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Article

The Virtual Latinx-Muslim Community  

Arely Medina

The forms of interaction mediated by the internet brings society closer to the transformations of distinct forms of socialization and the contemporary idea of community. There exists a construction of an imagined community with ethnic and religious borders located in the United States and on the internet. Islamic on one side and Latino on the other side are characteristics expressed in that imagined community that in virtual space can take the form of a cyberenvironment of Islam Latino. Latinx Muslims sought to be represented in front of other Muslims and civil society itself, such as the Latino community in the United States. The internet allows the creation of an extensive community based on the universal ummah and Islamic discourse. However, while the internet allows Islam to reach to minorities such as Latinos, it also enables the creation of cyberspaces where Latinx Muslims can express their needs as a community and claim their Muslim identity; what could form a flexible and changeable cyberenvironment according to their needs. Therefore, the margins that shape the cyberenvironment are a hybridization between Islamic and ethnic aspects.

Article

Terrorism and Violence in North America  

Atiya Husain

Even among those most invested in defining “terrorism,” there is an inability to agree on a shared definition. This suggests the political nature of the concept. Terrorism is best understood in relation to other social phenomena, particularly colonialism and capitalism. This essay discusses several questions on the topic of terrorism and violence: What is at stake in the definition of terrorism? What is the relationship of Muslims and Islam to terrorism? What is the scope of counterterrorism? In addressing these questions, the article discusses a range of topics including Black Power, paper terrorism, “Barbary” pirates, the Christian Identity Movement, black identity extremism, racially motivated violent extremism, and the permeation of terrorism concerns into sectors, including education and natural disaster management.

Article

Islamic Relics  

Richard McGregor

Relics can be found in every era of Islamic history, throughout the Islamic world. In line with other religious traditions of the Near East, the Qur’an mentions several objects endowed with special power (e.g., Joseph’s coat, the Ark of the Covenant). The earliest Islamic literature, preserving the life and mission of Muḥammad, presents details of several revered objects. These include objects handed down from pre-Islamic prophets as well as the discards of Muḥammad’s person, including clothing, weapons, and hair. Saintly figures, descendants of the Prophet, and his companions have also been sources for relics. Relics are displayed and venerated in devotional contexts such as shrines, tombs, mosques, madrasas, and museums. Relics have been paraded on special occasions such as the festival days of the Muslim calendar, in medieval protest marches, as part of the rituals for relief from drought, and as talismans in battle. Despite the occasional objection from austere doctors of law, devotion to relics has remained commonplace. While a full inventory is impossible, five categories may be proposed for the Islamic relic: (a) Bodily relics include the blood of martyrs, hair, and fingernail parings. Shrines have been built over severed heads—the most famous being that of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī (d. 680). (b) Contact relics, having collected the baraka (blessing) of their one-time owners, pass those blessings on to any pilgrim who touches them. Several staffs, lances, bows, shields, turbans, cloaks, and sandals attributed to the Prophet have been preserved, some of which were presented as symbols of authority in the early caliphate. (c) Impressions in stone made by feet, hands, fingers, posteriors, and even hooves are preserved. Muḥammad’s footprints saw a brisk trade in the medieval period, and his sandal inspired a minor tradition of devotional iconography first in manuscript copies and later in modern mass production. (d) Inanimate objects, miraculously endowed with speech or locomotion, constitute a fourth category. These animated relics could be speaking stones or moving trees, particularly in the sacred topographies of Medina and Mecca. (e) Many revered places which were the site of important events have been marked off and preserved. More than commemorations, these “stage relics” anchored sacred history and holy bodies in the landscape. The location of Muḥammad’s birthplace in Mecca was until recently a revered stage relic.

Article

Palestinian Muslim Communities in Colombia  

Felipe Medina Gutiérrez and Odette Yidi David

Arabic-speaking peoples, including Palestinians mostly Christian from Ottoman-controlled lands and later living under European mandates in greater Syria, migrated to the Americas, during the last quarter of the 19th century and until the end of the World War II. The creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 meant the expulsion and forced migration of yet more Palestinians, some settling in refugee camps in the region and others moving to distant countries, such as Colombia. This new wave of Palestinian immigrants was overwhelmingly Muslim. The Palestinian diaspora in the 21st century comprises about ten million people around the world and is highly diverse in terms of religious identity. Some communities have organized around supporting the development of their host countries and homeland; nonetheless, not many people are aware of these stories. Also, it is common in the “West” to witness accusations that Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs in general are violent by nature, as a result of a series of orientalist misconceptions about a people and a religion that, despite exceeding 1,600 billion believers around the world, remains misunderstood. Something similar happens with the Palestinian diaspora in Colombia, where little research has been undertaken to historicize their presence and interactions. Primary and secondary sources illustrate how the Palestinian Muslim immigrant community in Colombia has integrated into the local society and strengthened its ties on a social level beyond the political and economic issues, with consideration of its religious identity and minority condition.

Article

Islam and the Middle East in the American Imagination  

Brooke Sherrard

Americans have utilized Islam as a rhetorical device for articulating various understandings of American identity from the time of the earliest Anglo-American settlers. In every period, many rejected Islam and Muslims as oppositional to American identity, accusing Islam of inherent despotism that conflicted with American liberty. Others, though, used perceived traits of Islam to critique American behaviors or focused on similarities between Islam and Christianity. Many citizens of the early American republic assumed their country was essentially Protestant, but founding figures such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison indicated their support for a more inclusive polity by listing Muslims among the varieties of people they believed could be good citizens. These men meant this abstractly, as they believed there were no Muslims in the United States at the time and did not know some African slaves were Muslim. American Protestant organizations sent missionaries around the world starting in the early 19th century, including to areas of the Middle East where the Muslim majority was legally protected from proselytization. Therefore, missionaries tended to work with native Christian populations. American missionaries, travelers, and explorers had a great interest in the Holy Land. A frequent theme in their writings was a desire to see this area reclaimed from Islamic rule. They believed the Holy Land could be regenerated through Protestant influence and often suggested Jews could be relocated there. Over time, liberal Protestants moved away from seeking conversions and became more interested in educational and medical aspects of missions. American discussions about Islam intensified again after September 11, 2001. Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis argued that Western civilization and Islamic civilization were inherently incompatible. Others, like John L. Esposito and Feisal Abdul Rauf, focused on the historical and theological similarities between Christianity and Islam to suggest common ground.

Article

Governance in Classical Islamic Thought  

Ovamir Anjum

Governance in Islamic history has taken many different forms. The formative period saw most innovative deployment of the Arab tribal norms under the guidance of Islamic norms and the pressure of the rapid expansion. After the conquests, the ruling elite augmented their Arab tribal form of governance with numerous institutions and practices from the surrounding empires, particularly the Persian empire. The Umayyads ruled as Arab chiefs, whereas the Abbasids ruled as Persian emperors. Local influences further asserted themselves in governance after the Abbasids weakened and as Islamization took root. After the fragmentation of the Abbasid empire by the ah 4th century/10th century ce, a distinctively Islamic society emerged whose regional rulers upheld its law and institutions such as land-grants (iqṭāʿ), taxation (kharāj and jizya), education (legal madhhab, jāmiʿ and madrasah), and judiciary (qaḍāh). A triangle of governmental authority was established, with the caliph as the source of legitimacy, symbol of community unity, and leader of religious rites; the sultan as the territorial king who maintained the army and monopoly over violence; and the scholars (ulama’) as socioreligious leaders of their respective communities. The caliph or the sultan appointed the local qāḍīs from among the ulama’, who served not only as judges and mediators but also as moral guides and administers of endowments and jurisconsults and counselors, and thus played a key role in the self-governance of classical Islamic societies.

Article

Islam, Art, and Depictions of Prophets  

Rachel Milstein

The history of figurative painting in Islamic lands, although limited to certain regions and periods, includes a meaningful variety of saintly iconographies, mostly as book illustrations. Produced from the turn of the 14th to the early 17th century in Iranian capital cities or in the Ottoman Empire, paintings of prophets illuminate manuscripts of universal histories, encyclopedias, didactic poetry, and anthologies of prophetic biographies (Stories of the Prophets). They depict personages, not necessarily prophets, from the Old and the New Testaments, two Arab prophets mentioned in the Qurʼan, and finally Muhammad (and ʿAli, although he was not a prophet). The acts of these figures served as moral and spiritual models for the individual believers and, no less so, for the desired behavior of Muslim rulers. In Iran, the message of the illustrated texts and their paintings shifts from historical to moral, and often to mystical. In the Ottoman Empire, in addition, the prophets were conceived as forefathers of the Ottoman dynasty. In Moghul India, only Solomon and Jesus were depicted, not very often, while Joseph’s story was quite popular in late Kashmir. The impact of Western iconography and style, which characterize the recurrence of Jesus’ image, is seen also in later Iran, where portrayals of Solomon, Joseph, and Jesus were painted mainly on decorative objects, such as pen boxes and book bindings.

Article

Islamic Bioethics: Nanotechnology  

Nidhal Guessoum

What ethical issues that nanotechnology raise – in its present state of development and in future, projected breakthroughs? Are those ethical issues to be addressed from a utilitarian perspective (pros and cons to humans) or from higher principles, perhaps religious ones? Does Islam address those issues from a theological perspective or from juristic (“Fiqhi”, i.e. harmful/prohibited vs. beneficial/permissible) angle? What viewpoints and stands have ethicists and religious scholars (Muslim and other) advanced on nanotechnology?

Article

Sufism in North America  

William Rory Dickson

Sufism in North America is exceptionally diverse, reflecting its heterogenous origins and complex transnational dynamics. It can be found as an essential, if at times subtle, element of Muslim devotional practice, with several North American Muslim networks and organizations integrating Sufism into their teachings. It manifests more explicitly in various Sufi orders, normally led by a lineage-holding shaykh or shaykha, with a spectrum of approaches to Islamic identity and practice. Sufism has further been drawn upon as a niche resource for literature and commodity within the broader spiritual marketplace, intersecting with popular culture. Sufism in North America is thus an integral aspect of Muslim devotional practice, a distinct spiritual path embodied in various lineages and orders, and a literary phenomenon and popular spiritual commodity.

Article

Islam in Tijuana, Mexico  

Britt Dawson

While the first Muslims in northern Mexico were migrants from the Levant in the early 20th century, since 2010 the number of Muslims living in northern Mexico, particularly the borderlands, has grown rapidly. This is especially true in northern Baja California, where Mexican converts to Islam aid Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia who make their way to the city of Tijuana in hopes of claiming asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. The first musallas (places of prayer) were built in the border cities of Tijuana and Rosarito in the 2010s, and they serve diverse communities of Muslims. As Muslim migrants continue to make their way to northern Baja California, the forces of the U.S.-Mexico border shape the emergence of this religious community in a variety of ways. In striving to live a coherent Muslim life, Muslims in this region of Mexico navigate life in a country where few people know about Islam in addition to multiple layers of border security and surveillance developed as part of the U.S. war on terror. While Muslims in the greater Tijuana area come from all over the world, they have recourse to the Islamic discursive tradition in building community together and as a way of making sense of life in a border zone.

Article

Media Muslims and Telenovelas: El Clon  

Silvia Montenegro

The analysis of representations of Islam and Muslims disseminated in the literature, academic papers, and mass media involves a large tradition of studies and discussions that have highlighted categories such as Orientalism, neo-Orientalism and post-Orientalism. The Brazilian telenovela El Clon, released in October 2001 by Rede Globo and recreated in a new version by the Telemundo network in 2010, conquered the audience not only in Latin America but worldwide. In the creation of the original project, leaders of Islamic institutions played a role as advisors, but the way in which the religion was portrayed satisfied only part of the Muslim audience. In the analysis of the fictionalization of Muslim identities presented in El Clon, it is possible to identify: (a) the earlier examples of telenovelas aimed at Latin American audiences portraying the Arab-Islamic culture, (b) the significance of its release in the context immediately following 9/11, (c) the way of presenting the “core” of Muslim culture, (d) the integration of the telenovela in the wider process of commoditization of Arab-Islamic exoticism, (e) the dissimilar impact on the Muslim audience, and (f) the search for visibility by Islamic communities through a depiction that would not juxtapose Islam and terrorism. Exoticism, magic, and mystery as components of the soft Orientalism present in El Clon attracted the curiosity of a mass Latin American audience, becoming a milestone in the increasing visibility of Islam.

Article

The Caliphate  

Carool Kersten

The caliphate as an institution for governing the Muslim community can be traced back to the time immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 ce. With its humble origins in the parochial settings of an Arabian desert oasis, the caliphate provided the structure for the shepherding of a community of believers organized around prophetic teachings calling for return to the true religion of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets, a religion that came to be known as Islam. Despite internal dissent and even civil war, the caliphate not only survived but even expanded far beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Between the 8th and 10th centuries the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates ruled an empire stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River. After that, the challenges of sustained political control proved too formidable to be exercised from a single center, leading to political fragmentation. Although it functioned only for a few centuries as an effective form of Islamic governance, for many Sunni Muslims the caliphate’s political and symbolic significance has outlasted its administrative and institutional fragmentation. Its appeal even continued after its formal abolition in 1924 by the founding president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938). Since then the caliphate has not just remained a nostalgic memory. Throughout the 20th century and into the new millennium, some proponents of political Islam continue to advocate the restoration of a caliphate as a rallying point for Muslims worldwide, in some instances making concrete efforts toward re-establishing the institution or even proclaiming a new caliph.

Article

Islam in Southeast Asia  

Khairudin Aljunied

Islam has maintained its presence in Southeast Asia for more than a millennium, dating back to as early as the 7th century. By the 21st century, the estimated total of Muslims surpassed 240 million, making Southeast Asia a site that is populated by one of the largest Muslim communities on the planet. Muslims are majorities in 21st-century Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In other Southeast Asian countries, namely Myanmar, Cambodia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor Leste, and Vietnam, they remain as minorities, experiencing varying levels of integration and assimilation with the majority non-Muslim Buddhist or Christian populations. The massive though gradual spread of Islam in the region can be attributed to the generally peaceful, multifaceted, and creative ways by which Islam was infused into the everyday life of local societies. Traders, Sufi missionaries, scholars, rulers, and even non-Muslims have all contributed to the spread of Islam in Southeast Asia. Most Muslims in Southeast Asia are Sunnis, adhering to the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence, Ash’ari theology, and Sufi ethics. Located within this cosmopolitan and diverse religious landscape are Muslims who belong to other schools of Islamic jurisprudence and theological leanings such as Hanafi, Ja’fari, Shi’ah, and Salafi. Viewed from the perspective of the longue durée (long duration), the venture of Islam in Southeast Asia can be divided into four successive phases: gradualist (7th–14th centuries), populist (15th–19th centuries), colonial-reformist (19th–mid-20th centuries), and assertive (mid-20th–21st centuries).

Article

Islamophobia  

Todd Green

“Islamophobia” is a modern word for a prejudice that dates back to the Middle Ages and that permeates Western societies in the 21st century. It refers to the fear of and hostility toward Muslims and Islam, as well as the discriminatory, exclusionary, and violent practices arising from these attitudes that target Muslims and those perceived as Muslims. Islamophobia is best understood as a form of cultural racism that instigates animosity based on religious beliefs, cultural traditions, and ethnicity. The historical roots of Islamophobia are found in the political rivalries between Islamic empires and European Christian kingdoms and empires dating back to the Middle Ages. During this period, both Christians and Muslims depicted one another in unflattering terms, conceiving of the other religion as inferior and a distortion of God’s true revelation. By the 19th century, European empires gained the upper hand in this rivalry and imposed some form of colonial rule across vast swaths of the Muslim-majority world. To justify imperial expansion, Europeans developed Orientalist narratives that frequently cast Islam as a backward, uncivilized, and barbaric religion, at odds with European civilization. This narrative found new life as a “clash of civilizations” framework was deployed after the Cold War and particularly after the 9/11 attacks to explain both the rise in Islamist terrorism and to justify ongoing Western military intervention in Muslim-majority regions under the guise of the War on Terror. Islamophobia is exacerbated by the fact that Muslims often lack the power to control the narrative of Islam in the modern West. What most non-Muslims “know” about Islam often comes from one of two sources: the mass media, which frames Muslims primarily through the lens of terrorism and violence; and a professional Islamophobia network, a cadre of right-wing bloggers, activists, authors, and politicians who make a living demonizing and dehumanizing Muslims. Decades if not centuries of Islamophobia have had a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of Muslims living in the West. Since 9/11, Muslims have been subject to intrusive government surveillance and profiling programs, detentions and deportations, registration systems, hate crimes, and infringements on freedom of religion in the form of antisharia laws, hijab and full-face veil bans, and localized and political resistance to the building of mosques and minarets.

Article

Theology, Issues in North America  

Candace Mixon

Muslims have been present in North America long before the transatlantic slave trade; Western and North African Muslims were an (involuntary) part of “New World” expeditions as early as the 1500s. Muslims who arrived enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade were often prohibited from practicing, writing about, or discussing Islam. Later, immigration waves, new religious movements, and eventually dedicated centers for teaching about Muslims and Islam and centers of Muslim education and debate yielded sophisticated responses to the specific challenges and benefits of North American Muslim life. Authenticity and connection to Arabo-centric Islam have often characterized theological movements, while the variety of North American Muslim communities developed an ever-changing pallet of Islams and identity markers that still do not coalesce neatly into traditional theological schools. The concept and translation of Islamic theology, or kalam, does not map onto its comparative Christian counterpart. Kalam has historically been employed to define modes of correct Muslim practice within Muslim communities while defending against questions, attacks, or degradations by other religious groups. Islamic theology can be considered from two directions: foundations of practicing Islam that form Muslims’ obligations derived from many Qur’anic interpretations and through the discipline of theology, focused on the rational and technical inquiry of doctrines and arguments to determine correct practice. Both approaches delve into intra-Muslim dialogues, which are vital to the outcome of believers’ performance in this world to prepare for the next. North American experiences inform Muslim approaches to theology, whether attributed to transcontinental migration or developed within the boundaries of North America. Such approaches may sometimes be disparate or even oppositional, accumulated through the lack of a singular religious authority. Numerous leadership groups, histories, informal leaders, and recognized pathfinders who could be considered leading the charge to promote particular theologically driven movements in North America can be pointed to. At the same time, many Muslims in North America do not belong to any particular Muslim organization; they may connect with ethnic or regional communities instead. Tracing the history of Islam in North America is a framework for following North American approaches to theological debates that serve to create, police, or multiply the variety of Muslim experiences in North America. The decentralized development and diversification of Islam in North America contribute to a diversity of theological practices that are better embraced in their multiplicities rather than treated as a cohesive body.

Article

News Coverage of Islam and Muslims in North America  

Ahmed Al-Rawi

Many scholars cite Edward Said’s concepts of Orientalism and Othering that drew on West-East binaries that position the West as civilized and the East as barbaric. Such Othering is represented in various Western media through the association of Muslims and Islam with violence, fundamentalism, and terrorism. While such representations were being developed within public discourse through early mass media during the post–World War II period, such discriminatory and reductionist representations of Muslims were more clearly seen within the US media during the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Gulf War periods. Said effectively outlines the various ways in which news coverage presented Arabs and Muslims as an imagined Other, reduced to specters of “Islam”—a constructed idea of the religion as violently opposed to American rights, values, and democracy. There is no doubt that the largest shift in nuance in the public discourse and media representation of Muslims occurred after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with hate speech, violence, racism, and fear toward Muslim communities increasing across North America. The main discourses on the Muslim communities in North America continued to be Orientalist in nature but more obviously racialized regardless of the varied geographical regions and ethnic heterogeneity of the peoples that make up these various Muslim groups. As a result, Islam itself was racialized and generally used as a pretext to oppress Muslims. Other major themes that emerge from the news coverage of Islam in North America include Islam as being oppressive, and the gendered representations of Muslims, especially veiled women as needing to be rescued.

Article

Islam in the Caribbean  

Ken Chitwood

It is difficult to speak of “Islam in the Caribbean” in any unified sense. Because the story of Islam and Muslims in the Caribbean is characterized by both a long, multifaceted history and modern miscellany, there is no past or present uniformity in progeny, perspectives, or practices. Nonetheless, the classification offers a geographically focused and categorically complex frame of reference to consider often overlooked aspects in the region and of global Islam. Stretching from the long 16th century to the present day, the narrative of Islam and Muslims in and of the Caribbean is one of colonial power and cosmopolitanization, contested history and concurrent heterogeneity, global connectedness, and local complexity. Across the region, Muslim experience is significantly linked to the complex nexus of relationships and interactions between peoples and powers in the wider Atlantic world since the 16th century. Yet, because the Anglophone, Dutch, Hispanophone, and Francophone Caribbeans are each marked by colonial lineages and created certain networks by which Islam and Muslims arrived in the region, there are multiple assemblages that mark and make up the various socialities in the region. Thus, their stories are sufficiently diverse to warrant distinct recognition and treatment. At the same time, and thanks to this shared Atlantic world, there are shared themes and common concerns that can be identified across the Caribbean, including but not limited to: diaspora dynamics, migration, minoritization, transregional networks, debates over hybridity and purity, religious diversification, notions of space and place, class issues, questions of indigeneity, and the interstices of race and religion in colonial and postcolonial perspectives. In addition, there have also been enough interactions at, across, and between the various “Caribbeans” to justify—indeed, necessitate—comparing them and putting them into conversation with one another. Aliyah Khan, in her literary study of the significance, influence, and changeability of Muslims in the Anglophone Caribbean, emphasized both the need to decenter the U.S. in the study of Islam in the Americas and further globalize the study of global Islam by putting different regions into comparative perspective (e.g., the Anglophone Caribbean and the Hispanophone Caribbean). This requires putting connected, yet seemingly disparate, contexts such as Trinidad and Puerto Rico, Suriname and Haiti, the Bahamas and Cuba into comparative conversation. The result of such juxtapositions is not only a richer appreciation of the constitutive aspects of Caribbean history and contemporary culture but a more extensive and entangled understanding of global Islam’s constituent communities and representative sites.

Article

Ecology in Islam  

Rosemary Hancock

Starting in the late 1960s, a small number of Muslim scholars turned their attention to how the Islamic scriptures and intellectual tradition might help Muslims understand and respond to climate change and environmental crisis. In building this Islamic approach to ecology, these scholars undertook close analysis of the Qur’an, the Sunnah (the collected traditions of the Prophet Muhammad), centuries of Islamic law, and the writings of Sufi mystics and scholars in order to construct Islamic environmental theologies and law. This Islamic ecology remained on the margins of mainstream Islamic discourse for decades, but the participation of Muslims in environmental movements is growing and with it, the need for an Islamic ecology. In developing environmental theologies, Muslim scholars focus upon the relationship of God to the natural world, positing that as God’s creation, the natural world is a sign through which humanity can experience God. Although the natural world is “made useful” to humanity, humans do not have absolute dominion over creation. Rather, humanity is Khalifah—God’s representative or steward on earth. The development of Islamic environmental law from within the shari’ah tradition is arguably just as—if not more—important as articulating an Islamic environmental theology. Some Muslim environmentalists argue for the revival of Islamic land management institutions and look to the many regulations regarding agriculture and water management found in shari’ah as avenues for implementing Islamic environmental law.

Article

Islamic Bioethics: Religion, Science, and Technology  

Osman Bakar

Unlike views prevailing in certain cultures that insist on the separation of science and technology from religion, Islamic tradition argues for their interrelatedness, unity, and harmony. Islamic bioethics is both an old and a new field of academic inquiry. It is old in the sense that the practical concern with what are now considered bioethical issues has been present in Islam since its early history. But it is also new in the sense that its domain of inquiry now covers a much wider range of modern ethical issues that do not originate from the Muslim world. Rather, they largely originate from the modern West. It is also new with respect to the kind of philosophical challenges it has to grapple with in response to the competing theories of ethics that seek to best explain the meaning and significance of contemporary bioethics, as well as its relations—especially with its neighboring academic disciplines.

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Islamic Bioethics: Secular Bioethics in Muslim Countries  

Anke Iman Bouzenita

Bioethical discourse in Western and Islamic societies needs to be viewed against the background of their different historical perspectives and the role secularism has played in their respective development. While the Islamic experience generally saw science and technology evolving out of the Islamic way of life with medical ethics embedded in, and not hindered by, the injunctions of Islamic law, the Western (European) experience emphasizes the a priori need for secularization so as to initiate scientific development. Secularism therefore seems ingrained in Western approaches to science. Against this background, Western bioethics tends to insist on a secular imprint on bioethics. Bioethicists in Muslim-majority countries and in Muslim-minority communities elsewhere work with different historical and cultural experiences. Islam and its sources are still considered to be an important reference framework in Muslim countries and among Muslim populations. The communication of bioethical standards to various recipients therefore requires Islamic justification for legitimacy and acceptance.