Overcoming Religious Illiteracy: Towards a More Inclusive Approach to Islamic Bioethics

Islamic bioethics is an emerging phenomenon, with a recent proliferation of introductory literature seeking to describe the scope, parameters, and players of the field. However, this paper critically assesses the enterprise of Islamic bioethics as it stands today and argues that it lacks conceptual clarity. This leads to some very problematic assumptions made by Muslim and non-Muslim authors alike, which results in essentialist and reductionist discourses that privilege majoritarian, authoritarian, and conservative forms of religious and state authority at the expense of competing, dissenting, and reformist voices. I suggest using the principles of religious literacy (as endorsed by the American Academy of Religion) to bring much needed conceptual clarity to the field, to understand Islamic bioethics as a contested space of academic theology, and to promote a more inclusive discourse.