The AMI Podcast

Modern biomedical technologies managed to revolutionise the End-of-Life Care (EoLC) in many aspects. The dying process can now be “engineered” by managing the accompanying physical symptoms or by “prolonging/hastening” death itself. Such interventions questioned and problematised long-established understandings of key moral concepts, such as good life, quality of life, pain, suffering, good death, appropriate death, dying well, etc. This volume examines how multifaceted EoLC moral questions can be addressed from interdisciplinary perspectives within the Islamic tradition.

This book examines all verses of the Quran involving knowledge related concepts. It begins with the argument that an analysis of the Quranic concept of ignorance points to epistemic virtues that can pave our way towards gaining knowledge and/or understanding. It deals with the Quranic concepts of perceptual, rational, and revelatory knowledge as well as understanding and wisdom in the light of recent discussions in Western analytic epistemology. It also argues that the relevant Quranic verses seem to involve concept of an epistemic conscience whose proper exercise can yield knowledge or understanding. While not overlooking the Quranic emphasis on revelation as a source of knowledge, the book draws our attention to a remarkable overlap between some strains of contemporary virtue epistemology and Quranic approach to knowledge. It shows that the Quranic verses suggest a progressive sequence from propositional knowledge to understanding to wisdom.

Dr. Nebil Husayn delivers a research seminar examining an early pro-ʿAlid epistle attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) that defends his claims to leadership and critiques his rivals. The epistle emerged in the context of intra-army disputes after ʿAlī’s companions were murdered. While the work survives primarily in Twelver Shīʿī sources like those of al-Qummī, al-Kulaynī, Ibn Rustam al-Ṭabarī, and Ibn Ṭāwūs, some Sunni historians like al-Balādhurī also referenced it, indicating early circulation. Dr. Husayn analysed both the transmission and contents of this epistle, interrogating the relationship between the oral and written and the text’s role in shaping pro-ʿAlid identity and early Shi’ism.

The Islamic tradition has always held animals in high esteem, deserving the same level of consideration as humans. The Qur'an opines that "there is not an animal in the earth nor a flying creature flying on two wings, but they are people like you." This fascinating and highly original book examines the status and nature of animals as they are portrayed in the Qur'an and in adjacent exegetical works, in which animals are viewed as spiritual, moral, intelligent, and accountable beings. In this way, the study presents a challenge to the prevalent view of man's superiority over animals and suggests new ways of interpreting the Qur'an. By placing the discussion within the context of other religions and their treatment of animals, the book also makes a persuasive case for animal rights from an Islamic perspective.

An Anxious Inheritance reveals the tensions between the early framers of Islam and the ever-expandable category of non-Muslims. Examining the encounter with these religious others, and showing how the Qur'an functioned as both a script to understand them and a map to classify them, this study traces the key role that these religious others played in what would ultimately emerge as (Sunni) orthodoxy. This orthodoxy would appear to be the natural outgrowth of the Prophet Muhammad's preaching, but it ultimately amounted to little more than a retroactive projection of later ideas onto the earliest period.Non-Muslims (among them Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians) and the "wrong" kinds of Muslims (e.g., the Shi'a) became integral—by virtue of their perceived stubbornness, infidelity, heresy, or the like—to the understanding of what true religion was not and, just as importantly, what it should be. These non-Muslims were rarely real individuals or groups; rather, they functioned as textual foils that could be conveniently orchestrated, and ultimately controlled, to facilitate Muslim self-definition. Without such religious others proper belief could, quite literally, not be articulated. Shedding new light on the early history of Islam, while also problematizing the binary of orthodoxy/heresy in the study of religion, An Anxious Inheritance makes significant contributions to a number of diverse academic fields.

The late Michael Dols in his book on the Majnūn rightly asserted that when dealing with madmen in medieval Islamic societies, we need to have in mind a model of medical pluralism. He had spotted the various intersections of genres of texts and learning, and even sociological classes and behavioral norms in his examination of madness, more broadly, and lovesickness (ʿishq), in particular. In this chapter, I shall focus on the discussions on lovesickness from five medical commentaries from the Mamluk period. The focus will be not only be on illuminating how the texts and the authors engage with the work(s) of their predecessor(s), but also what we can learn about the specific intellectual landscapes in which each author operated along with their specific interests in the topic. Professor Nahyan Fancy is the Al-Qasimi Professor in Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He received his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Notre Dame. He taught for 17 years in the History department at DePauw University, Indiana, before joining the faculty at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter this year. He works on the intersections of philosophy, medicine, science and religion during the period between 1200 and 1520. His first book, Science and Religion in Mamluk Egypt: Ibn al-Nafis, Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection (Routledge, 2013), situated Ibn al-Nafis’s proposal of the pulmonary transit of blood within the context of debates amongst philosophers and religious scholars over the proper role of reason in interpreting revelation and the possibility of bodily resurrection. He has published widely on post-classical medicine, including more recent work on pre-modern understandings of sleep and plague. His current book project examines eight medical commentaries on the Canon of Medicine and its Epitome, to reveal that neither were Ibn al-Nafis’s works ignored after 1300, nor was there a decline in medical and scientific thought due to religious antagonism.

Dr Fella Lahmar presents "Educational challenges facing the role & scope of female scholarship"

Dr Mansooreh Saniei (King’s College London) While considering the relationship between ethics, religion, and regulatory policy in the field of emerging life sciences and technologies, this presentation focuses on the politics of embryo, specifically embryo donation for modern medically assisted reproduction and embryo research, and debates about its status in the context of Shiism, with particular reference to Iran with a majority Shia population in the Middle East and North Africa. It shows that the meaning of laws and moral values attributed to the human embryo is closely related to the notions of reproduction and kinship. In addition, this confirms that Iran has recorded these policies and their applications in several fields: the coherence of positions between religious, medical and legal authorities — at the intersection of the sacred and the secular, political and medical institutions, complex total values and norms, professional interests—such as individuals ’choices, and the emergence of commercial agencies.

Dr Mohammad Rasekh (Shahid Beheshti University and Institute of Ismaili Studies) Under Imami fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence), various rules are applicable to foetus. Among them, this research focuses on the rules on blood money (dīyya) and inheritance (irth), as applicable to foetus, in order to examine the underlying personhood picture of the entity. That is to say, a question may be raised on whether the said rules share similar understanding of foetus as person. In this regard, taking into account the relevant rulings on the two topics embedded in the major fiqhi (jurisprudential) corpuses authored by Imami jurisprudents, such as those compiled by Ṭūsī , Muḥaqqiq Ḥillī, Ibn ‘Idrīs, Khānsārī and Khu’ī, it can be said that the rules on blood money, to be paid as compensation for the harm inflicted on foetus, consider the entity as a person. The least reason is that, according to them, the money would be inherited by the heirs to the foetus, rather than by the mother alone. Heirs are certainly heirs to a person. In comparison, those rules on the right of a foetus to inheritance make it conditional on the foetus being born alive, even for one second. It means that when it comes to the issue of inheriting, foetus is not regarded as a person at any stage of pregnancy period. In other words, foetus does not turn into a person, i.e., an entity that bears rights and responsibilities, unless and until it is born alive. Therefore, the answer to the question stated in the title of this research is both in the affirmative and the negative. On the other hand, the said rules and rulings on the two status are undoubtedly reasoned for. However, they do not seem to embody a consistent personhood picture of foetus. Can the inconsistency be countered by the existing reasoning and rule inference method of the prevalent Imami jurisprudential tradition? If not, what can be offered as a way out of the conundrum?

Dr Amina Inloes (The Islamic College, London) Recent advances in artificial intelligence technology have revived debates over the nature of knowing, consciousness, and the soul. This paper will explore whether the emergence of speaking, rational machines and the possibility of sentient machines could challenge classical Twelver Shiʿi Islamic theology. It will consider in what ways sentient machines would bring to light implied notions of anthropocentrism and anthropocentric notions of God within Islamic theology. It will also consider in what ways sentient machines would challenge the celebration of the human being as the “speaking, rational animal”. From a classical perspective, it will consider whether an intelligent machine could be considered as “living” or as having a soul. In doing so, it will consider which classical models would require updating, such as classical divisions between solids, plants, humans, and celestial beings. It will also explore, from a Twelver Shiʿi perspective, whether the human being has the right to create another living being or species, insofar as God is held to be the ultimate creator. Part of the argument will incorporate Twelver Shiʿi hadith supporting the possibility of non-human sentient life in the physical universe as a theologically alternative to anthropocentrism.