Islam and New Kinship Reproductive Technology and the Shariah in Lebanon [Paperback]

Assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization have provoked global controversy and ethical debate. This book provides a groundbreaking investigation into those debates in the Islamic Middle East, simultaneously documenting changing ideas of kinship and the evolving role of religious authority in the region through a combination of in-depth field research in Lebanon and an exhaustive survey of the Islamic legal literature. Lebanon, home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, provides a valuable site through which to explore the overall dynamism and diversity of global Islamic debate. As this book shows, Muslim perspectives focus on the moral propriety of such controversial procedures as the use of donor sperm and eggs as well as surrogacy arrangements, which are allowed by some authorities using surprising and innovative legal arguments. These arguments challenge common stereotypes of the rigidity and conservatism of Islamic law and compel us to question conventional contrasts between liberal and Islamic notions of moral freedom, as well as the epistemological assumptions of anthropologys own new kinship studies. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Islam and the impact of reproductive technology on the global social imaginary.

Morgan Clarkeis Simon Research Fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Manchester.

As Clarke notes, he explicitly did not intend for this research to comprise an ethnography of reproductive technologies in Lebanon. As such, this book serves as an excellent companion piece to medical anthropological studies in the region that are more clinic-based and experiential, for example, those of Marcia Inhorn. This book will be of considerable interest to scholars in the areas of gender and health, reproduction and reproductive technologies, Islamicists, and those engaged in comparative kinship studies. It would be a vl³(