DERIVATIVES OF MODERN REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND THE SHARIAH: SYNTHESIS OR ANTITHESIS

Abstract

Shariah (Islamic law) is a living law. Although its tenets and rules have for long been established and perfected, its applicability to realities of modern times in all spheres of human endeavor is not in contest. One of these vast modern areas is the complexity attached to the technology of human reproductive system where a man or woman remains infertile after lawful marriage. In a bid to proffer cure for such infertility, which is plaguing a number of couples, medics have discovered and introduced a manifold of devices such as artificial insemination, surrogacy and gamete intra fallopian transfer (GIFT) among others. A convenient phrase which is constitutive of all these methods is Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). The paper examines the position of Islam on the permissibility or otherwise of each of the new reproductive technologies. The inherent benefit in this is to afford a practicing Muslim, bedeviled by the problem of infertility, an opportunity to identify the particular one(s) to opt for in the list of the ART methods.