Introduction: Why Islam, Health and the Body?

Abstract

This special issue of Body & Society was initiated to: (1) provide a deeper understanding of how medical technologies health and the body are navigated in Muslim settings (2) stimulate discussion among Muslim scholars social scientists bioethicists public health and medical professionals about how technologies are negotiated and incorporated in the Muslim world and (3) examine how social science literature on the body can provide a theoretical framework from which to examine health healing and technological innovations from Islamic perspectives - to explore Islamic systems of logic and how these operate in the corporeal world. Here we emphasize the plurality of Muslim perspectives rather than an overarching singular Muslim viewpoint. This issue broadly focuses on topics related to health and the body in Muslim countries exploring the relationship between Islamic discourse and metaphors surrounding the body perceptions and practices of the body and the challenges of medicine and modernity. Differences and similarities in Sunni and Shia responses - including adaptations in medical law and Islamic bioethics - are discussed. Cultural and religious idioms surrounding the body are also significant in contextualizing current perceptions of body and health. Ultimately this volume addresses how the dynamics between Islamic perceptions and practices surrounding health illness and the body are negotiated in the face of advancing medical technologies. (excerpt)