Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Islam and Modern Science: Contemporary Issues • 219While these issues are essentially irrelevant to the current realitiesof the Muslim world, the small body of literature dealing with“Islamic perspectives” on such issues is often termed pioneering workin the field. It attempts to derive its principles on the basis of wellknownprinciples of Islamic ijtihad, the process through which onederives ruling on matters for which direct precedent is not availablein the two primary sources of Islam, the QurāĀn and the Sunnah ofthe Prophet. These principles and their applications have existedfor centuries and were the logical place to go for Muslim scholarsinterested in searching out answers to such new questions. They hadalready used these principles in regard to certain other aspects ofmodern science. For example, when autopsies were first introduced tothe Muslim world, it became necessary to decide whether or not theywere halal (permissible) according to Islamic Law. The use of theseprinciples in numerous new situations arising out of scientific researchwas, in fact, a common practice during the premodern period. Then,however, Muslim jurists (fuqaha) were often part of the scientificcommunity, and even when they were not the science itself was inharmony with the basic principles of Islamic law, and hence there wasa symmetrical relationship between the astronomy, medicine, physics,mathematics, and geometry cultivated in the Islamic civilization andthe Shari‘ah, the Islamic Law. This harmony was broken in the post–seventeenth century period and Muslim jurists were forced to derivefresh insights into various issues that had started to emerge with thearrival of modern science and technologies in Muslim world.With regard to the human body, these issues arose in thecontext of autopsies and other post-mortem investigations, organtransplantations, and the like. Initially, Muslim scholars consideredpostmortem investigations illegal on the grounds that they violatedthe dignity of the dead. They could easily find examples from theQurāĀn and Sunnah to support their conclusion. But as certainbenefits of these investigations became evident to them, theirobjections disappeared, again on grounds for which they could easilyfind support in the two primary sources of Islam. Now no one objectsto autopsies on legal grounds as and when it is required for forensicinvestigation or to determine the cause of death.Over a period of time, a certain pattern seems to have emerged inthe responses of Muslim jurists to issues arising out of new scientific