ABSTRACT
The UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights’ project on the interdisciplinary search for bioethical norms can be thought of as a source of law problem, a problem of legal theory. The papers of Abu Sway and Padela both present the same kind of source of law questions: (i) Can ethical norms be derived from (more basic) mystical norms? (ii) Can Islam, as a general proposition, be a source of ethical norms? Both questions must be answered in the negative. Mystical norms cannot be a source of (bio)ethical norms because the order of being to which they belong does not intersect or overlap with the political order. The concerns of people who engage in mystical practices, and to whom mystical norms apply and are practically relevant, are disengaged from worldly matters. The religious life of mystically engaged people engenders political quietism. Islam, as a general matter, is a very complex space. Since (bio)ethics is a political subject, it must be grounded in political discourse of some kind. There are some 50 states in the world with Muslim majority populations. Some of these have incorporated Sharia in their constitutions to one degree or another, and some of them identify as Islamic states in their constitution. There are deeply conservative Islamic states, such as Saudi Arabia, and secular Islamic states, such as Iraq. It is empirically obvious, and theologically consistent, that Islam manifests politically in different ways in different communities. Therefore, the idea there is a unified understanding or manifestation of political order in Islam is impossible to justify. There are various legal theories, or schools of jurisprudence, but those as such are the province of scholars, not politicians and generals. Because (bio)ethics must be grounded in an actual political order, it is fair to say there are as many bioethics in Islam as there are Islamic political communities, certainly as there are states that claim to be Islamic. It makes sense to say Moroccan Islam suggests x as a bioethical norm, whereas Saudi Arabia holds that y is the norm covering the same topic. No school of Islamic discourse, philosophy or law can claim to be true for all of Islam. My analysis suggests that the contributions of both Abu Sway and Padela, to the extent they reference mystical norms are inapt and to the extent they purport to provide specific norms for neuro-genomic ethical problems, cannot be identified as Islamic to the extent they are ungrounded from a political order.
