ABSTRACT
Since the age of colonial expansion, industrialization, and widespread travel, modern forms of the natural sciences, medical education, and general healthcare have been introduced to the Islamic world and turned by state actors into full-fledged biopolitics. This development has generated enhanced normative assessment not only on the level of state law (qānūn) but also from the viewpoint of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). Reactions to it are expressed in fatwas, studies (buḥūth), conference discussions (nadawāt) among experts (including physicians), and debates in mass media-in Arabic as well as other languages relevant to Muslims around the globe. No Muslim regime can dare to ignore pious scholarly voices and their potential criticisms; indeed, a number of states structurally incorporate them in their law-making process and medical policies. The period from the mid-twentieth century on has witnessed a surge of scholarly monographs on specific medico-jurisprudential questions (not least in university theses and conference proceedings), in contrast to the comprehensive manuals that dominated premodern Islamic jurisprudence, and such knowledge is now spreading widely among the broader public in the form of popular booklets, fatwa-style snippets, and new media discussions, sparking at times political repercussions.
