Towards An Islamic Ethics Of The Body: From Middle Ages Through Transplantation Surgery

Abstract

The study of some of the open questions arisen in the relation of transplantation surgery with contemporary Islam ethics shows the presence of some specific problems which derive from the different attitude Islam shows towards bioethic matters: namely, the tendency – entrenched in cultural tradition since the Middle Ages - to privilege law and ethics and juridical-religious prescriptions over technical-scientific assumptions. A short survey illustrates some of the different positions involved in the debate and hints at some possibilities to find a positive issue for such questions.