This Article analyzes the 2021 judgment of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the case of Mst. Safia Bano v. Home Department, Government of Punjab. The case has garnered significant local and international attention due to the Court\'s ruling that a death sentence may not be carried out on a defendant who has a mental illness. Setting the case against the backdrop of Pakistan\'s Islamic and colonial contexts, this article argues that the Supreme Court has reshaped the insanity defense in Pakistani law by placing the determination of a defendant\'s mental state mainly in the hands of medical professionals. However, the Court\'s reliance on medical professionals and the subsequent downplaying of the \"moral capacity\" element of the insanity defense-a determination of law made by courts-has created an obstacle for courts to punish offenders more stringently in future cases due to the popular belief that mental health professionals are ill-equipped to answer broader questions of justice for victims and society. The article recommends that this issue can be remedied by establishing an objective legal test for insanity that considers Islamic law, Pakistani precedent, and advances in medical science.

The outburst of the fourth Industrial Revolution had a significant impact on many aspects of life. The discovery of new technologies in medicine has resulted in innovations: organ transplants. The introduction of three-dimensional (3D) organ printing technology promises improvements to the field. Organs such as the liver, kidneys, heart and others are printed to meet the needs of the actual organs. However, the production of prototype organs to replace the original organs is associated with the issue of changing the creation of Allah. Accordingly, this study will analyse the issue of changing the creation of God in three-dimensional (3D) organ printing technology according to the perspective of Islamic law. Several appropriate methodologies in Islamic law (usul fiqh) are used such as legal reasoning through maqasid shariah perspective and analogical reasoning. The result shows that three-dimensional (3D) organ printing technology falls under the permissible category of changing the creation of Allah because it can save human lives. The production of organs through 3D printing involving changes included in the category of necessity (daruri) and need (hajiy) is permissible, but the category of desirable (tahsini) requires further specifications.

In a landmark Fatwa, Saudi Arabia\'s highest religious authority-The Council of Senior Scholars-declared the Islamic permissibility of oocyte cryopreservation. The fatwa sanctioned the retrieval, preservation, and future use of oocytes, ovarian tissue, and whole ovaries from cancer patients receiving gonadotoxic interventions. Although momentous, the fatwa\'s specification of cancer patients effectively rendered this technology unavailable to others to whom it may be similarly beneficial, including patients with other medical conditions or patients seeking elective cryopreservation. This article argues in favor of widening reproductive choices through expanded access to oocyte cryopreservation in Saudi Arabia-regardless of the underlying cause of infertility-on three grounds: the technology\'s compliance with Islamic law, as a matter of fairness in medical practice, and as a means to support the well-being and flourishing of Saudi women within the context of a national societal and economic transformation strategy closely linked to their success.

Posthumous reproduction (PHR) is the process by which assisted reproductive technology is used to establish pregnancy and produce genetic offspring following the death of a parent. There are different ethical and legal approaches towards this method of reproduction around the world. This paper will study the legality of PHR and its legal consequences for the family status of a child born by this technology according to Iranian law. This research uses the descriptive-analytical method to study Iranian legislation, the opinion of jurists and jurisconsults, and case law in the area of PHR. The only statute regarding assisted reproductive technology in Iranian law - the Embryo Donation Act 2003 - and the associated regulation contain no explicit provision on PHR. The subject is therefore very controversial among Iranian jurists and jurisconsults. This issue has also been the subject of divergent court decisions. This study shows that the current legislation is insufficient to address various issues raised by PHR, and there is a need for the legislature to provide legislative clarity. Although advocates of this technique use the approval of some jurisconsults (fuqahâ) as justification for the legal recognition of PHR during the idda period in Iranian law, some concerns regarding the practice, especially the child\'s best interests, support prohibition or at least restriction to specific, limited cases.

Influenza virus is a life-threatening pathogen that infects millions of people every year, with annual mortality in the hundreds of thousands. The scenario for controlling infection has worsened with increasing numbers of vaccine hesitancy cases reported worldwide due to objections on safety, religious and other grounds. Uses of haram (impermissible) and mashbooh (doubtful) ingredients in vaccine production has raised doubts among Muslim consumers and consequently stimulated serious vaccine hesitancy. To address this major problem, we have reviewed and recommended some alternatives appropriate for manufacturing cell-based influenza vaccine which comply with Islamic laws and consumers\' needs. Intensive assessments of current influenza vaccine production in both scientific and Islamic views have led to the identification of four main ingredients deemed impermissible in novel sharia-compliant (approved by Islamic laws) vaccine manufacturing. Only some of these impermissible components could be replaced with halal (permissible) alternatives, while others remain impermissible due to unavailability and unsuitability.

Religious beliefs and values impact Muslim patients\' attitudes toward a variety of healthcare decisions, including organ donation. Muslim physician attitudes toward organ donation, however, are less well studied. Utilizing a national survey of physician members of the Islamic Medical Association of North America, relationships between religiosity, patterns of bioethics resource utilization, and sociodemographic characteristics with attitudes toward organ donation were assessed. Of 255 respondents, 251 answered the target question, \"in your understanding, does Islamic bioethics and law permit organ donation?.\" 177 respondents (70%) answered positively, 30 (12%) negatively, and 46 (18%) did not know. Despite the overwhelming majority of respondents believing organ donation to be permitted by Islamic bioethics and law, fewer than one-third (n = 72, 30%) are registered donors. Several sociodemographic features had a positive association with believing organ donation to be permitted: ethnic descent other than that of South Asian, having immigrated to the USA as an adult, and male sex. When using a logistic regression model controlling for these three variables as potential confounders, the best predictor of Muslim physicians believing organ donation to be permissible was utilization of an Imam as a bioethical resource (odds ratio 5.9, p = 0.02). Religiosity variables were not found to be associated with views on the Islamic permissibility of organ donation. While Muslim American physicians appear to believe there is religious support for organ donation, only a minority sign up to be donors. Greater study is needed to understand how physicians\' attitudes regarding donation impact discussions between patients and physicians regarding the possibility of donating and of receiving a transplant.

Iran is currently discussing cannabis and opium regulations, which could bring a legalisation of drug consumption through a state supervised system. The article engages with the question of cannabis by looking at the legal interpretation of religious authorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The choice of Iran is justified for several reasons: firstly, Iran has a long history of drug use and cannabis has been part of the country\'s intoxicant traditions since times immemorial; secondly, the Iranian state is unique in that it combines religious exegesis with political machination through official channels; finally, among all Middle East and Islamic countries, Iran is at the avant-garde in experimenting in the field of drugs policy which makes an excellent case for the study of cannabis regulation. The article is the result of a direct engagement with Iran\'s leading Shi\'a authorities, the maraje\'-e taqlid, \'source of emulation\'. The authors redacted a list of eight questions (estefta\'at) about the status of cannabis in Iranian society. It questioned cannabis\' legality in Islam, its potential medical use, the feasibility of domestic production and other relevant aspects of its social-religious life. Based on the responses, the authors analysed the difference in opinions among the religious scholars and speculate on the possibility of policy reform. Given the dearth of scholarly work about illicit drugs in the Islamic world, about which many readers might not be familiar, the article opens with an overview of the place of cannabis in the history of Islamic societies. It discusses terminological ambiguities, references in religious texts and traditions, and the general interpretations within Muslim religious schools of thought. Then, it discusses the status of cannabis in contemporary Iran before tackling the responses provided by the religious scholars. Eventually, the paper puts forward reflections about the potential implications for future policy developments on cannabis.

The ever-increasing technological advances of modern medicine have increased physicians\' capacity to carry out a wide array of clinical interventions near the end-of-life. These new procedures have resulted in new \"types\" of living where a patient\'s cognitive functions are severely diminished although many physiological functions remain active. In this biomedical context, patients, surrogate decision-makers, and clinicians all struggle with decisions about what clinical interventions to pursue and when therapeutic intent should be replaced with palliative goals of care. For some patients and clinicians, religious teachings about the duty to seek medical care and the care of the dying offer ethical guidance when faced with such choices. Accordingly, this paper argues that traditional Sunni Islamic ethico-legal views on the obligation to seek medical care and Islamic theological concepts of human dignity (karāmah) and inviolability (ḥurmah) provide the ethical grounds for non-intervention at the end-of-life and can help calibrate goals of care discussions for Muslim patients. In closing the paper highlights the pressing need to develop a holistic ethics of healthcare of the dying from an Islamic perspective that brings together multiple genres of the Islamic intellectual tradition so that it can meet the needs of the patients, clinicians and Muslim religious leaders interacting with the healthcare system.

BACKGROUND: This research-based paper examined the Indonesian foundation and endowment laws in relation to educational and religious institutions which are managed under foundation legal structure. The institutions examined were: 1) The Pondok Pesantren al-Ansor Foundation in Padangsidimpuan City; 2) The Pesantren Dar al-Ma\'arif Education Foundation in South Labuhanbatu Regency; and 3) ​The Masjid Agung Foundation in Medan City.
METHODS: Using legal sociology and critical legal analysis, data were collected through field research, document study, and in-depth interviews. The documents studied were laws, books, papers, and other related writings relevant to this research. Interviews were conducted with informants obtained from snowball sampling and key person methods.
RESULTS: It was found that in terms of foundation wealth, these institutions can be categorized into three: (1) foundation with founder\'s wealth; (2) foundation with endowment wealth; and (3) foundation with both founder\'s and endowment wealth. Even though both foundation and endowment legal structures have the same aim of societal welfare, it was found that when they are merged into one legal structure, the foundation becomes more dominant, and there is a risk that the endowment asset\'s status become unclear. The asset may be sold or its status may be changed from endowment wealth to foundation wealth. This unclear status may also be caused by conflict of interests among the foundation members and people involved in the foundations. Even when the foundation status is clear, most if not all foundation members violate the rules stipulated by the Foundation Law. The lack of status clarity has caused these institutions to become objects of conflict.
CONCLUSIONS: There is a need to position the status of these institutions accurately and it is recommended that the endowment legal structure is used for institutions with endowment wealth.

The question of whether there is justification for physicians to participate in state-sanctioned corporal punishment has prompted long and heated debates around the world. Several recent and high-profile sentences requiring physician assistance have brought the conversation to Saudi Arabia. Whether a physician is asked to participate actively or to assess prisoners\' ability to withstand this form of punishment, can there be an ethical justification for medical training and skills being put toward these purposes? The aim of this article is to examine aspects of Islamic law along with the different professional and religious obligations of Saudi Arabian physicians, and how these elements may inform the debate.