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The ‘Religionated’ Body: Online Fatwas and Body Parts
Abstract
Religious traditions ascribe specific religious ontological statuses to bodies which results in a ‘religionation’ of bodies. In light of the importance of bodies for one’s self-experience of others, for the production and reflection of social meanings, and as the subject and object of power relations (Douglas), meanings attached to bodies determine what can or cannot be done to them, in life and in death. Ethico-religious, social and physical segregation of ‘religionated’ bodies often finds religious justifications in the theological or religio-legal realms, hence the importance of looking at some Islamic legal opinions (fatwas) that pertain to bodies. While contemporary medico-ethical values are shaping a new Islamic paradigm (Moosa), pre-modern traditional Islamic paradigms – grounded in ‘mythical cognitive systems’ (Arkoun) or ‘premodern epistemes’ (Moosa) – survive and help us explain some of the dissonance that appears in various contemporary rulings. One may, however, ask to what extent have bodies remained ‘religionated’ in the developing corpus of contemporary fatwas with regards to new medical issues, e.g., blood and organ donation, organ transplants, or dissection of cadavers for medical training? I will look at a few (‘authoritative’) contemporary Sunni (IslamOnline.net) and Shiite fatwas (Grand Ayatollahs al-Sistani and al-Khamenei) available online to illustrate how the ‘religionation’ of bodies provides varying ontological natures to bodies. These fatwas grant different legal statuses that reiterate distinct ontological natures that have everything to do with what Daly identified as the reaffirmation of social relations that aim at maintaining boundaries. In life and in death, bodies partake in a specific ethico-religious ontological system that determines the sanctity of the body of individuals: they are not all equally worthy of the same sanctity. Some Sunnis are willing, in some cases (e.g., blood donation), to entertain ideas of ‘de-religionated’ bodies, but other rulings use pre-modern notions of bodies that attribute varying (on account of the fluid normative nature of rulings) degrees of sanctity to differently ‘religionated’ bodies, with some contemporary rulings being quite explicit: ‘religionated’ bodies and individuals are not to be treated the same. The same is true of the Shiite context when scholars tackle similar contemporary medical issues, sometimes reaching opposite conclusions to the ones provided by Sunni jurists. Some rulings, e.g., on anatomical dissections, nonetheless, illustrate how, even in death, remains of bodies retain their ‘religionated’ ontological natures and need to be treated differently.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
None
Sub Area
None