Clarke Morgan
Providing a ground-breaking investigation into the changing ideas of kinship in the Middle East, the author documents Islamic responses to assisted reproductive technologies such as "in vitro" fertilization through fieldwork in Lebanon and the extensive reading of Islamic legal texts. This ethnography is brought to bear on the latest theories of Middle Eastern kinship, as well as the "new kinship" studies in anthropology generally. Lebanon is home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and the book thus provides a full account of both schools of legal opinion: in the case of the latter, a number of the leading Shiite authorities are considered, including Ayatollah Khamene'i, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Lebanon's own Ayatollah Fadlallah, and Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq. The debates centre on the moral propriety of such controversial procedures as the use of donor sperm and eggs and surrogacy arrangements, allowed by some authorities in surprising and innovative legal arguments that challenge common stereotypes of Islamic law, and lead the author to question conventional contrasts between "liberal" and Islamic notions of moral freedom.
Islam and New Kinship: Reproductive Technology, Anthropology and the Shariah in Lebanon