheism in different forms and shapes, by changing the pristine clear messages of the prophets altering the good teachings with adulterated misconceptions both in theology and morality. It is significant to note that, as the youngest of the monotheistic traditions, Islam addresses the whole humanity and respects all the prophets from Adam to the last Prophet Muhammad and considers all nations to have witnessed God’s uncompromising unity confirmed in all the messages and teaching of God’s true envoys on earth. Belief in God’s unity (Tawhid) is the basis not only for Muslim theology; but it is also the basis of morality and ethics in Islam. We will return to this subject in greater detail in the first two chapters: “The Sources of Common Principles of Morality and Ethics” and “The Origins of Islamic Morality and Ethics.” There we shall explain how Islamic theology and Islamic religious law—the Shari’ah are integral and based on morality and ethics.
Karen Armstrong in her book, A History of God explicates this point about the relationship between ethics and belief in one God. According to her, “the assertion of unity of God (Tawhid, monotheism) is not only a denial that deities were worthy of worship. To say that God is one is not just a mere numerical definition; it is a call to make that unity the driving factor of one’s life and society” [4]. In another place she observes: “In practical terms, Islam meant that Muslims had a duty to create a just, equitable society where the poor and vulnerable are treated decently. The early moral message of the Qur’an is simple: It is wrong to stockpile wealth and build a private fortune, and it is good to share the wealth of society fairly by giving a regular portion of one’s wealth to the poor” (Holy Qur’an Surah 92/18, Surah 9/103, Surah 63/9, Surah 102/1) [5].
Some Important Concepts Related to Islamic Legal-Ethical Tradition in this Study
The Shari’a: (lit. “a way or well-trodden path to a source of water”) refers to the normative religious law of Islam with the Qur’an and the Sunna (The Tradition of Prophet Muhammad including his sayings, acts and approvals) as its sources. The norms of the Shari’a are immutable, since they have supernatural source in God’s revelation for humankind. Islamic jurisprudence (al-fiqh) engages in understanding (lit. sense of the word fiqh) of these revealed texts and formulating rules and rulings to cover all human activity in the area of human-God relations (‘iba da t) and human-human relationships (mu’a malat). In Islamic rulings acts are classified as obligatory, recommended, permissible, reprehensible, and forbidden.
1.
Obligatory Acts: The research in and understanding of the revealed texts makes it possible to declare certain acts as required (fardh, wajib) and certain other acts as recommended or even forbidden. The rule of thumb is that where there is a clear command in the Qur’an or the Sunna (for instance performing the five daily prayers) then performance of that action becomes obligatory. Obligatory acts include paying the annual alms (zakat) to the poor, fasting during the month of Ramadan between dawn and dusk for a month; performance of the annual pilgrimage—the Hajj, once in a lifetime, if he/she has got the means to perform it.
2.
Recommended Acts: These are the acts that are performed as supererogatory acts (mustahab, mandub). It includes all those acts that are good to perform, but they are not required. For instance, it is recommended to fast on Mondays and Thursday every week. Likewise, on certain important days of the Muslim calendar, it is highly recommended to perform extra prayers and fasting. Those who perform these acts are rewarded for their piety by God. But if they cannot, for any reason, perform them, they do not become blameworthy.
3.
Permissible Acts: These acts are neutral and permissible (mubah) in the sense that whether one performs them or not, it does not matter since they constitute neither blame nor recrimination. It includes all daily life activities. Everything is allowed unless there is a clear text prohibiting it. This is also equivalent to the legal presumption of innocence until the proof of guilt is established. Things are presumed allowed in the absence of prohibition.
4.
Reprehensible Acts: These acts, although better to avoid (makrooh), do not constitute blame or sin. It simply requires a person to think before performing it since there is no clear order of avoiding it. Certainly, being reprehensible, if avoided then God would reward the person for abstaining from it, but will not punish the person who did it.
5.
Forbidden Acts: These are forbidden explicitly in the Qur’an or the Sunna (haram). If a person performs such an act, then he/she will be punished either in this world or in the hereafter, unless he/she repents. Repentance is direct between God and human, and He (God) accepts repentance at any time except at the time of death when it is too late.
Islamic jurisprudence (al–fiqh) consists of two sets of inquiry: one set of inquiry deals with case studies (furu’), and the other relates the cases to the legal principles and precedents derived from the foundational sources of Islamic tradition (Usoo’ l). These include:
(a)
The Qur’an: Muslims believe that the Qur’an contains the revelation that the Prophet Muhammad received directly from God. Accordingly, it is regarded as the most authentic source of religious and moral directives that can be extrapolated to formulate judicial decisions touching all practical matters in everyday life of the community.
(b)
The Sunna: This source consists of all the sayings, deeds and silently approved directives and prescriptions provided by the Prophet Muhammad. This is collectively known as the “Tradition” in the forms of hadith -reports that describe the context in which certain rulings were made by the Prophet and reported by his contemporaries including his close associates. After the Qur’an, the Sunna serves as the most important source for deriving legal-ethical rulings in Islamic jurisprudence.
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