Relevance and Interest

This article seeks to engage not only those readers who are interested in understanding some aspects of the reasoning related to genetically modified food/GMOs controversy in the Muslim world, but also those readers interested in issues related to Islamic ethics in general, because it sheds light on various ethical arguments provided by Muslims and attempts to critically analyse various perspectives by unveiling and assessing certain theological, cultural and political assumptions. I believe that the article's relevance and interest stems from the fact that it focuses on the issue of the GMOs as a target for deliberation against the background of economic globalization on one side and global ethics on the other.

Modern food ethics seems to transcend religion and culture, especially when a new food technology is at stake. Nevertheless, some scholars and researchers have raised concerns about the extent to which an ethical discourse has to be religiously or culturally specific in a modern globalized world (Shabana ). Indeed, Muslims and other religious communities have to ensure that universal ethical principles such as the well known principles of bioethics—autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice—are informed by fundamental religious and cultural values to enhance their legitimacy and acceptability as indicated by Ayman Shabana (). However, that definitely does not mean that one should endorse any kind of cultural relativism or “theological voluntarism.” Theological voluntarism is a meta‐ethical theory that entails an exclusivist approach in ethics, as will be argued later in this article.

For a religious community confronting a range of challenging and practical questions within larger structures of governance—from globalization to liberal capitalism—debates about technology including agro‐biotechnology often sponsor a set of larger concerns including specific economic and political circumstances (Moosa ). Yet, having specific circumstances does not preclude the potential for an inclusive universal language and transcultural framework of ethical principles that provide an opportunity for a dialogue between people belonging to different cultures, traditions, and religions.

Before discussing the arguments related to GMOs which reflect various Islamic perspectives, I will provide an outline of the general landscape of the normative debate in Islam.

Classical Sources of Legislation

The Qur'an is the sacred book of the Muslims and is considered an important source of Islamic ethics and law. It contains 6,236 verses revealed to the prophet Muhammad (d. 632) in the seventh century, over twenty‐three years. The Qur'an is addressed to all human beings and its ethical framework is presented as one of universal applicability, “This message is no less than a reminder to all mankind” (81:27) Some Muslims adhere to the literal meaning of the Qur'anic verses; others believe that the Qur'anic injunctions are open to interpretations that necessarily reflect epistemological situations of different times and places. Nevertheless, Muslims agree that the Qur'an is the first and the ultimate source of guidance. The second source is the Sunna (the tradition) of the prophet Muhammad codified in the books of Ḥadīth that include reports of what the prophet did or said or approved.

The other two sources that are largely recognized by various traditional scholars are qiyās (reasoning by analogy) and ijmā‘ (consensus). In addition to those, ‘urf (local custom), istiḥsān (juristic preference), and maṣlaḥa (well‐being or public benefit) are also taken into consideration by different classical schools of fiqh when deriving rules and legislations, especially when certain issues that need to be addressed are not explicitly mentioned in the Qur'an or the Ḥadīth.

The principle of maṣlaḥa is usually linked to maqāṣid al‐Sharī‘ah (the aims or the objectives of the Sharī‘ah), and the aims themselves seem to be derived by an induction process from the rules and principles of the Qur'an and the Sunna by some classical Muslim scholars who flourished between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries. Those objectives are traditionally considered to include the preservation of five universal necessities, namely, life, religion, mind, progeny, and property. Prominent classical scholars such as al‐Ghazālī (d. 1111), and al‐Shāṭibī (d. 1388) have indicated that these objectives are universal and acknowledged by all traditions and communities (al‐Attar forthcoming).

Sharī‘ah, Fiqh and Religious Authority

Sharī‘ah literally means “a path to water” and indicates the method or the way of living rightly in this life in order to thrive in this world and achieve salvation in the hereafter. Fiqh literally means “understanding,” and includes methods, rules, and principles developed by the fuqahā’ (jurists who are also religious scholars) in order to understand the teachings of the Sharī‘ah. For a Muslim to live according to the Sharī‘ah means to live according to principles and values indicated in the holy book and to follow the example of the prophet Muḥammad, whose character and behavior embodied the teachings of the Qur'an. The two concepts of Sharī‘ah and fiqh are often equated, and both are usually translated as “Islamic law,” which is misleading. Fiqh indicates our understanding and knowledge of what it means to follow the right path and is open to modification and change, whereas Sharī‘ah is believed to be the “absolute way of truth and justice as it exists in God's mind” (Abou El Fadl , 150). For example, we can have various schools of fiqh, yet only one Islamic Sharī‘ah. The canonical schools of fiqh which are still active today in Sunni Islam include the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfi‘ī, and Ḥanbalī, in addition to the Ja'farī school in the Shī‘ī Islam and Zaydī among the Isma’īlī Muslims. Islam is far from being a monolithic tradition, and the schools of law just mentioned do not exhaust the various trends and living Islamic traditions. Also, most Muslims nowadays do not identify with any particular school of law.

In Islam there have never been councils or assemblies to solve dubious juridical or theological questions as is the case in Christianity. In the Muslim world no institution has the religious authority to formulate new religiously sanctioned rules incumbent upon all Muslims. However, in practice some Muslims follow the advice of a learned religious scholar or accept a fatwa (a legal opinion) issued from any of the great centers of religious scholarship (Shadid and Koningsveld ). Nowadays, Muslims also have recourse to the opinions provided by meetings, conferences, congresses, and academies that bring together jurists and experts from various parts of the Muslim world (Atighetchi , 89). Yet, in case of disagreement, which often happens, there is no superior religious authority that can decide. In Muslim majority countries, the religious affairs ministries appoint councils or a religious scholar Grand Mufti to issue fatwas (Moosa ). Also, some large Islamic organizations are sponsored and financed by groups of different Muslim countries, lending to them the responsibility of being their political‐religious instruments (Atighetchi , 9). Thus, ijmā‘ (consensus), mentioned above, which had been traditionally considered a source of legislation, can no longer be invoked regarding current issues and modern technology. Indeed, the meaning and the application of the principle of consensus itself has never been agreed upon. In the modern time, reaching a meaningful consensus is almost impossible, due to the socioeconomic, political, and geographical diversity of Muslim societies. In the absence of consensus, some have indicated that every Muslim should follow his/her own conscience and abide by what he/she believes to be the genuine religious rule (Shadid and Koningsveld ).

Kalām Theology, Law and Ethics

Before the canonization of various schools of Islamic law during the early years of Muslims’ intellectual history, debates centered on the role of reason in deciding issues related to law and morality. The main school of kalām (speculative theology) that emerged during the eighth century was the Mu‘tazilite school. For most of the Mu‘tazilites, and also for many non‐Mu‘tazilites, ethical values and moral obligations were considered to be cognizable by human reason before the advent of revelation (Reinhart ). The Mu‘tazilites school was heavily opposed by traditionalists who insisted on grounding each and every judgment in textual evidence, either from the Qur'an or the Sunna. They insisted that moral values and moral obligations themselves are only realized through revelation. They were further supported by a school of speculative theology that was found by al‐Ash‘arī (d. 936). From the late eleventh century onward Ash‘arism gradually prevailed and the Ash‘arite moral theology was accepted and developed by prominent jurists of the classical Islamic era, including al‐Ghazālī and al‐Shāṭibī, mentioned above. Theoretically, they remained faithful to the Ash‘arite theory of ethical value and obligation, which basically states that what is right and what is wrong are established by revelation only. Thus their position is often described as “ethical voluntarism,” which is a meta‐ethical position that entails the view that God did not command the acts because they were good; rather, acts became good only because God commanded them. Accordingly, human reason cannot discern right and wrong apart from what is commanded and what is prohibited, and there is no reason behind divine commands and prohibitions, which implies that divine commands are arbitrary. Ethical voluntarism is a meta‐ethical theory that is also largely endorsed by various Protestant scholars, including the contemporary “divine command theorists” in the United States and elsewhere (Al‐Attar , 110).

Regardless of their adherence to the above doctrine, the Ash‘arites from the late eleventh century onward widely opened the door for the use of reason by developing the theory of maqāṣid al‐Sharī‘a (the objectives of divine law). A theory that presupposes aims or objectives behind divine rules and regulations definitely implies that divine laws are not arbitrary but relevant to reason and the well‐being of humanity. Thus it can be called “divine purposes theory” rather than “divine commands theory.”

In the modern time, innovation in methodology via the doctrine of public interest maṣlaḥa and the objectives of maqāṣid “caused a gradual shift in modern Muslim ethical thinking. With this approach contemporary Muslim ethicists are able to question the inherited cultural logic embedded in the ethical values” (Moosa , 50). However, classical Ash‘arite moral theology, as we will see below, prevails in some modern discourses and leads to exclusivist moral views. An exclusivist approach to ethics is the approach that is based on the belief that moral truth is only accessible to a certain religious group to the exclusion of all others. This article will critically analyze exclusivism as a doctrine explicitly or implicitly held by some authors discussed below. I will be arguing for a more inclusive approach when dealing with moral issues, an approach that is based on the belief that all human beings are endowed with reason that enables them to articulate “moral universals that could serve as shared and common goals with humanity at large” (Abou El Fadl )

Islamic normative ethics, as also noted by Ebrahim Moosa, is a combination of different discourses merging duty‐based rules of fiqh (which can be compared to deontological ethics) with a teleological or a consequentialist approach of maṣlaḥa and maqāṣid (which Moosa and other contemporary scholars often compare to utilitarianism). Virtue ethics was developed mainly by Muslim philosophers who followed the Greek Aristotelian tradition (Moosa ).

Attitude towards Science and Technology

It is hard to characterize the relationship between religion and science in contemporary Islamic thought with any finality. Most Muslim intellectuals, and people with a broad range of opinions, generally proclaim the value of science and its neutrality (Dallal , 157). Voices have been raised that demand the Islamization of knowledge, including science. This was promoted by leading Muslim intellectuals like Sayyed Hossein Nasr, the late Ismail Raji al‐Farouqi, and the Pakistani intellectual Ziauddin Sardar. Their discourses are distinct from each other and some are highly sophisticated. Yet, the Islamization of science project is sometimes simplified, to the extent of being reduced to a set of dogmatic beliefs that are utilized to filter and suppress any knowledge or scientific theory that is deemed non‐Islamic. Even Sardar, who seems to have nuanced his view on the whole project of the Islamization of science later on, pointed out that “the Islamization program will inevitably lead to suppressions and censorships of any knowledge that is deemed non‐Islamic, thus creating a cast of scholars who will subjectively filter out knowledge as they see fit” (Guessoum , 123). Indeed, “Muslims find it difficult to digest any ‘separation’ of domains, widely believing (quite erroneously) that Islam is a complete system, which covers every aspect of life. That is why Muslim societies are the only ones to continue to resist ‘secularism’” (Guessoum ).

On the other hand, Muhammad Abdus Salam, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, alongside many other scientists and lay people, believes that science is universal, and only its application is affected by various cultural factors. Nidhal Guessoum seems to agree with Abdus Salam on the universality of science, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of the interpretation of scientific theories and taking into consideration their possible implications. Guessoum proposed a theistic philosophy of science that could substitute for the prevailing materialistic philosophy while still embracing methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism is essential for scientific practice and leads to scientific knowledge that cannot be disputed, whereas metaphysical naturalism as a materialistic philosophy can definitely be disputed. Scientific theories can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with theism (Guessoum , 94–97).

However, science is distinguished from technology, because the latter is comprised of a mixture of science, policy and social environment. That is why debates about technology often sponsor a set of larger concerns (Guessoum , 138; Moosa ). Muslims experience major transitions under the pressure of modernization and globalization, and the question of the relationship between technology and ethical thinking triggers issues related to economics, politics, culture, and society. In what follows, the article seeks to engage with Islamic perspectives regarding GMOs, a highly debated modern technology.

Modern Halāl and Muslim Ethics

Writing for the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences (IFEES) publication, Mohideen Abdul‐Kader, vice‐president of the Consumer Association of Penang, Malaysia, said that “the Sharī‘ah‐compliance of GM is being discussed in a profit‐motivated context, manipulating Islamic scholars into issuing highly controversial fatwas in support of GM food” (Abdul‐Kader ). It has been pointed out that the problem lies in the fact that ḥalāl certification is related to economic orientation, particularly due to the increasing demand and the rise of the “global market.” Thus, it is vulnerable to the rise of commercialization and conflict of interests among Islamic institutions (Anwar ).

In a recently published article, Maghfirah Dahlan‐Taylor rightly argues for food ethics beyond religious dietary laws. She argues for moving away from approaching food from a strictly consumer perspective (albeit a religious one), from asking questions that are limited to what one can and cannot eat given what is specified as Islamic dietary laws, to an approach that takes seriously labor injustices that reflect the problems of power inequality inherent in cooperative relations (). She argues for food justice, an alternative food movement that is rooted in the environmental health and justice movement whose main focus is inequalities. Isabel Schatzschneider, writing for the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) in Doha, pointed out that Islamic traditions concerning food have been discussed mainly in terms of Islamic dietary laws and exclusivist religious identity. She stated that “food is only permissible if it is good, wholesome and pure (ṭayyib). But if there is scientific research providing information on negative impacts on human health and still scientists are not sure whether GMF has risks for human health, how can this food be considered ṭayyib?” (Schatzschneider ). She also stated that “Islamic legislations should protect farmers and other individuals from pure profit considerations of GM companies” (Schatzschneider ).

We are told that until the end of the twentieth century most Muslim communities living in non‐Muslim countries, such as some European countries, did not question the goodness of the meat sold in the supermarkets and restaurants, since it was slaughtered by people of “the book”—that is, by Muslims, Jews, or Christians (Lever ). That is most probably true because the permissibility of meat from animals slaughtered by the people of the book is explicitly mentioned in the Qur'an in verse 5:5, and most Muslim religious scholars agreed that this holds for food which has not been explicitly forbidden elsewhere in the Qur'an, as is the case with pork (Shadid and Koningsveld ). The phenomena of ḥalāl food consumption and production in non‐Muslim countries is a relatively new one, which allows us to talk about what can be called “modern ḥalāl.” Modern ḥalāl is a concept that indicates the complexities among markets, industries, religious institutions, and international trade in determining what ḥalāl is. Although in Malaysia institutions started to issue ḥalāl certificates since the early 1980s, those were not widely recognized. Recently there has been a proliferation in industries and institutions that offer ḥalāl certifications. Moreover, five main international initiatives are working to create international ḥalāl standards (Bergeaud‐Blackler ). Market players have estimated the value of the ḥalāl food market to be around $632 billion annually (Blackler, Fischer, and Lever ). Although the global market for ḥalāl products and services is expanding, it is fraught with contestation in terms of politics and power/knowledge (Blackler, Fischer, and Lever ). Given the huge amount of money involved, there is a competition over the legitimacy of ḥalāl institutions.

Therefore one would not expect decisions on what is ḥalāl to be based only on moral and religious considerations, as profit seems to be an important driving factor. Indeed, that might explain the emphasis put by some scholars on distinguishing between shar’ī legitimate maṣlaḥa and capitalist maṣlaḥa (Bouzenita ). A competition over legitimacy is evident between Malaysian, Gulf Arabian, Turkish, and European countries. For example, Al‐Mazeedi, in a Gulf Conference on the ḥalāl industry organized in Kuwait in 2011, called on Muslim countries to reconquer the ḥalāl market from the West and warned Muslim countries of “an international conspiracy against the requirements of ḥalāl” (Bergeaud‐Blackler ). The GCC ḥalāl standard stands in direct competition with another initiative overseen by Turkey, which is promoting the ḥalāl market through opposition to Western countries while at the same time trying to control the European ḥalāl standard.

So far, the main focus of the ḥalāl institution is meat and animal products. Grain or vegetable products—their production, manipulation, conservation, marketing, and distribution—seem to be dismissed as irrelevant or less relevant to the issue of ḥalāl. Most religious scholars simply define ḥalāl food by referring to certain Qur'anic verses that explicitly state what it is prohibited to eat: “You are forbidden to eat carrion; blood; pig's meat; any animals over which any name other than God's has been invoked; any animal strangled, or victim of a violent blow or fall, or gored or savaged by a beast of prey, unless you still slaughter it [in the correct manner]; or anything sacrificed on idolatrous altars” (Q. 5:3).

Moosa wrote an article on genetically modified food and Muslims' ethics in 2009 in which he lamented the fact that religious communities, including Muslims, have not been able to go beyond science‐based decision making on this issue. Since then, some Muslim scholars have expanded the parameters of the debate. These arguments that went beyond science‐based debates that will be the focus of the following section.

Contempoary Islamic Ethics between Universalism and Exclusivism

It has been pointed out that “Muslim ethicists, whether they are of the traditional stripe or of the modern scientifically trained kind have yet to configure a theory and practice of Muslim ethics in relation to vastly changed social realities” (Moosa ), given that even those who are against or advocate a precautionary approach to GMOs “provide a rather thin theology to justify some emotional resistance to the use of GMOs” (Moosa ). Questioning the role of theology in public ethical discourse, some scholars maintain that “theology rarely yields precise and concrete directives for bioethical decision making, or commends insights and actions inaccessible to nonreligious persons” (Cahill ). Also, Moosa has stated that an important question needs to be addressed, which is whether matters of secular and scientific nature can and ought to be primarily decided by teaching and inspirations that are derived from revelation (2009). To my mind, universal ethical principles such as the four principles of bioethics should be informed by religious and cultural values to enhance their legitimacy and acceptability, as already indicated. Yet, what is needed first is a theology and philosophy that would embrace the idea of universal ethical principles. In a public discourse that is related to a common practical concern, the focus should be on reason and common ethical principles rather than religious texts, which might not be universally accepted and might not even be accepted by the adherents of closely related religions such as the three Abrahamic traditions. Therefore, I argue for a more inclusivist approach in Islamic ethics in order to establish more common ground, especially when dealing with issues related to modern technology.

A more inclusivist approach would acknowledge the fact that revelation confirms and does not contradict ethical principles and that human beings, regardless of their religious affiliations, are endowed with reason that enables them to distinguish between right and wrong. After all, the basic aims or purposes of the Sharī‘ah are not simply derived from scriptural source texts by an induction process, which is a common belief. Anver Emon, for example, noted that “source texts, at most, confirm and corroborate them” (2010, 135). Even the classical Ash‘arite scholar Al‐Ghazali (d. 1111), who was among the first to articulate the maqāṣid theory, acknowledged common morality and therefore universal ethical standards when he said that “it is impossible that any society or any legal system (sharī‘ah min al‐sharāi‛) which aims for the benefit of creation (iṣlaḥ al‐khalq) would not include prohibitions against neglect of and restraint from the five values” (Al‐Ghazali , 258; Emon , 135). An inclusivist approach to issues related to ethics would focus more on the use of reason, common morality, and universal moral principles, and less on religious texts which should confirm universal principles and not contradict them.

Classical Muslim scholars, mainly those who adhered to the Mu‘tazilite school of speculative theology (‘ilm al kalām) have provided us with a theory that distinguishes between religious obligations (taklīf shar‘ī) and rational obligations (taklīf ‘aqlī). The former includes obligations related to rituals such as fasting, praying, and observing some dietary rules, whereas the latter is related to obligations based on reason and shared by all people regardless of their religious traditions (Al‐Attar , 76–79). The specific question that was addressed is whether God or His divine law establishes morality or only indicates it (al‐sharʿ muthabbit am mubayyin). If divine law establishes morality, then no good or evil can be perceived apart from what is commanded or prohibited by God (Al‐Attar ). The Mu‘tazilites held that the law does not establish but only indicates morality, whereas the Ash‘arites, as we have already mentioned, insisted on the contrary. Indeed, any modern ethical discourse is vague unless it first addresses this issue, which has significant philosophical and practical implications.

A Critique of the Exclusivist Approach

A specific understanding of morality seems to have prevailed in Islamic culture since the rise of Ash‘arism. Sometimes Muslim scholars confirm that, for example, complete demarcation of law and ethics becomes unnecessary in Islam since a Muslim is obliged to obey whatever God has ordered, and that Islamic environmental ethics are derived from clear‐cut legal foundations which Muslims hold to be formulated by God (Laxman et al. ). Such statements presuppose an understanding of morality which presumes that God could have commanded anything, and anything becomes good because it is commanded by God. This ignores the other, more rational and inclusive option, which is that God commands or approves what is good because it is good and goodness is qualified as such because of certain attributes, effects, or consequences that render the things or actions good.

In response to a review of articles on Islamic bioethics written by Willem Drees (), Mohammed Ghaly reflected on the importance of shaping bioethics by philosophical ethics. He said that “Drees notices that most of the bioethical discussions in the Islamic tradition focus on how people relate to normative verses from the Qur'an, Sunna, and Islamic jurisprudence. In his view, the bioethical visions do not seem to be shaped by a philosophical ‘natural law’ ethics” (Ghaly ). Ghaly seems to agree that Islamic bioethics, as a field of study, should be broadened by involving specialists in Islamic theology and philosophy of religion besides the experts in Islamic law. This would definitely broaden our approach to bioethics, since issues related to ethics were largely discussed in kalām (speculative theology). However, ethics as a branch of philosophy stands on its own, and is being taught in departments of philosophy in various universities in the Arab and Islamic world. Therefore, broadening Islamic ethics should also include “philosophical ethics,” which is a field of enquiry based on reason, and is thus shared equally by people belonging to different cultures and religions. Indeed, only ethical thought that is based on human reason will likely allow Muslims’ ethics to contribute to the development of bioethics, including food ethics. Abdul Aziz Sachedina has rightly stated that “Islamic morality shares moral sensibilities with all other human beings equally endowed with that divinely ordained nature (fiṭra)” (Sachedina , 15). Moreover, he says that one of the main factors responsible for the fact that the Muslim world has in general neglected to pay close attention to moral aspects related to biotechnology is “a tendency towards religious discourse that emphasizes legal rather than ethical issues” (Sachedina , 199), and Tariq Ramadan noted that “the same reflexes of ritualistic and ethical formalism have set in everywhere” (Ramadan , 257).

Therefore one should endorse a discourse that emphasizes ethical rather than legal issues. Isn't the law after all (whether divine or human‐made) supposed to enforce some ethical standards? Also, one should make a distinction between origin and validity, and avoid “the fallacy of origin.” Good ideas or concepts should not be rejected simply because of their origin. During the heights of Arabo‐Islamic civilization, Muslims and Arabs were able to assimilate almost the whole of ancient Greek and Roman learning, “despite the numerous political and theological tensions that inevitably arose” (Fakhri , 65) No community can claim exclusive access to moral knowledge or claim ethical principles to be their own invention. It is true that the term “food ethics” or “bioethics” was coined by non‐Muslim scholars, but it is also true that the ethical principles of bioethics are not exclusively Western inventions, given that they actually incorporate ethical principles that are endorsed in all cultures and religions. Henk Ten Have has rightly indicated that Western societies cannot claim food ethics or bioethics as theirs, just as the Arabs cannot claim the numerical notation as theirs. We cannot blame the West for imposing the principles of bioethics on the Arab and Muslim world nor can the West blame the Arabs for imposing their figures on the Western world (2013).

Philosophical ethics as a discipline should incorporate relevant ideas and theories that were traditionally discussed in works of fiqh and kalām. It should build upon the accumulated wisdom and the common human heritage while incorporating relevant ideas and theories from Islamic sources. I believe that there is no reason to confine ourselves to the more traditional Islamic disciplines, like fiqh and kalām, because those were established by humans who were neither smarter nor more knowledgeable than people today. Ethical voluntarism, which prevails in the Ash‘arite moral theology and is sometimes explicitly invoked by writers contributing to the emerging field of Islamic ethics and bioethics, needs to be exposed and challenged by Muslim thinkers and intellectuals for various reasons discussed in the context of this article, including its clear exclusivist outlook.