Islam and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Sunni and Shia Perspectives ed. by Marcia C. Inhorn and Soraya Tremayne (review)

Even a casual observer would notice the proliferation of artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs) in countries of the Middle East. In Amman, Jordan, for example, a small villa offering infertility services has grown into a multi-story commercial enterprise. This timely collection of essays tackles the fundamental question of how this rapid development and dissemination of ARTs is challenging and transforming reproduction and notions of kinship in settings where Islam is the dominant religion. This is a particularly important debate given that within Islam, sexuality and reproduction are valued not only for individual fulfillment and family formation, but communal rules regulating them are seen as safeguards to maintaining the social order. One main objective of the book is to contrast Sunni and Shi'a perspectives on these questions, examining not only Islamic legal thought but also everyday practices and choices made in national settings.

The book is divided into three main parts. The first includes three chapters addressing Islamic legal thought and ARTs, analyzing, as the editors put it, "How reproduction has been understood and interpreted in both historical and contemporary contexts by religious leaders" (6). The second part of four chapters focuses on the Iranian ART revolution—a particularly interesting case given recent developments allowing third-party donations, as well as its official endorsement of stem-cell research. Moreover, Iran is a country where religious leaders have had to engage with public health issues head-on given that Islam is the dominant ideology of the state. The third part of the book provides country case studies of ART. Its first chapter, the most explicitly comparative in the book, compares and contrasts practices and policies (or the lack thereof) in Sunni Egypt, Catholic Italy, and multi-sectarian Lebanon.

A major contribution of the book is that it brings together varied perspectives of social scientists, clinician practitioners, and experts on Islamic legal thought. The book testifies to a growing body of research particularly on Iran, Egypt, and Lebanon, and the editors have done an excellent job bringing these diverse authors together. Readers looking for a focus on Muslim-majority countries outside the geographic scope noted above, however, must await further edited volumes.

The diversity in the authors' backgrounds allows them to apply varied methodologies, ranging from analysis of Islamic religious texts and fatwas, to vignettes based on in-depth interviews with users of ART services and even asylum-seekers to illustrate individual couples' therapeutic itineraries. One particularly compelling chapter by Shirin Naef compares Islamic legal arguments on surrogate mothers with people's perceptions gleaned through ethnographic research in Iran. A chapter written by a clinician illustrates the real moral dilemmas they face in their everyday practice as they try to reconcile religious values with the needs of their patients in a situation where they lack legal guidance on many topics.

Some of the most fascinating sections of the book elucidate the differences in justifications for and against accepting certain technologies between Sunni and Shi'a leaders. For example, the chapter on gestational surrogacy in Iran—where it is now allowed—argues that Sunni notions of nasab (lineage) confer more importance on the male line, whereas in Shi'ism, it is more gender-balanced (158).

A main intent of the book is to challenge "essentialist, static statements on 'the Islamic way' of constructing kinship" (49). Yet this message seems to be somewhat inconsistently conveyed across the book, perhaps reflecting a tension among the perspectives represented. The early chapters focus heavily on Islamic legal positions as embodied in fatwas whereas subsequent chapters attempt to place Islamic law in wider social and political contexts. As one later chapter argues, for example, "Islamic bioethics cannot be reduced to and equated with the fatwas of the jurists" (103). Another major contribution of the book is to point out that, in many Muslim-majority countries, key ethical decisions about ARTs are not...