Mehrunisha Suleman - Islam and Biomedical Research Ethics

This book is a contribution to the nascent discourse on global health and biomedical research ethics involving Muslim populations and Islamic contexts. It presents a rich sociological account about the ways in which debates and questions involving Islam within the biomedical research context are negotiated a perspective which is currently lacking within the broader bioethics literature. The book tackles some key understudied areas, including: the role of faith in moral deliberations within biomedical research ethics; the moral anxiety and frustration experienced by researchers when having to negotiate multiple moral sources and how the marginalisation of women or the prejudice and abuse faced by groups, such as sex workers and those from the LGBT community, are encountered and negotiated in such contexts. The volume provides a valuable resource for researchers and scholars in this area by providing a systematic review of ethical guidelines and a rich case-based account of the ethical issues emerging in biomedical research in contexts where Islam and the religious moral commitments of Muslims are pertinent.

The book will be essential for those conducting research in low- and middle-income countries that have significant Muslim populations and for those in Muslim-minority settings. It will also appeal to researchers and scholars in religious studies, social sciences, philosophy, anthropology and theology, as well as the fields of biomedical ethics, Islamic ethics and global health.

Mehrunisha Suleman is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge.

Biomedical Law and Ethics Library

Scientific and clinical advances, social and political developments and the impact of healthcare on our lives raise profound ethical and legal questions. Medical law and ethics have become central to our understanding of these problems, and are important tools for the analysis and resolution of problems real or imagined.

In this series, scholars at the forefront of biomedical law and ethics contribute to the debates in this area, with accessible, thought-provoking, and sometimes controversial, ideas. Each book in the series develops an independent hypothesis and argues cogently for a particular position. One of the major contributions of this series is the extent to which both law and ethics are utilised in the content of the books, and the shape of the series itself.

The books in this series are analytical, with a key target audience of lawyers, doctors, nurses, and the intelligent lay public.

Series Editor: Sheila A. M. McLean

Professor Sheila A.M. McLean is Professor Emerita of Law and Ethics in Medicine, School of Law, University of Glasgow, UK.

Available titles:

Health Research Governance in Africa

Law, Ethics, and Regulation

Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia

Revisiting Landmark Cases in Medical Law

Shaun D. Pattinson

Healthcare Ethics, Law and Professionalism

Essays on the Works of Alastair V. Campbell

Edited by Voo Teck Chuan, Richard Huxtable and Nicola Peart

Religion, Medicine and the Law

Clayton Nill

Islam and Biomedical Research Ethics

Mehrunisha Suleman

For more information about this series, please visit: www. routledge.com/Biomedical-Law-and-Ethics-Library/book-series/CAV5

First published 2021

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2021 Mehrunisha Suleman

The right of Mehrunisha Suleman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-19147-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-20068-7 (ebk)

To all my teachers

That there is nothing for humankind, except that (good) which they strive for

Quran (The Star, Verse 39)

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own

I am delighted to have the opportunity to welcome the publication of this timely and important book, which provides a rich and fascinating analysis of contemporary Islamic medical ethics. Based on in-depth interviews with medical doctors and researchers in several countries, Mehrunisha Suleman reveals the complex and difficult ethical questions arising in the conduct of medical research today and how those questions are understood and engaged with from a Muslim perspective by doctors and researchers in their encounters with patients. This is essential reading for anyone interested in the ethics of medical research or medical practice in the Islamic world, and in the day-to-day lives of Muslim patients and their doctors.

Medical research is increasingly an international endeavour. Much research takes place in countries with significant Muslim populations and is conducted by researchers and doctors who may themselves be Muslim. This book and the research informing it will be of direct relevance to those who conduct, fund, or regulate such research. It will also be of broader interest and relevance to those who are working with Muslim patients or research participants wherever they are in the world.

The book begins with a review and overview of approaches to ethics in Islam. It explains the roles of key texts and how they relate to other important sources of authority. This is both accessible to people who are new to this field and offers an in-depth analysis of key principles and texts that will be of real value to those who are students of ethics. What becomes apparent in this analysis is both the variety of approaches of Islamic ethics, and the subtle and careful ways in which ethical problems in medical research can be addressed. In the book, Mehrunisha Suleman discusses the challenges presented to Islamic ethics by developments in medicine, by the spread of HIV, and by the changing roles of women. She explores ways in which these are being and could be responded to by scholars and practitioners of Islamic medical ethics.

Apart from the impact of technological developments in medicine, and societal change, perhaps the greatest ethical problem facing doctors and medical researchers working in Muslim majority countries is one of how best to make sense in practice of the multiple sources of advice and guidance available to them. In addition to that from the Islamic world mentioned above, international, national, and regional ethics guidelines continue to proliferate. How in practice are doctors and researchers to go about making practical ethical decisions in their day-to-day work with patients and research participants? Little if any work has been previously published exploring the moral worlds of Muslim doctors and those who work with Muslim majority populations. At the heart of this book is a set of chapters reporting on the experiences of individual researchers and doctors in two Muslim-majority countries: Iran and Malaysia. It shows how on a day-to-day basis, those who work in these spaces identify, reflect on, and make ethical judgements in the context of the guidelines and sources of authority mentioned above, but also in the context of their own beliefs and commitments as Muslim doctors or researchers. These chapters provide important insights into the moral worlds and difficult decisions facing those doctors and researchers who are working in such situations: their struggles, where they look for solutions and so on.