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Presentation for MSc (Primary Health Care) by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. on 3rd December 2008
LAW and ETHICS:
Islamic Law is comprehensive. It is a combination of moral and positive laws. European law denies moral considerations associated with ‘religion’. Its difficulties to solve issues in modern medicine that required moral considerations led to the birth of the discipline of medical ethics. Muslims did not have a special discipline on medical ethics because medical ethical and moral issues are encompassed within Islamic Law.
Concern with moral issues in medicine increased in the recent past due to new medical technology and increase in moral violations by medical practitioners. Many writings have been published about ethics. In 1976 Beauchamps and Childress wrote authoritatively about ethical theory and ethical principles. The following international declarations covered legal medical issues from a European world-view: Declaration of Geneva, International Code of Medical Ethics, Declaration of Tokyo, Declaration of Oslo, and Declaration of Helsinki.
Muslims did not need to publish any new declarations because principles of legal medicine are found within the Islamic Law. Islamic Law incorporates moral principles directly applicable to medicine.
APPROACH TO ETHICS:
There are three European approaches to ethical analysis: normative (what ought to be done) or practical (what most people do), and non-normative (what is actually going on). Morality in the European perspective became communal consensus about what is right and what is wrong. Thus ethics became relative and changeable with change of community values.
Morality in Islam is absolute and is of divine origin. The Law is the expression and practical manifestation of morality. It automatically bans all immoral actions as haram and automatically permits all what is moral or is not specifically defined as haram.
The Islamic approach to ethics is a mixture of the fixed absolute and the variable. The fixed and absolute sets parameters of what is moral. Within these parameters, consensus can be reached on specific moral issues. Islam considers medical ethics the same as ethics in other areas of life. Islamic medical ethics is restating general ethical principles using medical terminology and with medical applications. The ethical theories and principles are derived from the basic law but the detailed applications require further ijtihad by jurists and physicians.