Gender and Sexuality in Islamic Bioethics

This chapter examines how various Islamic discourses assert and challenge normative claims about gender and sexuality. In the limited space assigned for this chapter, a comprehensive examination of these issues is impossible. Instead, it focuses on what are, in my opinion, some of the key problematic assumptions, dominant (and dominating) paradigms and under-developed principles that are invoked in discussions of gender and sexuality as they pertain to Islamic bioethics. This will necessarily involve, at times, a historical examination of how particular legal concepts and structures developed.

Originally published in: Mattson, I. (2017). Gender and sexuality in Islamic bioethics. Islamic bioethics: current issues and challenges. London: World Scientific, 57-84.