Advocacy for the pulsation of arteries, I don’t do
If an eye cannot shed tears of blood, what’s the point of blood anyway?
… These ideas, from the unseen, come to me
The screeching of the nib, oh Ghalib, is actually the melody of the angel of revelation.
Mirza Asadullah Ghalib (1989)
Abstract
Muslim ethics is cautiously engaging developments in neuroscience. In their encounters with developments in neuroscience such as brain death and functional magnetic resonance imaging procedures, Muslim ethicists might be on the cusp of spirited debates. Science and religion perform different kinds of work and ought not to be conflated. Cultural translation is central to negotiating the complex life worlds of religious communities, Muslims included. Cultural translation involves lived encounters with modernity and its byproduct, modern science. Serious ethical debate requires more than just a mere instrumental encounter with science. A robust Muslim approach to neuroethics might require an emulsion of religion and neuroscience, thought and body, and body and soul. Yet one must anticipate that Muslim debates in neuroethics will be inflected with Muslim values, symbols and the discrete faith perspectives of this tradition with meanings that are specific to people who share this worldview and their concerns.
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Notes
Social imaginaries are the “ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations (Taylor 2004).”
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the co-editor-in-chief of this journal, Stephanie J. Bird for inviting me to contribute to this special issue and for the feedback and comments she and her guest editors Michael Kalichman and Dena Plemmons provided. All remaining errors are mine.
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Ebrahim Moosa is professor of Religion and Islamic Studies at Duke University.
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Moosa, E. Translating Neuroethics: Reflections from Muslim Ethics. Sci Eng Ethics 18, 519–528 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9392-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9392-5