Initiative on Islam and Medicine
There are presently no open calls for submissions.
Interfaces and Discourses: A Multidisciplinary Conference on Islamic Theology, Law and Biomedicine
Initiative on Islam and Medicine, Program on Medicine and Religion, University of Chicago
Friday, April 15 – Sunday, April 17, 2016
Conference Objective:
Address the discursive and scholarly knowledge gaps impeding Islam and Science discourses through a 3-day multidisciplinary conference on the intersections of Islamic Theology and Law with Biomedicine.
Call for Abstracts:
The conference invites participants to share their work—be it using empirical, historical, theological, ethico-legal, social scientific, or other research methods—at the intersection of Islam and biomedicine. Papers will be grouped thematically into panels according to field of inquiry—scholastic theology (kalam), moral theology (usul al- fiqh), ethics/law (fiqh, adab, ahklaq), epistemology, empirical health research, and biomedical practice—and each panel will be brought to a close by a scholarly respondent commenting on the implications for cross-disciplinary dialogue and research that emerge from the presented work. While abstracts on any topic of relevance are welcome, presenters should consider the following two questions to be the primary focus of the conference.
- How might scientific notions of harm and risk relate to, and work with, Islamic constructs of necessity and benefit in the context of biomedicine?
- What is an Islamic ontology of the soul? How does it relate to, and how might it work with, modern neuroscientific data, in order to inform a better understanding of death and care for the dying?