Abdulaziz Sachedina, Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Principles and Application

Today, where contemporary medical issues are waiting for solutions with their ethical and religious dimensions. So, it is very important to create Islamic ethical norms that can appeal to the present day in the field of bioethics without breaking with the classical fiqh tradition. While establishing Islamic ethical norms, discussing the issues from medical, philosophical, theological, legal and ethical aspects will provide more realistic and permanent answers. In this field, which contains many theoretical and practical problems, there are very few works that provide a versatile and Islamic perspective on the issues. One of these rare works is Abdulaziz Sachedina's Islamic Biomedical Ethics: Principles and Application. The book, published by Oxford University Press in 2009, made a great contribution to the field of Islamic bioethics and set an example for subsequent studies in terms of method and content. The rapid development of the field of bioethics and the proliferation of questions that await answers in terms of jurisprudence have made the existence of comprehensive and in-depth studies on these issues inevitable. This work of Sachedina, one of the best examples of these studies, is frequently cited in the works written on the field of Islamic bioethics. The work contains a lot of deep and comprehensive discussions and concepts. In this work, Sachedina tried to bring an Islamic perspective to bioethical discussions and tried to produce theoretical and practical solutions to bioethical issues with interdisciplinary interpretations. The most important point that the author criticizes, as stated in the work, is that Muslim researchers working on bioethics refer to the literature and works that emerged in the West on bioethical issues. This indirectly distracts them from a legal perspective and solution to bioethical issues. From this point of view, the scarcity of studies with an Islamic perspective on bioethical issues once again reveals the extent of the gap in the field. The author has written this work to contribute to the gap in the field and to prove that bioethical issues can be approached from an Islamic perspective. In his work, he put forward the view that Islam also has an understanding that coincides with his own bioethical values. In this direction, the author has aimed to create Islamic ethical norms that can shed light on contemporary issues without breaking with the classical fiqh tradition, through this work. The book consists of seven chapters. The "Introduction" part of the book is very important in terms of presenting information about the author's world of thought and how he interprets Islamic ethics. The chapters of the book are as follows: “In Search of Principles of Healthcare Ethics in Islam”, “The Beginning of Life”, “Terminating Early Life”, “Death and Dying” “Organ Donation and Cosmetic Enhancement” and “Islamic Bioethics-Recent Development”. Each chapter is handled within the framework of different medical, philosophical and theological issues. The author has included theological and legal as well as ontological and epistemological discussions while addressing his issues. The author also referred to the legal maxims of Islamic law that are frequently cited in bioethics. At this point, it should also be noted that legal principles such as ḍarūra (necessity), maṣlaḥah (public good), ıstiḥsān (juristic preference), are not sufficient in solving the bioethical issues in question. Although these principles and rules are of great importance for the theoretical ground, the connection of the issues should also be sought in the works of fiqh, which are classical fiqh books. It has a great importance to establish a connection between the discussions of the fuqahā in the books of fiqh and current medical issues in order to establish a solid and consistent ground. In this respect, Sachedina rediscussed the debates in classical kalām and fiqh sources around today's issues. In addition to the above, another feature of the work is that Sachedina also includes the attitudes of both Sunnī and Shi'ite sects on bioethical issues in the discussions on bioethics and fiqh. The presentation of these different attitudes to the reader greatly enriched the content of the work. Oone of the first striking points is that most of the works written on medical subjects do not satisfy the philosophical and theological discussions from the Islamic perspective. In this respect, this work fills a large gap in the Islamic medical ethics literature. Sachedina explained the issues he dealt with conceptually and tried to establish the theoretical basis of the concepts related to the issues through the discussions of the fuqaha and the sects. Although the work needs the development of discussions, it is one of the rare works in the field in terms of discussing the conceptual construction and arguments about Islamic bioethics.