Islam And Organ Transplantation

Here’s a very interesting piece reporting on a forthcoming book that focuses on Islamic cultural reponses to organ transplantation.

Q&A with Sherine Hamdy: Organ transplants, Islam and the struggle for human dignity in Egypt

Many accounts of Egypt’s black market organ trade have surfaced over the years when youths with shoddy scars would describe tales of amateur-performed organ transplants, executed for various tragic reasons, though usually revolving around money. Less documented, however, are the sociocultural characteristics surrounding issues of organ transplantation in Egypt that by extension allow for this phenomena to exist.

In her forthcoming book, titled “Our Bodies Belong to God: Organ Transplants, Islam, and the Struggle for Human Dignity in Egypt,” scholar Sherine Hamdy, assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University, has, using over ten years of research, attempted to look at the deeper sociocultural issues surrounding organ transplantation in Egypt and why it remains such a controversial issue. more