New biology and its ethics: what do the fatwas say?

This lesson asks you to analyse, on the basis of research, ethical issues raised by a technological development in systems biology, and to communicate your findings. The curriculum's examples include cloning and organ transplants. The museum offers two answers of one Jordanian fatwa body, set down as that body's answers and not as the museum's own; the issues, the other positions and the scientific side are for your class to research. ¹

Look at each record: it names the body that answered, the question it was asked, and the reasons it gave. Ask what kind of reasons they are, and what a person who weighs ethics on other grounds would add.

The records give one voice. Ask which other voices your research must find, and how you would label each one before you state it.

Set the two answers side by side and look at how each is built. On bequeathing organs, Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that God commanded cooperation in righteousness and piety, quoting al-Mawardi's Adab al-Dunya wa-l-Din that joining piety with righteousness brings together God's pleasure and people's ². It said that a person's donating one of his organs at death to relieve harm to another is permitted by the sharia, falling under two agreed maxims: necessity makes the prohibited permissible, and necessity is measured by its extent ². On cloning plants, it said the scope the Sharia allows for non-human cloning is set by two words: securing benefits and warding off harms, with the judgment of these referred to experts and specialists ³. It cited the resolution of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy at its tenth session in Jeddah in 1997 ³. The museum records each as the Department's answer, not as its own.

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published the first fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 3895, dated 4 July 2024, and the second as no. 4010, dated 6 October 2025 ^{2 3}. Each record states that the museum records the text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it, and that it issues no ruling of its own. Each answer replies to a question as it was put: an initiative to spread awareness of organ donation asked for the ruling on a person making a will to donate all his organs after death ², and the questioner on cloning asked about taking a cell and multiplying it many times to make juice and substances added to food ³. The reasoning in each record is the Department's own account of its reasons; neither record checks the facts it asserts.

The two answers rest on different kinds of reasons. The first cites a command of cooperation, hadiths on relieving distress and two maxims about necessity. The second sets a condition, that the process is shown not to harm the consumer or disrupt the plant ecosystem, and refers the judgment of benefits and harms to experts and specialists ³. In each answer, who is given the authority to decide, and what kind of evidence would that person need before the reasoning applies? Which of the two reasonings leaves more to be decided by someone other than the body that gave the answer, and why?

• Bequeathing one's organs after death: the question, the Department's answer and the sources it cites.
• Cloning plants: the conditions the Department sets and the Academy resolution it cites.
• al-Mawardi: the author the Department quotes in its first answer.

Read the records of the fatwa on bequeathing one's organs and the fatwa on cloning plants. For each, write the question, the answer and the reason given, in three short lines.