This Article gives a brief overview of Islamic views on assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Islamic law is applied to ARTs to determine what may be lawful and/or moral and what may be impermissible. The article examines artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and cloning.

This book investigates the central role of reason in Islamic intellectual life. Despite widespread characterization of Islam as a system of belief based only on revelation, JohnWalbridge argues that rational methods, not fundamentalism, have characterized Islamic law, philosophy, theology, and education since the medieval period. His research demonstrates that this medieval Islamic rational tra...

F several centuries, the world, and particularly Europe has benefited from the great contributions brought about by Muslim physicians in the field of medicine. These contributions were not only based on technical skills but also on the role of eminent Muslim physicians in establishing medical ethics. Many prominent physicians of the Islamic civilization involved themselves with professional eth...

Islamic Finance is more than an asset class – it is a way of life lived by 1.6 billion Muslims around the world. But its reach goes even further – non-Islamic countries, governments, and businesses, have all invested in or issued Islamic securities for one reason or another. With the ongoing push of globalization of trade and finance, Islamic financial flows, long a localized phenomenon, have b...

Classical Islamic law recognizes only natural persons; it does not grant standing to imagined, juristic persons. This article identifies self-reinforcing processes that kept Islamic law from developing a concept of legal personhood indigenously. Community building being central to Islam’s mission, the early promoters of Islam had no use for a concept liable to facilitate factionalism. In subseq...

Islamic building codes require mosques to face Mecca. The further Islam spreads, the more apt are believers to fall into a quandary. X faces Y only when the front of X is closer to Y than any other side of X. So the front of the mosque should be oriented along a shortest path to Mecca. Which way is that? Does the path to Mecca tunnel through the earth? Or does the path follow the surface of the...

Islamic banking is currently one of the fastest growing segments of the financial market industry, operating in over 75 countries through 300 institutions. While past literature has established the development of financial institutions as a determinant of economic growth, research on the correlation of the diffusion of Islamic banking with economic growth is limited. This study seeks to add to ...

At least from the nineteenth century onward, certain observers have viewed Islam as a religion that discourages entrepreneurship by fostering fatalism, conform-ism, and conservatism. 1 Leading Muslim reformers of the nineteenth century, including Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–97), believed that this view confuses a perverted form of Islam, which counsels passive resignation to events, with auth...

The early models of Islamic banks are based on partnership of mudharaba and musharaka (profit-loss sharing) structure. Such equitybased financing are perceived to be superior to conventional financing from the standpoint of robustness to external shocks and from the standpoint of ethics, fairness and social justice. Where profit-loss sharing mechanisms cannot be used, Islamic banks provide othe...

There is burgeoning interest in the field of "Islamic" bioethics within public and professional circles, and both healthcare practitioners and academic scholars deploy their respective expertise in attempts to cohere a discipline of inquiry that addresses the needs of contemporary bioethics stakeholders while using resources from within the Islamic ethico-legal tradition. This manuscript serves...